Our Favorite Homeschooling Curriculum Fall 2023: Kindergarten, 2nd Grade, 4th Grade [Episode 291]

Episode description

In this week’s video, I’ll take you on a virtual tour of our homeschooling setup for this year. As a homeschooling mom of Kindergarten, 2nd grade, and 4th grade kids, I’ve tested a variety of resources and materials over the years. 

So, if you’re a fellow homeschooling parent looking for inspiration, you’re in the right place! We’ve made a few tweaks to how we are doing school this year. Now that I have three school-aged kids, we are shifting to more of a family school focus with a few individual subjects, instead of primarily individual studies. 

Here is what we are focusing on this year: 

Family Subject Resources

• Science: Science in the Beginning 

• Picture Study 

• Addition Facts That Stick 

• Subtraction Facts that Stick 

• Language Study 

• History - Story of the World 

• Picture books from the library on a variety of subjects

Individual Study

• Busy town Eye Found It Game

• Spot It

• All About Reading 

• Rightstart Math

• Minimalist Math Curriculum Research Parent/ Right start 

• Hoffman Academy  (Get 10% off with code LEARN)

• Good and the Beautiful books/reading for 4th grade 

• The Great Illustrated Classics

Organizational Resources

• Backpacks with pencil and planner

• Hooks for backpacks

• Notebooking pencils 

• Pencil sharpener

• Kids watches

• How to stitch a notebook

I’m often asked what the secret is to being consistent with homeschooling. I’ve found that consistency in homeschooling is easier to achieve when you have a reset space that makes it easy to do the thing you want to do.

I want to do all the things in our homeschooling day - math, science, history, music practice, nature study, language study, etc. - so I often would pick just doing one more thing instead of cleaning up. 

What I’ve discovered this semester is that if we just do a little less each day and leave time and energy to reset the space, it is SO MUCH EASIER to get into schoolwork the next day. So instead of doing lots of school a few days a week and getting frustrated and burned out by the amount of effort it took to keep going, we do a more measured amount each day and leave time to reset for tomorrow. It has made all the difference in our consistency.