We’ve made it to 5th grade! 👏🏻 Today I’m sharing all our 5th grade curriculum choices for the 2024-2025 school year! So far this week I have shared 1st grade and 3rd grade if you are interested in those too!
This is all the core curriculum that my daughter will complete each day, most of which can be done independently for 5th grade. In addition to these, she will also do history, science, geography, and Spanish. We like to do those studies all together as a family, so I will be sharing those on a separate post. (Read it HERE!) I’m really excited for our plans!
**Please take note: You do not have to use the same curriculums I am sharing. Each child learns differently and the blessing of homeschooling is that we have the freedom to tailor curriculum choices to whatever works best for them. We have tried multiple curriculums and I have done extensive research on lots of different things. This is what works best for our family and our needs. 😊
5th Grade Curriculum 24-25 School Year
Bible– Meeting with Jesus
My daughter started this book this past year in 4th grade and really enjoys it. She is about half way through, so will continue to use it for 5th grade.
We have a Bible curriculum that we are using together as a family once a week, that I will share tomorrow, but I like that she can use this daily and independently as a Bible reading plan.
Each day it gives a short scripture passage for them to look up and read in their own bibles, and one simple question to answer after. There is also a place for weekly prayers and memory verses. It is super quick to complete, can be done independently, and is a great reading plan for children ages 6-12. Both of my kids have THESE children bibles that have easier to read text they use alongside this study.
If she finishes this book during the school year, I will grab her the other by the same author, David Murray, Exploring the Bible.
Language Arts– Brave Writer Arrows
My daughter has been using Brave Writer Darts for 2 years now and LOVES it. She is my big reader, always has a book in her hands, so using great literature to teach her language arts concepts, grammar, literary devices, and the mechanics of writing has worked so well for her. See our Dart review from last year HERE.
For 5th grade I am moving her up to the next level Arrows that is geared for ages 11-12. The Arrow guides are laid out just like the Dart guides, so we will be familiar with them and able to use it in the same rhythm we do now. (You can read more about Darts and how they work HERE.)
Each Arrow is a 4-week guide and uses a novel to teach grammar, punctuation, and writing concepts. Each month is a new book and guide, so it always feels new and fresh throughout the school year. She is always excited and looking forward to each book.
We aren’t sure exactly what books we will be using yet this coming school year. Brave Writer will release all the new titles on May 31st! A new bundle of books is released every year, but if you wish to not purchase the bundle, you can also choose to buy individual guides as Literature Singles. This has ALL past Arrow guides available anytime. I like to wait and see the new books released to decide if we want to purchase the bundle or individual guides. (I already have a list ready of lots of great book guides available from past Arrows!)
This past year we purchased the bundle for Dart and it does save you money, plus I like that it gave her a variety of books I probably would have never chosen for her and help broadend her horizons.
*Update: See all the books we chose and read this school year HERE.
Check out the Book Reports she completed at the end of every guide!
**Use this referral link to get $10 off your order at Brave Writer!
Grammar- Fix It Grammar Level 3
Last year my daughter used Fix It Grammar Level 2 for 4th grade. She really enjoyed it and it was quick to complete independently each day. Using Fix It Grammar alongside Brave Write Arrows is perfect for daily grammar practice.
Each week there is one short lesson taught by the teacher/parent and then every day after they are given a sentence to “fix.” They have to find and mark what it asks at the top (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.), they have to fix any mistakes (punctuation, capitals, etc.) and rewrite the sentence correctly at the bottom.
Last year she completed the Level 2 book by doing one page every day. Since she is moving on to the Level 3 book (that is geared for 6-8th grade) we will be slowing it down and only completing one page twice a week. This way I hope to spread it out between her 5th and 6th grade years.
Yes, you need the teachers manual! It is very helpful to quickly check answers when they are done or to look up something if they have a question! Sometimes you will be stumped by a question. 😆
Spelling- 180 Days of Spelling and Word Study (5th grade)
This coming year I wanted her to work more on vocabulary and I wanted to find something to where I could use new vocabulary as her spelling words. This workbook is perfect to combine everything! It provides a weekly spelling and word study, plus uses the words to practice analogies, sentence completions, parts of speech, prefixes, suffixes, synonyms, antonyms, and more.
I plan to use the words at the beginning of each unit to do a spelling pre-test, and then she can complete the worksheet pages on her own independently (just one page each day.) Then another spelling test at the end to see if we still need to work on any words.
Writing– WriteShop Junior Book D
I shared about this curriculum yesterday in my 3rd grade blog post, but wanted to share again because I will be using it for both my 3rd and 5th grader together.
WriteShop Junior Book D is geared for ages 8-11 and provides fun hands-on activities to practice grammar and writing, including creative, expository, narrative, and persuasive writing. They will learn how to practice brainstorming, planning, organizing, and self-editing in their writing projects. It has 10 lessons throughout the school year, taking 2-3 weeks to complete one lesson. The teacher guide gives great examples on how to break down the lessons each day using a 2-week or 3-week schedule to complete each lesson. I LOVE how spaced out everything is so they can take their time with their writing.
For each lesson they will have a pre-writing activity, engaging activities to teach the lesson, journal prompt, writing project, and how to edit/revise their work. We will mostly be using it for the writing projects and activities and not too much of the grammar portion since we already use Fix It Grammar.
I think they will really enjoy these projects and help teach them more structure in writing proper paragraphs and essays in the future. You can see lots of samples and a placement quiz on their website HERE.
I’ll be sharing a more thorough blog post of this curriculum, how I prep it, and implement it into our school days later on.
** You might have noticed I am not having my daughter use a handwriting curriculum next year. I believe her penmanship is great and she loves to write in cursive all the time, so I didn’t feel she needed to add another workbook to keep practicing the same things. She will get her handwriting practice in with all of these other subjects, history, and writing projects.
Math– Simply Good and Beautiful Math Level 5
My daughter has always loved math from The Good and the Beautiful (since Kindergarten!) so we are continuing on with Level 5. I love the way they teach math, with fun puzzles, games, or stories to make it engaging and I’m always amazed at the different ways they teach quick mental math.
Like Level 4, Level 5 offers options for student-led video lessons or a mini lesson taught by a parent/teacher to learn new concepts. Most of the time my daughter asks me to teach her the mini lesson, but the video lessons are so great for things I’m not confident in or days I need her to do more work independently.
After the lesson there is a few lesson practice problems and one page of review from previous lessons. You definitely need the answer key and I recommend having graph scratch paper on hand to work on longer problems. We use THESE basic graph paper notepads and they are super helpful for lining up problems to solve.
**Halfway through the year we decided to drop this curriculum. Read all about why and what we switched to HERE.
Typing- Typing.com
We will continue our typing lessons with the free lessons from Typing.com. I have them work on their typing lesson twice per week.
That is everything for my daughter’s 5th grade core curriculum! Among all these, she also reads a ton of books. Many books she will be reading as part of our history curriculum (sharing tomorrow) but I always have a running list of great books for her to check out from the library or put on her kindle too. Here are just a few books I hope to introduce to her next school year for free reading:
Her current favorites are Nancy Drew mysteries, the original Babysitters Club, the Time Machine Girls, and American Girl History Mysteries. 😊
She is able to complete most of her work independently and having a checklist is super helpful for the both of us to remember what needs to get done each day. This is an example of her independent checklist this year (although I do update and edit it throughout the year as needed.) Grab the editable template HERE!
A typical homeschool day:
• breakfast & books • get ready for the day • independent work • play break or a walk • Language Arts & Math lesson • lunch • play • reading (30 min) • history or science • clean up • extra curricular activites (ballet)
I’m excited for a great year ahead with her and lots of learning together!!
Be sure to check out what we will be using for science and history HERE!
– Lindsay
***Mid-Year Update Review: Some of her curriculum we switched to and a review of using some of these new ones so far.
5th Grade Curriculum Round Up:
180 Days of Spelling and Word Study (Grade 5)
Simply Good and Beautiful Math Level 5
Interested in what we used for our 4th grade year, check it out HERE!
Thank you for sharing your curriculum choices! I love the spelling and word study! Did you have yours cut and spiral bound??
I took off the binding and spiral bound it myself at home! I share a tutorial on how to do it on my Instagram in my “Binding” highlight. 🙂
Question about LA curriculum choices…
why do you have Brave Writer and WriteShop? Wouldn’t Brave Writer have enough assignments to cover writing?
I am not familiar with either curriculums so just asking out of curiosity. Or does WriteShop cover things left out of Brave Writer?
We currently use IEW for 4th grade but are considering Brave Writer for 5th plus.
Thanks!
We use Brave Writer Literature Singles for Languages Arts; they cover literary devices, grammar, punctuation, etc. but they don’t teach writing. We use Write Shop for the structured writing process and writing projects. Brave Writer does have separate writing curriculums we have used in the past and enjoyed, such as Jot It Down and Partnership Writing, but is mostly for creative writing.
What do you use for science and history?
I did a separate blog post to share all of those. It is linked at the top of this blog post. 🙂