Curriculum Choices for 2021/2022 - Kindergarten, Grade 6 and Grade 9

Curriculum Choices

Well, it’s that time of year again folks. The time when my kids are super excited for their summer break, and the time when I figure out what we’ll be using for our homeschool next year. I always feel like maybe it’s too early, but I’d rather figure it out now and then enjoy our summer fully without worrying about the curriculum. No one wants to find themselves at the end of summer thinking “oh no, I don’t even know what we’re going to be using, and school starts next week!” In an attempt to help you with your own decisions, I’d like to share our curriculum choices for next year with you once again. You can also find our choices for past years by clicking these links:

Kindergarten

My 5 year old will be starting Kindergarten in the fall and he is so excited. He is ready to learn how to read so that he can “read everything in the whole world!” In the past we’ve used My Fathers World for Kindergarten and we’ve absolutely loved it! Their Kindergarten program comes as a complete set with everything you’ll need for a complete school year. They have both a basic set and a deluxe set, we’ll be using the deluxe set this year. As I write this I have an email in my inbox letting me know that this package will be delivered today! (I will update here with a link to our unboxing video once we get that up on our YouTube channel)

This set comes with a teachers manual that walks you through what to do each day. There is a weekly “grid” and also a section that gives more details about each day’s activities (instructions for how to teach the lesson, or perhaps a craft or recipe idea, etc). The deluxe set even includes a book package that will go along with each weeks lessons! I love that all the subjects are included and I can just “open and go”!

Grade 6

For my middle child, who will be in grade 6 this fall, we will be pulling together a few things from different curriculum companies.

The base curriculum we’ll be using will be Exploring Countries and Cultures from MFWbooks.com. We have this set from when my oldest used it before and I thought it was a great time to pull it out for my daughter to go through since it is suitable for 3rd-8th grade. We just needed to order a couple of items (consumable items) to complete our set. With this curriculum, you will need to add language arts, math, and foreign language. This set will cover Geography, Science, Reading, Art & Music.

For Language Arts, we will continue to use the courses from GoodandBeautiful.com. The LA courses are based on “levels” and not grades. So although my daughter will be in 6th grade, it corresponds to level 5 from The Good and the Beautiful. We do still have the non-consumable items from when my oldest used this level, so we’ll just need to purchase a new coursebook for my daughter.

For Math we will be sticking with the series from Masterbooks, Math Lessons for a Living Education: Level 6. We’ve been using Masterbooks Math for years now and the kids prefer it over some of the others we’ve tried before. We already have the Teachers Guide, so we’ll just need to get the book with the student sheets.

My daughter has chosen Spanish for her Foreign Language course. I haven’t decided what we’ll be using yet. So if you have any suggestions please comment below and let me know what’s worked for your kids.

We may supplement some History using History 2 from GoodandBeautiful.com and Science with some of the different units available from GoodandBeautiful as well since we have both of these things already.

I usually add something specific for Canadian Studies (we are Canadian after all). This year I’ve decided to go with My Canadian Time Capsule from The Canadian Homeschooler. It looks like a really fun way to learn some Canadian History. If you’d like to see a review of this program after we’ve had a chance to use it in the fall, let me know in the comments below.

Grade 9

I can hardly believe my oldest is in grade 9 this fall! Being the oldest, he is the hardest one to plan for. With the younger ones I have the advantage of knowing what we liked from when my oldest was in that grade. But for Jacob, we have to research more and make a decision as best as we can.

Math is still fairly easy to plan for, we will continue using materials from Masterbooks as it seems to be working well for him. He will be moving on to Elementary Algebra.

For Language Arts, we will be sticking with GoodAndBeautiful.com, but moving on to their Highschool 1 course.

For Science, we have decided to use Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Physical Science (3rd edition) Advantage Set. We’ve used some of their Science courses in the past and I really enjoyed how they were laid out with the Student Notebooks, and I love that there is an MP3 Audio Disk that will read the textbook to him. We’ve actually already received this in the mail and have done an unboxing video for you! (see the video below)

History will be GoodAndBeautiful.com’s History Year 2 program, which we already have on hand to use.

We may also add in some more specific Canadian Studies for him as well, maybe following along a bit with My Canadian Time Capsule that we will be using with my 6th grader.

Mom’s Supplies

As homeschool moms, we need some supplies of our own as well.

The number one thing I need is a planner to keep track of everyone’s daily tasks. This past year I used one single planner for my two older children, in fact, I used my own planner which you can find right here: The OLB Homeschool Planner.

This year though, my Kindergartener and 6th grader’s main curriculum each comes with a “teacher’s manual” which is what I will use as a planner for their work.
My 9th grader doesn’t have a “teacher’s manual” though, and so I will likely use my OLB Homeschool Planner for organizing his days.

Some of the other basic supplies I like to keep on hand are:

Flair Marker Pens – I use these for marking assignments and writing in my planners.
Electric Pencil Sharpener – This is the sharpener we have and we love it. We can use it plugged in or with batteries so it’s really easy to move it around with us depending on where we are doing our schoolwork each day.
Supply Caddy – We have this caddy pictured below. I love how we can take out each individual section as needed, but then it all stores back neatly in the circular base.
ProClick P50 Binding Machine – I have been eye this simple binding machine for some time now, and I think this will be the year that I get one! The binding spines that go with this machine can open and close easily to remove and add pages if needed. It just looks so simple to use.
Scotch Thermal Laminator and Pouches– We’ve had this laminator for years now and I have been very pleased with it. I use it to laminate covers, and to turn worksheets into “dry-erase” activities. It’s also great for laminating materials that you want to last a long time, either because you want to use them with other children later on, or maybe it’s an item that will be getting a lot of use and handling and you want it to hold up better.