I’m so excited to share our 5th grade curriculum picks for 2024-2025. First, can I just say that I can’t believe I have a fifth grader! I used to teach fifth grade, so this milestone is hitting me a little bit harder. This is our sixth year homeschooling, and I feel so blessed to be able to choose the curriculum for each of my kiddos.

As a reminder, I pick this curriculum because I feel like it’s the best fit for my individual child. What works for us might not work for you OR it might work great for you. That is always up to you to decide. As you read through this, I hope you are inspired with ideas as you plan for your own homeschool year. Please do not read this as expert advice.

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Family Subjects

As a mom of four, I group a lot of our subjects together. This has been such a big blessing for us and it makes our days so much more simple. I have a separate post about the subjects we are covering as a family this year, and you can check that one out here.

Our family subjects include Bible, history, science, fine arts, and some language arts.

Math

I finally feel like I found a math I love for this particular child! It feels so good to say that. For the last couple of years I just knew we didn’t have the right fit and it was so hard to work through it. In January of this past year we tried BJU Press Math 4, and we both loved it!

I am so excited to continue with Math 5 this year from BJU, and so is my daughter. The set up is so perfect for her, and we have found a really great way to work through it.

This year I ordered the textbook kit which comes with a Teacher’s Edition, Worktext, Activities Book, Assessments, and Assessment Keys.

The way that we do math works like this: I teach my daughter the lesson using the Worktext. It’s a colored textbook with plenty of examples to practice the skill. We usually only work through the front side of the lesson, but there’s even a back side if we need it. The next day, during her independent work time first thing in the morning, she will complete a lesson in the Activity Book. This lesson includes practice from the skill we worked on PLUS review.

I love breaking up our math like this. I talk about it in more detail in this video if you have interest in seeing inside the textbooks and how we use them.

Language Arts

We do not use an all-in-one curriculum for language arts. I like to call it “DIY Language Arts” because we make up our own curriculum using novels that we are reading. We have been doing this for a year and a half and it is so freeing and enjoyable.

I am looking forward to reading some fantastic novels. I have a few in mind related to our history unit we will be doing, but I usually wait to pick the books as we need them. This allows us to follow our interest instead of following a strict schedule. We actually WANT to read the books by the time we get to them.

With our novel units we cover handwriting, spelling, and vocabulary using passage study from the novels. By practicing copywork, dictation, narration, and just great conversation about books our language arts studies have become so enjoyable!

I use this FREE passage study template to plan and organize our novel units. I also have an entire playlist of videos on how we do this on my YouTube channel. You can even watch a series where I work through an entire novel so you can see one from start to finish.

Some books I have in mind this year…The Hobbit, Where the Red Fern Grows, Little Britches, Pollyanna, Wingfeather Saga, Number the Stars, and The Book Thief. It’s a little historical-fiction-heavy because that’s my favorite! It’s not my daughter’s favorite (ha!) so I will need to be thinking of a few more, but, like I said, we will choose as we need them!

Grammar

We do use a daily grammar curriculum alongside our novel studies, and we plan to use Fix it Grammar again this year. She is currently working through Level 2. I want to say she made it almost half way at the end of last year, so she will just pick up where she left off when we start our year.

I love using Fix it Grammar because the lessons are short and she can do them independently. It’s also nice because it’s not one mastered skill at a time. She really has to know and remember each part of speech she learns because it may or may not come up in any sentence that she edits.

Writing

I almost didn’t put this in here, but I think it’s important to point out. I can confidently say that we do not use a writing curriculum in our home. I use that word “confidently” because there were a couple of years where I stressed about adding in writing prompts and assignments, and it was quite miserable! I don’t feel that way anymore.

One book completely changed my outlook on writing, and even in just one full year I have seen the difference it has made to let go of a formal writing curriculum for now.

The book is called “Know and Tell” by Karen Glass. It’s a book about narration and how to start with oral narration and gradually move into written narration. It encourages the flow of ideas and thoughts and explains that a writing curriculum can sometimes prevent a writer from writing freely.

Although the book is not a “curriculum”, it is a fantastic resource that contains multiple charts showing how to progress at each grade level and when to actually add in a formal curriculum. (Eventually we will – but not for a while!) It also contains multiple examples of narrations from students of a variety of ages which allows you to actually see results from this method.

Just to give you an idea of what happened in our house – I quit forcing writing about a year and a half ago. I even stopped editing writing. After a few months of doing this, she suddenly WANTED to write. She was asking for notebooks and writing the most random selections (hello, creative writing) and she didn’t stop. She suddenly loved writing!

Her written narrations went from just a couple of choppy sentences to full pages of writing. Is it perfectly edited? Absolutely not, but we are learning editing in our Fix it Grammar and I have witnessed her writing gradually get more and more edits by her own doing, based on what she has learned in grammar.

I could write an entire blog post about this. My point is we are choosing NOT to do a writing curriculum. Instead we will be practicing written narration by writing about what we are reading. This will happen across multiple subjects (science, history, language arts). I will also continue to let her write as she pleases and will listen, without correcting, to what she puts together on her own. That is our plan for writing this year.

Foreign Language

I never intended to start a foreign language at this point, but last fall my daughter expressed an interest in learning French. I know absolutely zero French and had hoped one day to teach them Spanish, so this was a little unexpected for me. I let her know that I could provide her with materials if she committed and did the work independently. For her, I knew an interest-led study would be good.

We tried multiple things: workbooks and websites – and we stuck the longest with Duolingo. It’s great for a free program, but her and I both were feeling like she needed more of a challenge. This is why we chose Rosetta Stone for this upcoming year.

I love the idea of using an online program for this especially because I don’t speak the language. When we tried workbooks in the past I was having such a hard time with pronunciation and was spending lots of time learning it myself. It’s doable with a workbook, but it’s not a good fit in my house.

Rosetta Stone can be a little pricey, but they have great sales and from my research it seems the sales happen often. We are currently in a 3 month trial period so we will re-evaluate when that time ends.

What I love most about Rosetta Stone is the fact that it’s interactive. She uses the microphone in the computer to record her voice so she’s actually speaking what they are teaching her. The lessons are broken up into 10 minute segments, so it’s easy to add in to her independent work for the day.

Piano

As much as I would love to sign all of my kids up for piano lessons, financially it doesn’t make sense for us. Using an online program is an alternative I am thankful for! This summer we started using Voetberg Music Academy, and it’s going so well that we plan to continue it through the year.

Voetberg Music Academy is affordable and the whole family can participate! Currently, it’s just my oldest daughter using it, and she is taking the Piano course.

The course is broken up into weekly lessons. Each week contains about a 20-minute video teaching the lesson and then it’s the student’s job to practice what was learned that week. You can move at your own pace and complete the lessons as you are ready for them.

Their website is also very interactive and helpful. It almost feels like a Facebook group. You can chat with the teachers and other families that participate. The program also offers opportunities to have a virtual meeting with their teacher, perform in an online recital, and it provides multiple ways to track for success.

Typing

My oldest daughter consistently practiced typing during her fourth grade year. At the end of the year, it seemed like the best fit for her was to practice once a week, so I plan to set that same goal for the year ahead.

We use typing.com which is a free typing program online. It’s a mix of short videos, typing practice, and games. With the free program, the computer screen contains ads. So, that’s something to be aware of. I know that there is an option to pay a fee and remove the ads, but so far it hasn’t been a problem for her.

You can set time goals for typing.com so that each day they are actually typing for a certain amount of time. If I remember correctly the videos and games don’t count for the time.

Recap

This fifth grade year feels like such a milestone to me, mostly because I used to teach this grade level and I just can’t believe she’s here already! Here is a recap of what we are using this year:

Family Subjects: Check out this blog post.

Math: BJU Press Math 5

Language Arts: DIY Language Arts

Writing: “Know and Tell” by Karen Glass

Foreign Language: Rosetta Stone-French

Piano: Voeterg Music Academy

Typing: Typing.com