Next school year I will have all four of my kids at the school table! As my youngest enters Kindergarten and my oldest enters middle school, I’ve been thinking a lot of what the future years of our homeschool will look like. We have already learned so much and done amazing things, yet I still hope to repeat a lot of it for my younger kids. This also means repeating subjects for my older kids since we like to do family style learning. However, as they grow older they are much more independent and will be able to complete deeper dives into these subjects on their own.
As I’m looking around at curriculum and planning for next year, I needed to do a brain dump and just write out a rough idea of the subjects I hope to cover as my kids grow. I mostly plan for history first (probably because it’s my favorite) as our big family subject and the rest falls into place alongside it. Of course this plan can always change, but having a rough idea on the overall subjects can help me narrow down and find curriculum choices when the time comes.
Before I share that list with you, I thought it would be helpful to share all that we have done, and curriculum we have used thus far in our homeschool. I have been blogging for almost 7 years, so have MANY blog posts of different curriculum and resources we have used. Below I’m sharing the blog posts I have that correspond for each grade level for easy reference. I’ll also give a quick note about our favorite studies each year.
**Note: This is NOT the order or grade level you have to cover these subjects. This is just the order we have chosen to do them as a family based off interests and previous topics we enjoyed. I hope this helps give you some ideas or as a starting point to find what will work best for your family and homeschool. Home Learning Year By Year by Rebecca Rupp is a great book that has helped me over the years too.
Past blog post for additional help: How to Choose Homeschool Curriculum
Preschool
Preschool is one of my favorite years and this year is my 4th and final time. Having done preschool four times through, I’ve narrowed it down to our favorites and have a blog post with everything here: Preschool Curriculum.
Kindergarten
I have only used The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts for my three oldest kids to learn how to read and they are all amazing readers!
Me on the Map is my favorite unit study to do in Kindergarten. It helps them learn all about their own place in the world, where they live, and a final project all about them that is one of my favorite keepsakes.
First Grade
When my oldest daughter was in first grade we loved Sassafras Science Zoology. Check out my highlights here (& part 2 here!) on Instagram sharing all the fun projects we added. I have a blog post with more ideas HERE too.
My daughter did “Who Was” Book Unit Studies to dip our toes into history and we loved these also! She got to choose different important figures throughout history to learn about.
By the time my third child was in first grade, I switched history up to be a little more simple by just reading some fun books and notebooking. Read all about it towards the bottom of THIS blog post.
For science we also loved Me and My Place in Space! This unit study is so fun and perfect to follow up Me on the Map. At the end of Me on the Map they learn about their planet Earth, so then we continued learning about all the other planets with Me and My Place in Space.
Second Grade
Second grade is when we started diving into American History. This year my daughter did American Girl History and LOVED it! This was one of our favorite years yet and she still (she is 11 years old now) remembers so much of it!
When my son started second grade, we did American History also, but with Adventures to the New World and Adventures Through America.
This blog post explains both curriculums in a lot more detail and the similarities/differences between the two. (They can be used together also!)
For science we continued with Me and My Amazing Body learning all about the human body and anatomy.
Third Grade
This was the first year we stopped using The Good and the Beautiful for Language Arts and switched to Brave Writer Literature Single: Dart. My daughter loved them so much and we never looked back. Lots of information on those here:
Brave Writer Review & Book Reports
This school year I had a 3rd & 1st grader and we did a full year of Around the World. This was so much fun and full of great projects! I have a blog post sharing every country we completed, the books we used, and tutorials or links to activities & crafts. For science, we studied the biomes of different regions throughout the world. We studied a new country every 2 weeks and spent every Friday (for 6 weeks) on a biome related to that part of the world. I have a Master Blog Post with all the blogs of countries and biomes we completed!
Fourth Grade
Family Studies 2023/24 School Year (Bible, History, Science, Geography)
4th Grade Curriculum Mid-Year Update
Dart Review & Book Reports Year 2
This school year I had a 4th, 2nd, and Kindergartener. As I shared above (for 2nd grade) we went back and did American History. The beginning of the year was all new for everyone as we went further back than previously and started with the Vikings in Adventures to the New World. The second half of the year we completed Adventures Through America, which was some review for my oldest, but more deep dives on topics such as Lewis & Clark and the Oregon Trail.
Since we were covering American History I wanted to study the 50 states for geography. We had a lot of fun with this and have everything in a post here: 50 States Unit Study.
For science I decided to learn about weather that occurs throughout the 50 states, so we did a unit study for the year on Weather & Natural Disasters.
Fifth Grade
Family Studies 24-25: Bible, History, Science
There is one state I saved till the end of our 50 states study and it became the center of our studies for this school year; our home state of California! Public (& private) schools in CA study California History in the 4th grade, but I waited until my oldest two were in 5th & 3rd so I could do it with them together.
Since we were learning all about California for history, I decided for science to learn about the ocean with Marine Biology in the fall and Geology in the spring.
This year is when we switched up Math from The Good and the Beautiful to Teaching Textbooks. All about this curriculum change in the mid-year blog post above.
And here we are coming up on 6th grade for my oldest next year; so crazy!!
Next year I have plans to start diving into Ancient History. I’m creating a new curriculum coming this summer and we will be covering Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, and Ancient Greece. We are so excited!
Science I’m still thinking about and haven’t decided on yet.
We are also switching up ALL our Language Arts curriculum to EIW and will see how we like it. I think it will be a great fit, but more details on this switch coming later.
Future Homeschool Years
If you noticed from our early homeschool years (Kindergarten & 1st grade) I don’t use a full history curriculum. I mostly focus on reading, writing, and basic math skills during these early years. We like to do simple studies or read books on a range of different people and topics for history and interest based for science.
Even though I did American History, and am currently doing California History, etc. with my older two, I don’t expect the younger ones to participate. They are always welcome to join and love to listen to stories or do some art projects with us, but it isn’t a requirement. Second grade is when I start a more formal history curriculum and have them participate more in notebooking, discussion, etc.
*A quick blog post all about Notebooking HERE.
As my kids get older, I will be repeating many of these subjects for my younger kids. While we may be covering the same subjects together as a family, I will have a different curriculum or books for my older children that they can do independently and dive deeper.
Here is a rough draft idea of the time periods/topics I would like to cover. *I’m listing the grade levels of all my children the school year they would be completing these.
K, 2nd, 4th, 6th: Ancient History (next school year!)
1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th: Middle Ages/Medieval Times
2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th: Around the World
- This is when my youngest starts 2nd grade and we will repeat Around the World with my two youngest, but my older two will review and cover World History/Civilizations
3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th: American History
- Repeating American History to teach my younger ones, focus on Constitution & Government for my older ones.
4th, 6th, 8th, 10th: California History
- Repeating CA History for my younger two, covering WWI & WWII for my oldest two.
That’s as far as I’ll go for now, but I hope that makes sense. We still like to take our homeschool journey year by year and see what is the best for our kids, so we never know what grade we might outsource for or choose a different route.
Here is another rough idea of what to cover for the older grades too:
6th- Ancient Civilizations & Empires
7th- Middle Ages to Age of Exploration
8th- American History
9th- Constitution & Government
10th- World History, WWI
11th- WWII-Cold War
12th- Government & Economics
Science I like to do interest-led for now, and will cover biology, chemistry, earth sciences, etc. more thoroughly as they get older. If you have a favorite science curriculum, please share in the comments below! I feel like I’ve tried quite a few, but still haven’t found a favorite!
I hope this post was helpful! I know it was A LOT, but I wanted to put it together for you to easily come back to anytime and have everything in one spot.
Reminder, all the curriculum we have used so far (K-5th) has all been geared for elementary grades, so you can use anything that we used in any grade level and in any order! Don’t worry if you haven’t covered something already, they will get to it again. Just from writing everything out, you can see they will repeat certain topics or time periods in history a few times throughout their education.
I’m excited to see what the future holds and all the fun things we will learn together!
Let me know if you have any questions below!
~ Lindsay
Storing and Saving Art & Curriculum
Homeschool Daily Rhythm with Toddlers
Love this, thank you for putting this together! Do you have any suggestions yet or ideas on how you’ll do 7th grade (middle ages)?
There are few different curriculums I have in mind that I have saved to look into more but have not decided on one yet. The Kind Kingdom by Peaceful Press, Simple Studies The Middle Ages, or Beautiful Feet Books.
Oh I am really excited to see your Ancient History curriculum! I am planning to do ancient history with my 5th/3rd/1st graders next year but I haven’t decided on a curriculum yet. Your other curriculums look so engaging. Do you have an idea when this one might be out?
I hope to do it with my kids next year as well, so my goal is to have it available this summer!
Thank you this blog post! I’ve been following you on Instagram for a couple years and my daughters (1st/4th) have really enjoyed doing the American Girl units the last two years. I am trying to decided between one more year of American History (focusing on post WW2 – present), or stopping at Molly (WW2) and switching it up to Ancient World History (I’m looking forward to the unit you’ll be posting this summer!). I teach high school sciences and math in our local co-op and have really been impressed with the Apologia curriculums for science. It is Bible/God focused, yet explains the science very well (I have found that many Christian science curriculums lack this- it’s just more of a “because God made it that way” type of approach). I’ve also been researching EIW for my rising 5th grader, it seems like a great fit. My rising 2nd grader might end up with one more year of The Good and the Beautiful LA, that’s about as far as we go with it. In two years I’ll have my youngest in Kindergarten with me, so I love your idea of “planning” out the years and how to circle back to certain subjects with the younger group. Great post!
I have heard great things about Apologia and that has been high on my list of curriculum to try next! Thank you for sharing!
This all looks great! I love following along with everything you use. You make everything look fun and engaging. I have a 7th and K next year and I’ve been struggling to figure out what to use for history and science for my older one. I have me on the map for my little guy which I’m super excited about. We also have your space and body units to use as well
That’s great! I hope he enjoys them!
We are doing apologia anatomy and physiology and then astronomy or zoology through them
I have heard great things about Apologia and definitely hope to try one of their curriculums for science!
Have you looked into Answers in genesis for science ? Master books I think now owns the printing for this curriculum and combines 3 units in one textbook. It’s kind of like all these different science units combined. They call it Gods design series.
I will check it out, thank you for sharing!
Yay! I will be first in line to buy your Ancient History curriculum! Always love your ideas!
We struggle to find a science too! We are going to try Journey Homeschool academy next year! Also, we loved EIW! This was our first year using it and will definitely be using it again!
That’s great! I think we are going to try Beast Academy Science! My kids are really excited about it. 🙂