We just wrapped up our second week of homeschool for the 2024-2025 year, so I thought I would do a post about it and share what we are using for curriculum, what we are studying, and working on, etc!
To read more about my homeschooling philosophy and why we homeschool, see THIS post. To read about my favorite homeschool supplies, see THIS post.
This is our 5th year of homeschooling! My kids ages are: 9, 7, 3, and 2. The two oldest will be doing fourth and second grade work and the toddlers are just along for the ride with us.
I love the start of a new year because it’s a time when we can make changes from the year before, as needed. I personally love having some changes in our schedule, so I love the start of a new year! Last semester, we did a lot of life learning and my kids attended a nature school twice a week and a co-op once a week. My husband was working a lot and studying for his CFP exam and I was really burnt out so we did a lot of life learning and just focused on math and language arts studies. This year, we have a totally different schedule and are mixing things up.
We decided not to do nature school this year (although we absolutely loved it), but we are still doing our weekly nature co-op. My 3 year old was supposed to be doing his second year at a play-based preschool, but they sadly ended up closing abruptly after the first month of school, so he is back at home with us each day. We are focusing on math, language arts, handwriting, history, and a nature based unit study for science. And the focus for the toddlers is… well, PLAY. That’s all I worry about at this age for them.
Curriculum we are using:
The Good and the Beautiful Math
The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts
Handwriting without Tears Handwriting
Treehouse Schoolhouse Autumn Unit Study (Use WILDANDWELLBLOG for 10% off)
A Living Learning Election Unit Study
We are doing more curriculum this year, than we have in previous years. I’m a big believer in play-based learning and lots of life learning in the younger years. We will still have a lot of that, but now that my oldest is 9, I really want to make sure we are staying on top of the foundations and working in all subjects for him. I am excited for everything we will get to dive into together!
Our Rhythms This Year
We like to get school done mid-morning, so that we can leave after lunch for an outing if we want. I’ve also noticed that my kids just have trouble focusing later in the day, so it works better to get it done and out of the way in the mornings. We don’t have a set schedule, but we try to do math and language arts 4-5 days a week, our unit study 3 days a week, and social studies twice a week. And one day a week, we will all attend our nature co-op that we love and have been attending for 3 years now!
How I Printed/Organized Our Curriculum
I talk about this in video format in my curriculum highlight on Instagram if you’re more of a visual person. But something I’ve learned about myself is that I need to have our homeschool materials extremely organized, or I get very overwhelmed and behind with our schooling. This does not come easy to me (hello severe ADHD) but I was able to get our curriculum printed in a way that I think is going to work really well.
For our Autumn Unit Study, I actually printed it and had it binded at Staples- but instead of doing it all in one booklet, it’s in multiple separate booklets, as you can see above. I have it divided up by:
+ Teacher’s Guide
+ All of the poem’s, songs, etc, any papers that do NOT need to be written on
+ each child has their own booklet with their worksheets to be written on,
so all their work stays together
+ and one booklet has just the artwork that will be observed for that week
So far, I LOVE having it organized this way and I am so glad I printed it this way. It makes it so much easier.
I also printed and binded our Election Unit study in one booklet and we are using THESE history journal notebooks with the lessons.
I typically print TGTB curriculum myself because it’s free and put it in a binder. But this year I opted to just to buy it already binded and I’m really glad I did that. It’s more expensive, but makes my life so much easier.
Thanks for reading!
