Let’s Chat Preschool-6th Grade Curriculum

Books & CurriculumPreschool
Written By Cassie Shepherd

After five years of homeschooling multiple kids I’ve now taught every elementary grade and that is SO fun to say! I often get asked about my favorite curriculums so I thought I’d round up some of them by grade. This isn’t a complete list of everything we’ve used just the ones I’ve loved most and would recommend as well as some unit studies I’ve eclectically curated. Keep in mind, some of these curriculums can definitely work across multiple grades, but I’ll list them by the grade we used them in order to keep things simple. At the bottom of the post, I’ll link all my past curriculum picks so you can also see what else we’ve used. In that list I also included summer & Christmas school plans. Then, I also added a few extra review blog posts I have so you can see how things went.

Preschool/Pre-Kindergarten (Ages 3-5)

  • Busy Toddler Playing Preschool: I love all the cute themes this curriculum offers and think it’s really well done especially as a gentle introduction to homeschooling. If this is your first time homeschooling ever I always recommend starting with this one. It’s a fun one to practice with!

  • Let’s Play School: The creator of Let’s Play School, Chelsea, has such a gift for making learning play-based and engaging for kids. In the early years, the themed studies really helped us set a fun tone and develop a culture for our home that has lasted for years.

  • Montessori & Learning Shelves: At this age, I really enjoyed setting up learning shelves and have continued to do it into the early elementary years. I also have a Montessori flare in my teaching and so you may also enjoy this post: Montessori at Home. And here are two examples of some of my first learning shelves when I was just first getting into homeschooling: Apples & All About Me. I have lots of shelfie pics scattered all through out my blog you can also browse for inspiration.

Kindergarten (Ages 5-6)

  • The Good & The Beautiful: For K-3 math, language arts, and handwriting TGTB is my favorite curriculum to recommend for all core subjects! It is open and go and makes teaching these subjects super easy. I have a post on Learning to Write, Type, & Draw with The Good & The Beautiful that may also be helpful.

  • Explode the Code: I wouldn’t say this is my favorite because it’s fun, but it’s my favorite because it is a super simple phonics workbook that is easy! We just do 1-2 pages a day and it takes my kids like 5 minutes, but it is very good for reading development. I have a review blog post on Explode the Code if you’d like to read more.

  • Me On the Map: This is the cutest geography unit! I did it with my older son and now we’re actually going to be using this as part of my 1st graders curriculum this year since we didn’t have a chance to get to it last year. (Code Homecenteredlearning10 will give you 10% off anything at LSOS)

  • Art for Kids Hub: I feel like everyone knows about this but just in case I am still going to throw this resource in here because they have so many great videos for young kids to start developing their drawing skills.

  • Red Headed Hostess Scripture Study: This is the longest subscription I’ve ever had and covers every age (even me, ha!) so I am going to put this right in the beginning here because it is just fantastic. (Just a heads up - it is a LDS faith perspective.) I have a whole post on how we use Red Headed Hostess here.

First Grade (Ages 6-7)

  • Savvy Reading: We have been using Savvy for six months now and this is such a great option if you need a reading curriculum that is hands-off. It’s pricy, but if you have homeschool funding or can make it work I have to admit I’ve really enjoyed having a little pressure taken off of me and being able to just read with my boys as practice instead of always delivering the instruction.

  • Evan Moor Spelling: At this age we add spelling along side our core curriculum from TGTB. Their LA does include spelling, but I like how simple and straight foreward Evan Moor’s spelling practice is. And, again, I like this just because it’s really easy to use. We continue to use this all through the elementary years and I also like 180 Days of Spelling for the older years.

  • Dash Into Reading & Emotional Resilience: Dash Into Learning has multiple curriculum options. I especially love their early readers (don’t miss the decodable poetry books too!) and the emotional resilience curriculum is taught through fairy tale stories and is fantastic. (Code HCL15 will get you 15% off anything!)

  • Little Hearts & Hands Science Units: This is another one I’ve used all through out the early elementary years and LOVE all the units. We especially love the simple science experiments (pretty much open and go) and the cute and beautifully illustrated Big Book of Science Stories that come with each unit.

  • Color Unit Study: I love to do a short unit as we ease back into a homeschool routine after the summer months. This unit was perfect for that and one of my absolute favorite mini studies we’ve ever done.

  • Season’s Afield: I did this year-long nature study course with my 5th graders & 1st grader (and a pre-kindergartner) and it worked so well for everyone! We all LOVED this course and is one that just makes lots of good memories along the way. Here is my full blog review: BFB Nature Study Review.

  • Growing Butterflies & Ladybugs: If you haven’t done either of these you definitely need to ASAP! My linked blog post shares all the details.

Second Grade (Ages 7-8)

  • Studying Stem: This was a perfect simple study for my 2nd grader last year. I wish I had more capacity to have done lots of fun hands on projects with him, but fortunately he was happy when we just read the books and notebooked about them. This unit is very flexible which is nice!

  • Crunch Labs: We started this subscription when my youngest son was in 1st, but we’re on our 3rd year of doing them now and it is such a highlight in our home. The recommendation for these is age 8, but if you have very math minded and engineer minded kids I think younger kids can figure them out since there are videos and easy picture instructions to follow. I think they’re also great for a bit older kids who love to build!

  • Letters from Afar: It feels like we did these FOREVER ago, but they’re really so beautiful and such a fun way to study geography. We paired these with Atlas Crates and that was perfect.

Third Grade (Ages 8-9)

  • American Girl History: This is another one of those years that will always have lots of memories because this curriculum was so fun! I’d highly recommend it. We did one mini unit study from Adventures to the New World Bundle and it also has a very similar feel.

  • Zoology Study: This was the first study where I broke off and 100% let my girls choose what they wanted to learn about and then pieced things together I thought they’d like. They chose animals! I thought I’d struggle spending an entire year learning about animals, but turned out we all loved it!

  • ‘His’ Story Timeline: I made this timeline when my girls were in 3rd grade, but it’s great for any age! It’s still one of the focal points of our homeschool room! We also really love our Timeline Book!

  • Botany Study: We’ve done a handful of science units from The Good & The Beautiful, but this one was one of our absolute favorites!

  • Cursive & Typing: I wanted to highlight TGTB here because their rainbow method for teaching cursive is my absolute favorite! It starts in Level 3 Handwriting. They also have great typing books but my kids have done best learning to type via typingclub.com. After they did everything they could on that resource I had them practice on typing.com and then used Level 3 Typing from TGTB for extra practice.

Fourth Grade (Ages 9-10)

  • Bird Unit Study: To be honest here, I didn’t really want to study birds, but, apparently, my girls weren’t done studying animals and chose birds right after our zoology unit. I was pleasantly surprised I really enjoyed the unit and so did all my kids.

  • Cinderella Writing Project: Ah! If I had to pick my top 3 best projects we’ve ever done I would say this is definitely one of them. I think it’s because I was just so happy with how much fun we had with this unit. It was spontaneous and just what we needed to wrap up a great year!

  • Solar System Study: I am starting to lose track how many times we’ve studied the solar system. This, by far, was our best one though. I’ve learned I tend to blog about our favorite things and this obviously was one of them!

  • Fix It! Grammar: As the kids have gotten older and write more independently I took a creative writing approach versus following a structured writing curriculum. I love Fix It Grammar because it is simple and doesn’t take much time. The levels do not coordinate with grade level so definitely look into what level would be best for your child.

Fifth Grade (Ages 10-11)

  • The Good & The Beautiful Math: We used TGTB for all of upper elementary math. I have a review blog post: Simply Good & Beautiful Math 5 and then the girls did fantastic with level 6.

  • The Math Art Connection: We did this as a summer study between 5th-6th grades and I thought it was perfect for that age, but my younger sons actually also really enjoyed it because there are easy projects to modify. We didn’t get through this whole course but I hope one day we come back to it because the projects we did were amazing and I felt like my kids learned a lot.

  • Story of the World: We started this study with Ancient Times when my girls were in fourth and finished with Middle Ages when they were in fifth. I think SOTW is better for upper elementary unless you’re doing it family study and so younger kids can tag along (which is what we did). I added a lot of extra things to make this study work for us but you can make it as simple or as hands-on as you’d like. Here are my review posts: Story of the World 1: Ancient Times Highlights & Story of the World 2: Middle Ages Highlights.

Sixth Grade (Ages 11-12)

  • Around the World Art Classes: As our kids get older I’ve noticed it’s natural to want to just add more and more to their plates. This is exactly what I did my girls sixth grade year and then I backed up and slowed down. Instead of a heavy history load I ended up just having the family work on these art classes 1-2x a month and it was perfect and exactly what we needed for my first year seriously homeschooling 4 kids! This course is part of the Lily & Thistle Art School. We’re lifetime members and I can’t recommend it enough. Here is my blog post: All About Lily & Thisle Art School.

  • Harry Potter Study: I curated this study last year and it was definitely so much fun. This was my 6th graders third time through the first 3 books. I have lots of resources I used on this blog post: A Deep Dive into Harry Potter.

Curriculum Pick Blog Posts

Note: Some of these blog posts are old and over the years as I’ve transitioned blog hosts some of the links, pictures, and formatting has gotten lost, but I still decided to share in the event you’re looking for more ideas. Happy browsing!

Cassie Shepherd
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