2024-2025 Homeschool Curriculum Choices
It’s official. Another school year is off to a start.This year I will embark on teaching my first high school student. As well as teaching a 4th grader, a 2nd grader, and two littles. Even though we homeschool year round I like to take about 6 weeks off from memorial day until the first or second week of July. It gives my children the feeling of having a break when the neighborhood friends are around and it gives me time to refocus on the house, clean out bookshelves, read inspiring homeschool books, and pray and plan for the next school year.
Every decision has been prayed over and possibly over researched before I landed on any thing. Although, I have been homeschooling for over a decade I still have bouts of worry. I still want to choose the best for my kids. What God has taught me through my experience is that I have to trust He has and will give me wisdom and that I can make adjustments as I see fit. I make plans knowing that only God will know what will come up in the next school year. That means I hold my plans loosely. I trust that His plans are good. Therefore, anything I have written here as plans for the next school year are just guesses as to what I hope will happen.
We aren’t starting from scratch with every subject, we usually don’t, instead we are picking up where we left off with a few things that I am excited to incorporate. I will be sharing all of my choices for each grade in separate posts but here you can find our family subjects. I call this morning time or lunch time readings but whatever you call it it is just subjects we do all together.
Bible time/ Books of our faith: We are reading the book of Revelation as our family bible study. We usually join a local bible study but this year we are taking a break from meeting outside of the home and doing the study at home together.
The book Wonderfull by Marty Machowski, will be added to our family readings. It is a book that guides the reader through the book of Psalms. I have heard it highly recommended and we have just finished up The Ology by the same author. I look forward to using this book to guide our study of the Psalms.
We also, include missionary stories. This year we are reading about Jim Elliot and Eric Liddell. In the past we have enjoyed this book that gives a good overview of a few missionaries.
History: We have used The Good and Beautiful History 1 the past two years. History is a subject I like to take my time and linger longer in any time period we are interested in. This year I intend to loosely use their 1st edition of Year two. Our history spine this year is a new to us choice. It’s called The Story of Civilization Volume 1 by Phillip Campbell. It reads like a story which is my preferred style of material to use for history. It is recommended for grades k-8th. I am adding other books to my 9th grade daughters personal assigned reading for the year which you can find when I talk about her independent subjects in a separate post.
Geography/Social studies: We are using a unit study that I love and first used when my oldest was in 2nd grade. It is Around the World with Picture Books by Beautiful Feet Books. The plan is to explore Egypt and China. I want to use this to enhance our history readings. So as we are reading about ancient Egypt we will use the book Maps as well as many others recommended in the guide. I am also planning on using books found in this booklist of ancient history books .
Science: We have loved doing science as a family. My 9th grader will also be doing her own high school science curriculum that I will include with her independent subjects post. We are currently listening to Apologias’ Land Animals of the sixth day. The book and notebooking pages are great but this year we are going to just listen to the cd, as we drive to sports or to run errands, and discuss. We are also reading some nature lore books. First on my list is The Burgess Bird Book as well as Blacky the Crow both written by Thornton w. Burgess. The plan is to read, discuss/narrate, research, and record interesting facts in our nature notebooks. I also, have a few science units from The Good and The Beautiful that I may choose to use. I already own the Birds study and may choose to have the kids use it as a research resource. I am also thinking of using the Botany study next spring. My goal for this year is to get outdoors more and have our nature study explorations spark interest and lead some of what we will study as the school year takes off.
Memory work: We are continuing to use The New City Catechism going through it one question a week revisiting past questions to keep them fresh in the mind. We are also memorizing a few hymns from the book Then Sings My Soul. I choose Count your Blessings, Hark the Harold Angels Sing, and Tis sweet to trust in Jesus.
Read alouds for fun: As of now a few read aloud books I have chosen for this school year are The Wild Robot, The Vanderbeekers of 141st street, Sweet Home Alaska, Treasures of the Snow, Farmer Boy, and our Christmas School favorite The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. I will share more about our Christmas book selections in another post as Christmas time nears. We will also be sure to pick up a few picture books to read along the way.
The Arts: Poets: Eugene Field, James Whitcomb Riley, and Christina Rossetti. Artist: we are studying Norman Rockwell, Constable, and Rembrandt. Composers: Tchaikovsky and Joplin as well as Storybook Orchestra books..
That’s a wrap for our 2024-2025 Curriculum choices for Family Subjects. If you want to see more of how this plays out in our home follow me on instagram @bringingjoytothesedays
