It’s hard to believe this will be our third year homeschooling. What a fun, unexpected journey it has been! This year I will have a second grader and one in kindergarten. In this post I’ll be looking at our curriculum picks for the 2021-2022 school year.

Some programs we are not changing from last year. Others we are trying something new. Remember that every family is different. What works for me may not be the same for you, but I do love learning about curriculum and I hope to provide that opportunity for you here.

I will say up front that I also have a 2 year old and a 9 month old. Both will be tagging along and listening while we work, but I have no plans to purchase any sort of curriculum for them.

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Kindergarten

This will be my second time homeschooling kindergarten, and I am looking forward to it again. My second daughter has a very different personality then my first, so there are a couple changes I will be making to better fit her needs. I love that so much about homeschool.

Kinder Math – Horizons K

This will be my third year using Horizons. I love it because it is to the point without any fluff. Along with the workbook I enjoy creating math games and activities to go along with their lessons. This provides us with a lot of hands on learning during our math time.

Horizons math allows me to be extremely flexible when it comes to planning. Some days I want to have big plans to make an elaborate lesson, but there are also days we want to take it easy and just complete a page together. Horizons is set up in a way that lets me do that whenever I want.

Kinder Language Arts

I do NOT plan to use a curriculum set for language arts. You may think I’m crazy, but this is exactly what I did with my first daughter and it was wonderful! Here’s the thing – the fancy reading programs can get SO expensive! I just can’t get myself to spend that much. So, instead, I use a combination of things for our language arts in kindergarten.

First, we will review. We had so much success with the Alphabet Workbook at 4 years old. She knows her letters well, but we will spend the first few weeks of kindergarten reviewing and practicing the letters and their sounds. Then we will get into blending sounds, sight words, and using early readers. Here’s my list of sources below:

• Lowercase Alphabet Mats
• ABC See, Hear, Do – one of my favorite reading resources!
• BOB Books
• Dear Dragon Series` (This series is SO GREAT! And FREE at our library)
• Sight Word Activities

Kinder Handwriting

I actually didn’t use a handwriting curriculum for kinder with my first daughter. We practiced writing within our other lessons. I considered letting it go again this year, but I felt like it would help with routine if both girls had handwriting practice. So, we are going for it. It will also help with alphabet review.

We are going to start with ABC See, Hear, Do Writing Practice. I actually changed to this last minute. I liked it because it was very basic, simple, and low-key. I also liked that it had the capital letter and lowercase letter on the same page. It will go along perfectly with our practice of letter sounds using the ABC See, Hear, Do workbook. It’s only 26 pages, so once we work through that, we will work through the original program I purchased.

This year will be my first year to try A Reason For Handwriting in our homeschool. (Level K) I actually used it in the classroom to teach cursive when I was teaching fifth grade. I really loved that it was short, sweet, and scripture focused. I also have a personal preference to the three lines with the dotted middle line.

That’s it for Kindergarten…sort of.

It really is a short and sweet plan, and I’m so excited for it. I love how much growth happens in kinder, but there’s also just so much fun and playful learning along with it. I can’t wait to experience that again.

My kindergartener will participate in the read alouds and bible activities I do with my second grader. Although it’s not necessarily “for her”, she will benefit so much from it, and I love anything that can involve all of my children together. She is also in Foundations with Classical Conversations – more on that later in the post.

Second Grade Math – Horizons 2

This will be our third year working in Horizons. As I mentioned above, we love the simplicity and flexibility of the curriculum. I hope to create new hands on math activities to better help my daughter understand the different math skills. Follow me on Teachers Pay Teachers or, even better, sign up for my email list and be the first to get updates on when I add new math games to the store!

Second Grade Language Arts – Christian Light Education + Write Shop/Read Aloud Units

We switched curriculum midway through the year last year and ended on Christian Light Education. You can read more about that in my first grade curriculum review post. I loved the way Christian Light was set up so we decided to continue with it for second grade. I only purchased the unit set and the Teacher’s Guide.

My goal for language arts this year is to complete one lesson each day from Christian Light, but I also want to add read aloud units and work on writing skills. So my plan is to alternate the two alongside the Christian Light Curriculum. For example, for the first few weeks we will complete a read aloud together. The next few weeks we will focus on a writing project. Then, back to a read aloud book. See the pattern?

Write Shop

As I planned Language Arts, I purchased a writing specific curriculum called Write Shop. I did this without knowing that there are actually writing assignments integrated in the Christian Light Program. So, I’m not sure how much we will do of Write Shop. I feel like I may have purchased a level too high anyway, so we will take it slow and see how it works for us. I hope to try one project this year for sure – just to get the feel for it. I feel like it will be a great resource for writing this year and in the future.

Read Aloud Unit

For our read alouds, we will complete a Read Aloud Experience which is something I created for the whole family to participate. It’s set up to add simple crafts, activities, and/or (free) books to your read aloud. We will start the year with The Boxcar Children. I’m so excited about it! The book is absolutely adorable, and we will get to experience so many different things through the activities. I really think this will be our favorite read aloud yet!

For more information about the Read Aloud Experience, check out my post for The Secret Garden and Mrs. Piggle WIggle. You can also download the two units completely FREE in my shop!

2nd Grade Handwriting – A Reason For Handwriting

My 2nd grader is begging me to learn cursive, so we will start that using Level T Worktext from A Reason For Handwriting. It starts with manuscript and than gradually works into cursive. I look forward to the challenge for her, because it was getting to the point where handwriting practice was getting a little boring. This will definitely motivate her to continue practicing.

Bible

All of my children will be a part of our bible lesson, but I did buy a workbook for my second grader to complete. We have always just done devotionals together, which are great! However, this year I want to be a little more intentional with our bible lessons. I want to ask more questions and study more scripture while applying it to our daily life.

I chose a program from Masterbooks called “More Than Words: Level 1”. The workbook has places for the student to write things down and interact with the text. I also love that it has character studies, which I’ve been wanting to add to our homeschool. We will have just one workbook that I will use to lead us all in discussion while my oldest uses it as a personal workbook.

Foundations – Classical Conversations

We are a Classical Conversations family. This will be our second year and we absolutely love it. My two oldest children will practice their weekly material which includes Timeline, Science, History, Geography, Latin, English, and Math. If you would like to know more about what is involved with Classical Conversations, check out my blog posts:

• “Adding Classical Conversations to our Homeschool”
• “Classical Conversations: Overcoming my Fears and Jumping In”

Since we will be covering so much through Classical Conversations, I do not purchase any sort of Science/History/Foreign Language curriculum. However, I do hope to check out library books and dig deeper into our topics as we are interested.

Science and History

As I mentioned before, our science and history will come from our Classical Conversations studies. However, this year I want to try to plan ahead a bit and use our library to help expand on our memory work.

I’ll be checking out books from the library related to the topic we are studying that week. This will provide us with FREE lessons, and we will be able to really dig in to the things we are interested in. I’m using the “Year at a Glance” page from my Foundations Guide and simply writing down topics into my planner.

Everything will be based on the availability of my library, but that’s OK. This is only for extra reading and fun and just a great way for us to continue to learn together as a whole family.

Other Resources

I’d love to add art and maybe some science experiments and field trips. I’d like to even have a designated “morning time” where we do some extra reading together. But – I don’t like to overplan. It’s hard to know what I have time for without getting an idea of what our daily rhythm will be. I don’t want to set myself up for failure. We will be starting with the basics. Once we get in a groove, I’ll think about adding other lessons if time allows.

If you are feeling overwhelmed with planning, try just starting with the core subjects. Be sure to look into your state laws as well. See my post “5 Simple Steps to Start Homeschooling” for direct links. Put your extras aside until you get going for a couple weeks. Add them in as you can. Having a wish list like this is a great way to jump in to the year without getting too overwhelmed.

Be flexible and willing to make changes as needed.

This is one of the greatest perks of homeschool. We get to choose what works best for our family. I’ve given you my whole list of plans for this upcoming school year, but I know one or more things may not work out as I planned. That’s OK! We will make adjustments and push on.

All I know is I am eager to jump in and get going! As you choose your curriculum for your family, I pray you have peace with whatever choice you make. I pray you have a blessed year as you learn together as a family.