The Ultimate Guide to Homeschool Curriculum - Down to Earth Homesteaders

Choosing to homeschool our kids is one of the biggest decisions we can make when raising them. I always tell people that the success our kids have as homeschoolers is dependent a lot on how disciplined we are as parents. One thing that has helped me to be disciplined when teaching Sarah and Seth has been choosing homeschool curriculum that I enjoy and can easily implement. In this article, I’m going to share with you what curriculum we chose to use with our kids. My hope is that you will find it helpful and possibly give you some ideas and inspiration.

You can jump directly into the curriculum for each grade listed below.

But first, let me explain briefly my thoughts on some of the subject covered.

First, my thoughts on each subject.

When you look at the price tag on some of these items remember they are an investment. If you have more than one child to homeschool you will be using the teachers manuals and manipulatives over and over as your children grow into the materials. Some teacher’s manuals you can purchase used but you will need to buy a new workbook if one is required.

Art

The way we chose to teach art to our kids was to give them some basic drawing skills in their early years, and then allowed them to develop those skills if they had the interest. By the time they were both in the 6th grade they were using sketch books on their own time, which we did not include in their school assignments. Sarah’s interest developed into drawing people and focusing on facial and hair details. Seth’s interest led him to fill sketch books with Pokemon characters.

Bible

Teaching our kids the Bible has been a huge priority in our family. We choose to make it part of their school studies so that they had a routine approach to studying the Bible. As you will see the materials we choose to use change from year to year. This is mainly because as they got older they could handle Bible study more maturely.

By the time they were in the 7th grade we started them using World Video Bible School (WVBS) to study the Bible. This is a free video service provided that you can enroll you kids in. If enrolled as a formal student they will be given tests and writing assignments to complete oftentimes this includes memory work. If they are a formal or informal student the WVBS Online Bible School issues a certificate of completion to you for each course they successfully complete. And, if you are a formal student they issue a graduation diploma upon successfully completing all required courses.

Computer

It was very important to me that Sarah and Seth could type proficiently and not two-finger the keyboard when writing an assignment. We chose to use Mavis Beacon to help teach typing skills. I think it’s a great program that encourages accuracy. Up until 5th grade all the assignments were handwritten, but after that I encouraged the kids to type their assignments and develop those skills since that is what they will be doing in college if they choose to pursue that.

Cursive

I realize that many states are not including cursive handwriting in their curriculums any more, but we chose to include it in ours. Most people nowadays only write their names in cursive when their signature is needed on something, but I still felt it was a skill that my kids would benefit from learning. This helped to lead to Sarah’s interest in calligraphy and Bible Journaling.

Geography

You will see below that we did use some formal materials in the early grades to teach geography, but the thing that helped the most was making the kids aware of the world around us. Because were we missionaries for the majority of their school age years, we traveled a lot, which gave us the opportunity to discuss not only different states, but also countries.

Grammar

Just like Saxon Math had been our constant for teaching Math, Shurley English is what we chose to use to teach grammar to our kids. I would say that the Shurley English materials are well organized and give the kids a lot of opportunity to practice the skills they are learning. Sarah and Seth found some of the writing assignments, such as writing thank you letters, to be boring some times, but I thought it was beneficial for them to develop those skills even if they seemed silly to them. Shurley English includes Jingles to teach concepts that are a bit difficult to grasp. It’s important to have a good handle on the materials before moving on to a new concept because they build on one another and the kids can get overwhelmed if there is too much unfamiliar material.

Greek

The Hey Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! materials were fun to use when they kids were very small. They use songs to help with memorization and workbooks to make learning activities age appropriate. We choose use William Mounce’s Greek materials in high school. Don’t be intimidated if you don’t know Greek. I learned right along with my kids.

History

We chose to use Veritas Press’ online self-paced history courses to teach history because the quality of the material is good and the

kids enjoyed using it. Each course has it’s own character or characters that interact and lead the student through the material. The course is self contained including activities, quizzes, and tests. There is supplemental reading if you choose to use it. You may find that the majority of books are ones you can find in your county library or request to have purchased. A lot of libraries have a budget set aside for book suggestions from the community.

Foreign Language

It’t not likely you will choose for your kids to study Indonesian as we had Sarah and Seth do! Because we were missionaries in Indonesia it made sense for them to develop those language skills and they had ample opportunity to practice those skills on a daily basis. I would encourage you to start teaching a spoken foreign language to your kids at a young age. Kindergarten or earlier would be the best time because young children can pick up and learn a second language so much better than adults or even older children. I think we do a disservice to our kids when they are teenagers insisting they learn a foreign language that they have no opportunity to use outside of a classroom.

Latin

So many of our English words have roots in Latin and that is why we chose to include some basic Latin in our homeschool curriculum. Latin for Children uses songs and chants to help with memorization and I appreciated that they ask the kids to think of words that sound like the Latin words they are learning, thus helping kids to learn to recognize the parallels between the languages.

Literature

My goal when the kids were very little was to make reading fun and enjoyable so that as they got older and could read for themselves they would pick up a book to read not because it was an assignment but because they wanted to read for pleasure, sometimes in odd positions (notice Sarah’s reading position)! Haha! This doesn’t mean though that I didn’t insist they read materials that they weren’t interested in. No, some of the books you will see listed below were assigned reading that I thought beneficial to them or that correlated to other materials they were learning. The list of books is in no way exhaustive. As the kids got older they would pick books out for pleasure and I haven’t included most of those in my list.

Math

Saxon Math is a constant for us. We started in Kindergarten using Saxon Math after a friend recommended it to me and gave me the first teacher’s manual. Saxon Math builds on itself, which is one of the reasons I like using it. As the kids got older and their math skills exceeded my knowledge, we choose to use the DVD set’s that include instructional materials. We found this supplemental material to be very helpful to their studies.

P.E.

While we make it a point in our family to be active, we wanted to intentionally teach our kids good exercise habits. Hal Higdon has great training programs for running a 5K and 10K races that we used with Sarah and Seth. This gave them a set schedule to keep with a goal in mind. We also occasionally joined county sports teams and sports activities organized by a local homeschool group. As a family we also had fun doing 30 Days of Change. It’s a fun and free exercise program that doesn’t require any gym equipment.

Reading and Writing

I know that a lot of parents feel intimidated and overwhelmed at the idea of teaching their kids to read and write. It’s a BIG responsibility and you can feel defeated when you don’t see progress being made. I would encourage you to check out The Phonics Museum that Veritas Press has designed. I used it with both Sarah and Seth and enjoyed the experience. They offer a very creative approach to reading and writing with lots of fun songs that help you and your kids memorize the basic concepts of reading.

Science

We used Apologia Science for our formal science studies in the older grades, but just like with most subjects you begin teaching

science when your kids are young by observing the natural world around us. Before we ever began using books we focused on God’s creations and taking note of how the seasons change and what takes place in each season that makes it unique. We did fun experiments like creating a volcano to see the reaction between baking soda and vinegar. The possibilities are endless and fun!

Kindergarten