We’re getting excited to dive into our new curriculum and learn things in the coming school year. Austin is nine this year and working on fourth grade work. Brookland is seven, working on second grade work. Gauge will be five in November, and is excited to be starting kindergarten.
Our Homeschool Curriculum Picks: Grades K, 2, and 4
*I received BookShark curriculum for my kids in exchange for posts on how we use it. We love BookShark. This post does also contain some affiliate links, see my privacy policy for more information.*
Are you as excited for a new school year as I am? My middle child says she can’t wait to start up again, and I think, like me, she wants to start enjoying all the new books, the new pencils, and the other new things that I have stashed away for the upcoming year. I really like the routine of school. Summers are fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants fun, but the structure of our homeschool schedule is comforting.
Secular Language Arts – Curriculum Picks
Secular Kindergarten Language Arts
For kindergarten this year, we’re using BookShark’s Language Arts. I’m excited to use their language arts for the first time, and with all three kids at that.
This year Gauge will be working more on learning letters and phonics through activity sheets, copy work, and writing assignments, though I’ll be helping with those at this point, of course. Basically, everything that we have been working on here and there will become more routine and put together into actual lessons instead of scattered. All our pre-K fun learning comes together here.
Language Arts Level 2 and Language Arts Level 2 Advanced
I have my two girls studying science and history together, using BookShark Level 2 this year. BookShark’s helpful customer service recommended that we use the language arts level 2 advanced for my fourth grader because it ties in with the history curriculum. I took side-by-side photos to show you the difference between the two for week one.
You can see that they’ll be working on the same concepts but with different words and different work, as well as reading different books. My fourth grader will be doing more reading alone this year while I read with her brother and sister.
Secular Science – Curriculum Picks
We loved using science level 1 so much last year that it was natural that we would continue onto science level 2 this year. We’ll all be learning about:
- historical and mechanical technology (how things are made) which is going to trill my oldest and her need to know how everything works
- geology
- meteorology which I can’t wait for! We have some crazy weather here in Saskatchewan with hail, sun, and tornadoes occurring often in the summer months.
- biology of plants, animals, babies and habitats – We’ll all be very into this topic!
Secular History – Curriculum Picks
This year we are using Reading with History Level 2 because, again, we loved level 1 and I loved being able to read one book at a time to all my kids and having projects that we can work on together.
Having just a couple of subjects that we can all do together is a lifesaver.
This second part of Intro to World History is going to help us see how history has had a real impact on how we live today.
We’ll get to learn real historical answers to their questions such as:
- Why did castles, knights and jousting tournaments fade away?
- Why aren’t there very many Kings and Queens in the world anymore?
- Why do we study Math and Science?
- Why do people from different cultures tend to view the world so differently? – I’m excited about this one as Saskatchewan is full of people from different cultures, including us who are from the East Coast of Canada where things are a bit different there from here.
I’m not a history buff at all, but these are topics that I am really interested in diving into with my kids this year. One of my favorite things about homeschooling is that I get to learn along with my kids. When one of us has a question, we dive deeper into a topic and get to learn so much.
Secular Math – Curriculum Picks
We’re using RightStart Math levels A and C this year. Using level A, Gauge will be getting a firm foundation of number sense through quantity recognition and visualization strategies using the AL Abacus.
RS2 Level A helps the child understand quantities based around 5s and 10s. This level includes addition and subtraction to 10, place value to the hundreds, and some basic geometry and measurement. Money and clocks are introduced.
Brookland will be using RightStart level C which continues to build on known addition and subtraction facts, works with 4-digit addition and subtraction and 2-digit mental calculations and introduces multiplication and fractions. We’ll also be working on area and perimeter, measurement, money, time, and basic fractions.
Austin is using Teaching Textbooks this year, level 4. You can read our review on that here. I’ll say she loves it, and I definitely love it. She really enjoys the independence with it, she can go at her own pace and being online she can work on it when we go to the library for the younger ones’ storytime.
All these math programs can be purchased separately, or you can get them with your all-in-one BookShark curriculum as well.
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Reading History – Learning about the World