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Our Homeschool Curriculum for 5th Grade, 2nd Grade, 1st Grade, and Tot

July 12, 2015 by Selena Robinson 6 Comments

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Hi everyone! Today is a wonderful day, because it’s the start of my favorite time of year – homeschool planning season!

After briefly experimenting with public school last year, I’m thrilled to be resuming our homeschool life this fall and I’ve had a great time choosing our curriculum for the 2015-16 school year!

Today I’m sharing our homeschool curriculum for 5th grade, 2nd grade, 1st grade, and Totschool!

Our Homeschool Curriculum for 5th Grade, 2nd Grade, 1st Grade, and Totschool

Image: Africa Studio / Dollar Photo Club

Our Homeschool Curriculum for 5th Grade

I honestly cannot believe that Tigger is entering fifth grade. It seems like it was only yesterday that I planned her preschool curriculum. Amazing how fast time flies.

The book What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know will serve as our curriculum spine for this year. I always appreciate the Core Knowledge books, because they give me a framework to use for designing my lesson plans.

What Fifth Grader Needs to Know

I’m not a classical homeschooler, but I love the classical approach to history. So we follow the history method outlined in The Well-Trained Mind – a chronological approach with a four-year rotation of the same time periods.

This year, the bulk of our history lessons will come from The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History.

Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History

One thing I actually liked about public school was that it introduced Tigger to the rigors of Common Core Math. I am actually a fan of the Common Core curriculum, though not necessarily the instructional method. (I’ll share more about why I use Common Core Math in our homeschool in an upcoming post.)

This year, we’ll be using enVision Math Common Core Grade 5 by Scott-Foresman Addison-Wesley.

enVision Math

To supplement our math lessons and to accommodate Tigger’s ADHD, we’ll be using a few other math resources, including the Math Mini Office Lapbook from A Journey Through Learning. (See our review here.)

Our science curriculum will be based on Harcourt School Science for Grade 5. I’ve been able to find this book (and other school books like it) for just a couple of dollars on Amazon. Win!

Harcourt Science

We’ve been using the Homeschool Fitness Package from Family Time Fitness for years and we’re sticking with it this year too! It’s an easy and fun way to get everyone moving, which is absolutely critical for kids with ADHD.

Family Time Fitness - Fitness 4 Homeschool
We have a Lifetime Membership to Notebooking Pages and we’ll be putting it to good use this year! There are pages for all kinds of topics, including history, nature study, geography, and more!

Notebooking Pages LIFETIME Memberships
For geography, this year we’ll be learning about the continent of Europe. And we’ll be using the wonderful notebooking pack Discover Europe to explore each country!

Discover Europe

Both Tigger and Pooh will be using the program Keyboard Classroom to practice their typing skills. I think Pooh, in particular, will love it because he hates to write things by hand.

Keyboard Classroom

Our art program this year will be the Art for All Ages from Southern Hodgepodge. We got to use the Shark Chalk Pastel ebook last year and my kids loved it so much that we’ll be sticking with chalk pastels this year as well.

Art for All Ages Bundle - 3 ebooks!
For music this year, we’ll be using SQUILT Volume 1: Baroque Composers by Homegrown Learners. This will be our first time studying classical music as a family, so I’m excited to get started! (If you’re interested in SQUILT, you can save 25 percent on any volume through July 17th!)

SQUILT Music

Our Homeschool Curriculum for 2nd Grade

For second grade, we’ll be using the book What Your Second Grader Needs to Know as our curriculum spine.

What Second Grader Needs to Know

Our math curriculum for second grade will consist of Khan Academy, which Pooh loves, and a continuing study using the Life of Fred: Apples and Life of Fred: Butterflies.

Life of Fred Apples

This year, we’ll be using several resources from the EHM Members Only Website for Pooh. Some of our picks include:

  • The 2nd Grade Daily Math Activities Book
  • It Just Makes Cents Money Book
  • Geoboard Activity Pack
  • Foam Dart Physics
  • Landforms Around the World
  • and the US State Study Packs

E.H.M. Member's Only Website

Our Homeschool Curriculum for 1st Grade

Roo and Pooh have a lot of their lessons together, but I still like to make sure that he masters his concepts. His first grade curriculum will be centered on the book What Your First Grader Needs to Know.

What First Grader Needs to Know

Like Pooh, he’ll also be using Khan Academy and Life of Fred for math. And he’ll be using some of the resources from the EHM Members Only site as well, such as:

  • All About My Community Pack
  • Days of the Week Activity Pack
  • My Plant Journal
  • and the Children of the World Pack

Since he also has ADHD, we’ll have to break out the Ultimate Guide to Brain Breaks to help him burn off a little activity in between lessons.

The Ultimate Guide to Brain Breaks eBook

Our Homeschool Curriculum for Totschool

For Totschool, I’m keeping things simple with little Piglet this year. We’re going to be using the oldie-but-goodie Teach Me Mommy by Jill Dunford.

Teach Me Mommy

I’ve had this book since Tigger was a toddler and I love it so much. It’s a wonderful introduction to preschool themes but it has all of the book suggestions, activities, and crafts laid out for you each week.

Since Piglet will be three in December, we’ll begin using this then and probably continue with it until she reaches PreK. And I guess this is the last child I’ll use it with! *sniff*

We use a lot of unit studies with our kids, so I’ll also be including some of the themed Tot Packs from 3 Dinosaurs and 1+1+1=1. That way, Piglet can get in on learning about the same things as her older siblings!

Before we begin officially Totschooling this winter, we’ll be using the book Learn with Play from the Kid Blogger Network to help her get involved in making things and having sensory fun while learning. I suspect the older kids will want to get in on the fun too. 😉

Learn with Play

Those are our choices for homeschool curriculum for 5th grade, 2nd grade, 1st grade, and Totschool! I’d love to hear what you’re using this year, so tell us your choices in the comments!

This post is part of the 2015 Not Back to School Curriculum Week Hop from iHomeschool Network! Click over to read even more great posts from our fellow bloggers!

2015 Not Back to School Hop

CurrClick

Filed Under: 2015-16 Curriculum, Homeschool Curriculum, Homeschooling, iHomeschool Network Linkups

Comments

  1. Mystiqua says

    July 14, 2015 at 8:56 am

    Looks like you have a fun and exciting year up ahead!

    Reply
    • Selena Robinson says

      July 19, 2015 at 7:23 am

      Hey Mystiqua! Thanks for stopping by!

      Reply
  2. Lauren says

    July 24, 2015 at 7:55 am

    I love the layout of your homeschool year! Thanks for sharing it with us, I’m going to have to look into Learn With Play for my two tots. By the way, the nicknames are awesome 🙂

    Reply
    • Selena Robinson says

      July 26, 2015 at 6:18 am

      Thanks for stopping by! 🙂

      Reply
  3. Sheila @ BrainPowerBoy says

    July 26, 2015 at 5:55 pm

    Nice to see you are back homeschooling Selena. I hope it goes well for you. It is always interesting for me to see the huge variety of ideas available for homeschoolers.
    I’m glad you found things that will work well for your family. I love the Learn With Play book!

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Curriculum Reveal Roundup & Favorite things Friday Linkup says:
    August 7, 2015 at 9:01 am

    […] is the curriculum reveal from Look We’re Learning. You can check out her full post by CLICKING HERE or on the image to the left. She describes what curriculum she is using for 1st grade, 2nd grade […]

    Reply

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Hi! I'm Selena, a teacher and a veteran homeschool mom to four. I'm so glad you're here!
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