This week we’ll get into our curriculum picks for the 2024-2025 school year. These resources range in years from k to 4th grade. However, if you were interested in teaching catechism, you’ll want to read last week’s post for those choices.

Little Badger

This is Little Badger’s first official year of homeschool. Last year was her pre-kindergarten year. And in that time we focused on math (preschool math at home, followed by kindergarten math with confidence) and beginning to learn to read. So I’ll start by talking about how we are continuing her journey into reading.

Learning to Read Curriculum (various reading levels)

Our primary text for learning to read is The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, which I’ve mentioned in previous articles. This book (or books, with the newest edition seperating the student text from the teacher text) is the most straightforward and effective phonics program I’ve come across. We use this sequentially to master all the required phonics for reading in the English language. Because of this book, when I tested my last year first grader’s reading level, she tested as reading at a seventh grade level. It’s brilliant.

Aside:

I did get the new edition to try out with Little Badger, after using the previous version with Little Fox. There are some improvements,  though honestly I’m not sure which I like better.

It is nice having a separate text for the student. However, in the rush of homeschool days, sometimes I don’t bother to check the teacher’s manual before doing a lesson. Perhaps I’ll get the teacher’s edition spiral bound for when Little Owl is ready to learn reading, to motivate me to use both books.

Practice Practice Practice!

To reinforce the reading lessons from The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, we have several phonics readers. First, we use Bob Books, which delight young children as they can start to read them after knowing only a few sounds. Second, we use the Little Angel Readers, for their Catholic early reading content. Finally, we use the All About Reading readers, since they are convenient, cute, and interesting for children learning to read as they get older.

One thing we are doing differently for Little Badger is adding in All About Reading flashcards-only. I’ve resorted all the flashcards to match what we are learning with The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, and using them for daily review. This way Little Badger gets extra practice with words without being worn out by seeing a lot of text on the page.

Writing/Printing (K – 1st Grade Level)

Another task I’ve done to prepare for homeschooling this next year is to put together my own homeschooling notebooks/workbooks for the children. So Little Badger has some penmanship worksheets that I’ve put together to go with the Shortcut to Manuscript method. Shortcut to Manuscript (available for free download online) improved Little Fox’s handwriting tenfold in the span of a week. So I look forward to continuing its use with Little Badger.

The one thing about Shortcut to Manuscript is that it requires my attention. I also like the children to be able to practice their writing skills independently. For this we use The Good and The Beautiful Handwriting. Little Badger is working through level 1 (grade 1 equivalent) at the moment, and I will probably have her repeat level 1 when she is done.

What I really appreciate with The Good and the Beautiful worksheets is that they can be bought as a PDF and reused with multiple children, as frequently as necessary.

Math Curriculum (First Grade Level)

For math we are definitely sticking with Math With Confidence. I so love how this program teaches conceptual understanding of numbers, uses a mastery approach, but with plenty of spiral review. Little Badger is just about ready to start First Grade Math With Confidence. We also are using Addition Facts that Stick. Not because it is necessary when you have the MWC series, but for the ten frame flashcards!

These ten frame flashcards help children visualize groups of numbers, which in turn helps the child see how various numbers relate to each other.

For example, instead of just seeing eight dots and not being sure how many dots there are, the child will see that there are a group of five dots, and three more, and immediately recognize that this means there are eight dots. Also, the child will see that there are two less than ten, which also means that their are eight dots. This skill is actually really important. And even though I loved math as a child, I now understand it way better for having used this program! And that is why I think Math With Confidence is the best curriculum for the K-6 math years.

History/Geography, and  (Kindergarten)

History, geography, and science are not a priority for us during Kindergarten. Little Badger will listen to Little Fox’s history  and science texts as a read aloud, just for fun.

Little Badger will also have the opportunity to do Montessori map work, and Montessori continent boxes for geography. Finally, for science she will use some free general science worksheets (so she can feel included in doing school like her older sister), and some Montessori science shelf works for hands on science work.

Arts

For the arts, primarily we will focus on piano and music through the program Music for Young Children, and drawing skills with Draw Write Now. Actually, the same applies to Little Fox. There is a chalk pastel program I’m considering, but I think the cost isn’t justified at this point. I do really love chalk pastel though, from my own time at a fine arts elementary school. Maybe next year!

Little Fox

This year Little Fox will be entering second grade. Her love of math and reading are flourishing, and so here are our curriculum picks for her!

Math Curriculum (Second-Fourth Grade Math)

This year Little Fox is ready to start Fourth Grade Math with Confidence! I am so impressed with how she picked up multiplication and division with Third Grade Math with Confidence, and so I look forward to what awaits us in fourth grade math with confidence. I think I even know my times tables better now… as a child, I only bothered to memorize the 7s …

However, since Little Fox is still technically in second grade, we are also going to delve deep into second grade math with Beast Academy.

Beast Academy is an advanced curriculum, which contains math puzzles rather than simple math worksheets. Even adults may be puzzled by many a Beast Academy math problem! I let Little Fox work through Beast Academy on her own, as a sort of math warm up time. She loves the “math reading work” and also benefits from review of more math “age-appropriate” material, if there is such a thing. Many people use Beast Academy as their sole curriculmn, but I prefer to use the solid teaching of MWC for our spine, and have Beast Academy as our “treat math”

English

For English, we are going to focus on spelling, grammar, vocabulary, reading and printing/cursive.

I have a minor dyslexia problem myself, and hate the subject of spelling. Our homeschool coop has turned that around for me (a bit). It turns out spelling in English is a bit more logical than I thought! So this year Little Fox will go through All About Spelling level 4. It is still TBD whether we are doing this at home, or with the homeschool co-op.

For grammar, we are continuing First Language Lessons Level 3. We started (but did not finish) this last year. The reason we didn’t finish is partly because grammar was a lower priority to finish compared to other plans, and partly because she was already working ahead of grade level so really there was no rush.

Our literature for the year is based on Medieval times. I think our list will warrant a separate article later.

For penmanship, I have made her some notebooking pages of catechism copywork. I plan to have her rotate between doing penmanship and vocabulary work. On the days she does vocabulary work she will go through Daily Skill Building vocabulary. Since vocabulary will only be every other, I only plan for her to get through half a year’s worth. We will see how that pacing works for us!

History and Science Curriculum

Our main text for history is Story of Civilization: The Medieval World. I have also made some notebooking pages for Little Fox. There is a narration page for each chapter in her notebook. Plus I added various history colouring pages. These are mostly from Dover colouring books, but also some free Saint counting pages from online that fit with the topics she will study.

For science this year, we will study geology, earth science, and astronomy. The textbooks we use are from Tan Book’s Foundation of Science series. These are Foundations of Science: Earth, and Foundations of Science: Space. And in Little Fox’s science notebook I put together some copywork based on the content of each chapter of these books, visuals for the connections to our faith, and some science colouring pages and worksheets.

Overall, I am really excited to do science and history with these new notebooks I’ve put together!

Memory Work

Aside from the arts, which I covered under Little Badger’s section, we also are going to do more memory work this year. We did more memory work in Little Fox’s kindergarten year than we did last year. And that is something I feel we missed out on. In line with what I am doing for our other subjects, I put together a memory work notebook that combines what we are doing in all our other subjects as memory work, plus I added some poetry and catechism.

Also, I purchased the timeline cards from Classically Catholic Memory, and we are going to use their timeline for memorization.

The Byzantine Life

Thank you for being here with The Byzantine Life! In this article, I mainly covered what we will be using to homeschool in the coming year. If you are more interested in how we will be using the materials, check out more of our posts on homeschooling! In the meantime: Be Bold, Be Beautiful, Be Byzantine!

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