I absolutely love autumn – the smells, the activities, the coziness – it’s a perfect time to relax and reset. If you’ve read my post about our year-round homeschool routine , then you know that fall doesn’t necessarily signal the start of the new school year in our home. Though we may not always be starting a new school year or grade level at this time, I use Fall (and Spring) as a chance to plan and prepare for the upcoming 6 months. I can do a check-in with our supplies, order any curriculum or materials we may still need, and even plan some holiday related things to work into our upcoming days.

This fall, my oldest will be wrapping up her kindergarten arithmetic and phonics, so we will be moving into 1st grade for those courses before 2025. Her handwriting is still on the kindergarten level, and it looks like it will be that way until at least next spring. We will be finishing up both of our science and history courses before next spring, so it’s time to plan out new curricula for those classes. So without further ado, let’s jump into our curriculum picks for fall.

As an Amazon associate, I may earn commission from qualifying purchases made when using the links below. This is at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting this blog!

Phonics / Language Arts

We have been using Abeka’s phonics program for K-5, and it’s been a semi-success. My oldest is easily frustrated and distracted, so reading and remembering all of her phonics rules has been a challenge. I don’t think switching curriculums will necessarily take that away – all phonics programs will still be teaching with phonics rules, and she will still face distractions as she reads. She DOES love the little reading booklets that Abeka offers, and she enjoys the workbook pages. So, we will be sticking with Abeka for Language Arts for 1st grade. We have already begun spelling and poetry, which she thoroughly enjoys. We will start slowly moving into the phonics workbook before Thanksgiving. I love the plethora of readers that come with the program, but I am afraid that their size might initially intimidate her. We may spend some time going back through her kindergarten readers to build some confidence before we dive into the 1st grade readers.

And I feel like it goes without saying, but we absolutely include read alouds in our Language Arts time. We utilize our local library for this, and I often pick books that correspond with the current season or holidays. This means I don’t plan them out in advance but pick things one week at a time.

Arithmetic

For K-5, we used Abeka’s Arithmetic program. It’s solid, colorful, and really easily laid out. No complaints. However, I know that as she gets older, we will not use Abeka math forever (that’s a totally different topic – maybe I’ll do a post on that in the future). To avoid the constant switching of math curriculum, which can leave gaps in her math knowledge, we are switching over to Saxon for 1st grade. My hope is that Saxon will work for her learning style and we will be able to use it all the way through her senior year. If it doesn’t work, we can try something different in the spring, but I am really trying to find what works for her while she is still in early elementary. Saxon is way less colorful than Abeka, but the workbook pages have fewer questions and I like the way the material is laid out as far as teaching order is concerned.

Penmanship

As I mentioned above, we will be staying in our current Kindergarten penmanship book, which is the K-5 level workbook from Abeka. We are working very slowly through this one. Since my kiddo is not quite 5 yet, she has a few years to go before her hand are really ready for strenuous writing. We just do a few lines a day in this book so that she can get an understanding of how to form the cursive letters.

Science

Science has been such a fun time for us this year. We’ve been working through God’s Design for Life for Beginners from Master Books (pictured above). Little sister does this one with us. I love the short lessons, the illustrations and the optional activities that are scattered all throughout the book. It’s very well laid out! Once we finish this book, probably sometime before Thanksgiving, we will be trying our very first unit study! Both of my girls are obsessed with everything “space” right now. We dress up as astronauts and fly our rocket ships to mars; we stop outside on every clear night to look at the stars and find constellations. It’s really been a blast! pun intended 😉 When I found Gather Round’s Space Unit Study, I knew it had to be on our list of things to try this fall.

Once the unit study is finished, we will head back and do God’s Design for Life for Beginners again. We did not complete the workbook activities this first time, and I’d like to try completing some of the experiments that we skipped over the first time (plus re-do the ones that we loved from before). We also have this Awesome Science Experiments for Kids book that I’d like to incorporate if I can.

History

History this year has been fun (and easy on Mama). We started off the year by going through the US presidents. Now, we are going backwards to study the founding of America, but not with a curriculum. We are watching Liberty’s Kids (one or two episodes per lesson) and then adding in biographies, flag studies, map studies, etc. My oldest loves watching Liberty’s Kids and has started picking up on important names like Ben Franklin, George Washington, and King George III. She’s also asked us several times if we can take her to Boston or Philadelphia so that she can meet these people – ha! We are still working on the concept of time 😀 but I’m glad to see that she’s wanting to learn more.

If we finish this before the Spring, our next curriculum will again be a unit study. Right now, I’m looking into the North America Unit Study from Gather Round but haven’t officially decided if we will do that or if we will create our own unit study using this National Parks of the USA book. We already own this book, and it has the most beautiful illustrations! We will eventually use it in our homeschool, just not sure if it will be this fall or later.

Miscellaneous

In addition to core courses, we have our morning basket and electives which are not listed above. Our morning basket changes frequently. Right now, we are working through Egermeier’s Bible Story Book , learning a new hymn each month and keeping up with our prayer journal for Bible time. We also have a read a loud and some Latin work each day. Some of our electives like music and poetry, are put together through things we pick up from the library each week. But for Art and Logic we do have set curriculums planned. We are using Abeka’s Art 1 course and Lollipop Logic Book 1 . I was really impressed with Abeka’s Art 1 book. I was expecting it to be more of an arts and crafts only style, but the projects are ordered according to the months of the year (meaning you can jump in at any time) and the students are learning terms like primary colors, secondary colors, complimentary colors, etc. It’s been a nice bridge from regular old arts and crafts into more formal art concepts.

And that’s it for our formal curriculum picks for fall 2024! I’m toying with the idea of creating an Instagram page to showcase all of the books we are using from the library from week to week. It’s hard to plan those things out in advance, so a real-time update may be helpful.

Are you using any of these in your homeschool this year? Let me know in the comments below. Happy homeschooling!