I have been asked many times what we use for curriculum so I thought I would take a few minutes and share. This fall will be our second year of officially homeschooling, however, I was homeschooled from Kindergarten through High School. When my turn came to start thinking about school options for our children, my mom passed all her curriculum on to me so I had quite a variety of books. I had assumed that since I was homeschooled, figuring out a curriculum would be oh so easy. I was oh so wrong. lol I stressed, read, researched, stressed, read, asked questions and did I mention I stressed some more? lol Basically, I made everything a lot harder than it needed to be.
After a few weeks of stressing myself out over it all, I went to my husband and asked him to help me figure it out. We looked at what we already had and decided that while we wouldn’t use all of it, we knew we wanted to use the McGuffey readers. That helped eliminate several stacks of workbooks and other books that we knew we just wouldn’t use.
Once we eliminated some of the over-lapping curriculum I went in search of what we still needed to correspond with the McGuffey readers. Google is a wonderful tool! I discovered there was a whole series of workbooks that went along with McGuffey. I also learned that there was something called Ray’s Arithmetic and Harvey’s Grammar. I’ve used several sites to help us save money on the workbooks along with the textbooks needed. I am listing them altogether since all 3 kids will be working on the same thing, the only thing that will be different is the grade level of workbooks and my youngest won’t be doing *everything* in every subject as my older two. So without further ado, here are the resources we currently use.
2nd Grade, 1st Grade and Kindergarten Curriculum
Bible
- Betty Luken Flannel Graph Set – Through The Bible
- Monthly Bible Character (we will be doing an in-depth study on 9 people from the Bible)
Science
Arithmetic
- Ray’s New Primary Arithmetic
- Arithmetic Series 2 Books 1 – 4 workbooks (2nd Grader)
- Arithmetic Series 1 Books 2 – 4 workbooks (1st Grader)
- Arithmetic Series 1 Book 1 workbook (Kindergarten)
History
- Mayflower/Pilgrim Unit Study (this is a combination of several historical books we have on hand and some printables I’ve been able to find)
Reading
- Phonics Made Plain (cards and chart)
- McGuffey Primer
- McGuffey Pictorial Primer
- Reading Series 2 Books 1 – 4 workbooks (2nd Grader)
- Reading Series 1 Books 1 – 4 workbooks (1st Grader)
- Mrs. Silver’s Phonics Workbook by Claudine Silver (Kindergarten)
- Progressive Course in Reading Book 1 from Eclectic Educational Series
Writing
- Writing Series 2 Books 1 – 4 workbooks (2nd Grader)
- Writing Series 1 Books 1 – 4 workbooks (1st Grader)
- Copy work/Tracing (Kindergarten)
Spelling
Health
- Nutrition, Health & Safety Unit Study
Art
Financial
- Counting Money Early Learning Kit
- Develop Savings/Spending Habits
Language
- Greek (we are still deciding on what course to use for this and we might not start Greek until 2013)
Music
- Living Stories of Famous Hymns
- Piano Lessons
Parent Resources
- ABC’S and All Their Tricks by Margaret Bishop
- A Measuring Scale for Ability in Spelling
- Key to Primary, Intellectual, Practical Arithmetic (Answer Key)
- McGuffey Parent-Teacher Guide
- Ray’s Parent-Teacher Guide
- Mrs. Silver’s Phonics Workbook – Teacher’s Edition by Claudine Silver

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