The 2025-2026 school year is approaching very quickly! We don’t technically start our school year until October 1st (you can read more about our year round schedule here), but the curriculum is picked and ready to go.

Since we homeschool year-round, we don’t stick to typical grade levels in our material. The kids can move onto the next level whenever they’re ready. This means my first grader has already started her first-grade math and language arts and will probably continue into second grade materials before the school year is officially over. I’ll include all materials that we plan to use in this post but wanted to explain why you might see so many things for one subject. We are moving at her pace, I promise!

Morning Basket

Our Morning Basket time usually includes Bible, Scripture Memory, monthly hymn, Latin, and a read aloud. We read one story from Egermeier’s Bible Story Book for now, but hopefully by next spring my first grader will be confident enough in her reading to read short passages from her Bible. We are using our Level 1 Scripture Memory cards again, Latin for Littles Vol. 1, and we choose one hymn from our church hymnal each month. Our read alouds will include Little Bear, Little House in the Big Woods, All of a Kind Family, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz., and Mr. Popper’s Penguins.

Language Arts and Penmanship

For Language Arts, we are sticking with Abeka once again. As mentioned above, we have already begun the first-grade curriculum, so we will be completing that one and starting on the second-grade curriculum after that. So far, Abeka seems to be working well for us in language arts, so I don’t want to make too many changes at this time. If something goes awry during the first-grade curriculum, I’ll be sure to come back and update this post with any curriculum changes.

For more fun learning, we have our trusty language arts games like Bananagrams, Word on the Street (Jr.), and our alphabet stamps. We are also looking at adding in more language art activities with things like creative writing, Mad Libs, and our first character book report.

Math

We will be continuing Saxon Math for first grade and second grade. Like language arts, this is really working well for my daughter, and I won’t change curriculums unless it seems like the program no longer suits her. For more hands-on math practice, we will be using math wraps, Race to Planet X, and classic card games. Other items I have considered purchasing, but have not committed to yet are fraction blocks, pattern blocks, brain flakes, and base ten blocks.

Science

Science this year looks to be very fun! At the moment, we are finishing up unit 1 of God’s Design: Life for Beginners from Master Books. This is our second time through the book, and we are enjoying it just as much as the first time through. When we finish, we will move on to God’s Design: Heaven and Earth for Beginners. We also have a book given to us that contains 100 experiments that I would love to incorporate once our other books are completed. We would use this book in combination with documentaries, biographies, and nonfiction books from our local library.

History

History for the ’24-’25 school year was rough! We started off strong with early US history following alongside the Liberty’s Kids tv series. After that, we switched to My Story 1: The World Around Me, from Master Books. This book just isn’t a good fit for us. It feels really disjointed and both the kids and I were having a difficult time staying focused. We are attempting to finish as much of it as possible (it has word searches, which my daughter LOVES, so we are focusing on the “fun” activities). In the fall, we plan to start Notgrass Our Great Big World along with Simply Charlotte Mason’s Genesis and Ancient Egypt. I’ve not used history curriculum from either of these companies, and they both have things that I love. Until they arrive and I have time to really look through the materials, I have no idea which we will do first, or if we will try to do them at the same time. Both curriculums are literature based, which is usually a hit in our homeschool. I’ll be sure to do an end of the year review to see how these two go!

Electives

Poetry: Poetry will be a combination of Abeka poetry (part of the Language Arts program) and a study on Emily Dickenson.

Music: We will be continuing music studies with term studies featuring Bach, Brahms, and Dvorak as well as continuing our music theory lessons. My oldest is really ready for piano lessons, but we don’t have a piano in our home. If we can manage to get one this year, then piano lessons will be a part of music time as well.

Art: Our art courses are things we have found available on YouTube and our library. This year we will be following printmaking tutorials by Createful Kids (YouTube), various paper sloyd projects by Happy Handicrafts (YouTube), and Christmas paper projects from the book Making Christmas Bright with Papercrafts.

Picture Study: This year’s picture studies will include terms about Botticelli, John Constable, and da Vinci. We always get our picture study materials from Simply Charlotte Mason.

Logic: Logic is part of our “skills” class. During 3 terms we work on important skills like knowing our address, manners, state capitols, basic map skills, etc. and during the fourth term we take a logic course. This year, we will be finishing Lollipop Logic 1 and starting Lollipop Logic 2. I don’t anticipate completing the second book, but if we do, we will then move on to Mind Benders Book 1.

Nature Study: This is a new one for us this year! We are studying Bird of the US using Burgess Bird Book for Children and the Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Comstock.

And that’s it! We will be doing lots of read a-louds and extra reading with our science and history courses. I may do a whole post focusing on those another time. Let me know if you see any of your favorites mentioned above! Happy homeschooling!