Our 2020/2021 Homeschool Curriculum

‘Tis the season for all things back to school. I’m seeing LOTS of new homeschoolers around here (hello, COVID) and getting lots of questions about our homeschool curriculum. That’s so great!

We have tried a lot of different homeschool curriculum over the years. This will be our tenth year homeschooling, so you can imagine all the curriculum we’ve gone through. When we first began homeschooling, I was all for the boxed kits where everything comes shipped to you in a box and you don’t have to do anything else to prep except open the book on the first day of school. Those are wonderful, and so helpful the first year or two in homeschooling.

However, over the years we have learned what has worked and doesn’t work for our family. Each child is different and enjoys different things and learns differently, so after those first few years, we branched out and tried other options and pieced together our curriculum. It worked for a few years but not for long.

Two years ago, we tried something different (shocker, I know). We were at the Teach Them Diligently convention (ya’ll know I’m a huge fan of this convention and can’t recommend it enough) and looked through MasterBooks curriculum for hours. We fell in love and thought our kids would love it too. So, we tried Masterbooks for a year and everyone loved it! Since then, we’ve used Masterbooks curriculum for everying but a couple of electives and our Math and it’s worked wonderfully! No one wants to change to something else and I love how easy it is for the teacher (ah-hem, Mom) to use. There’s very little planning involved. Each subject has it’s own plans laid out for you and your student in the front of the book. The only thing you really need to do when it comes to planning is to take a look at what supplies you need ahead of time and gather them. Masterbooks is also a good curriculum for families who would like their children to do some independent work to prepare them for later on in their schooling to get to all independent work (and let me tell you how wonderful it is when your kids get older and can do the independent work).

Also, if you order from MasterBooks, take 5% off your order by using the code MEGHANSFRIEND.

So what are we using this year? Here’s a line-up of our curriculum for our 9th, 6th, 3rd, grader – as well as our PreK(er).

9th Grade Curriculum:

• Bible/Foreign Language: Masterbooks Intro to Biblical Greek (how cool that he gets high school credit for a foreign language with this course?!?)
• Science: Masterbooks Biology
• Language Arts: Masterbooks Writing Strands Advanced 1 and Advanced 2.
• History: Masterbooks The World’s Story 3
• Literature: Masterbooks American Literature Set
• Math: Teaching Textbooks Geometry

6th Grade Curriculum:

• Bible: Masterboooks More Than Words Level 2 (we will do this during our Morning Basket time. More on Morning Baskets in another post, soon)
• Science: Masterbooks Soil, Sea, and Sky Curriculum Pack
• Language Arts: Masterbooks Language Lessons for Living Education 6
• History: Masterbooks America’s Story 2 Set
• Math: Teaching Textbooks 6
• Art: Masterbooks Living Art Lessons + Creating a Masterpiece
• Typing: The Good and the Beautiful Typing 1 and 2
• Handwriting: The Good and the Beautiful Handwriting 5

3rd Grade Curriculum:

• Bible: Masterbooks More Than Words Level 1 (we will do this during our Morning Basket time)
• Science: Masterbooks God’s Design for Life
• Language Arts: Masterbooks Language Lessons for Living Education 3
• Social Studies: Masterbooks My Story 2
• Math: Teaching Textbooks 3
• Art: Creating a Masterpiece
• Typing: The Good and the Beautiful Typing 1
• Handwriting: The Good and the Beautiful Handwriting 3

PreK Curriculum:

• Masterbooks Stepping Stones
• The Good and the Beautiful PreK Writing Practice

A few notes: Masterbooks has a great Math curriculum and thats what we use until they are old enough for Teaching Textbooks. When our kids start 3rd grade, they switch to Teaching Textbooks because they love doing some of their school on the computer, this helps me in not having to really teach Math (unless they need help of course), and it does the grading for me (so easy). So, it’s a win-win for everyone.

Don’t forget, if you order from MasterBooks, take 5% off your order by using the code MEGHANSFRIEND.

I love talking all things homeschool and curriculum and am here to help you, so please don’t hesitate to reach out on social media or by commenting on this post.

Also, make sure to check out some of our favorite homeschool supplies + books and follow me on the LiketoKnowIt app for more of our favorites. You can also check out some of our other homeschool posts HERE and follow me on Instagram + Facebook.