I can’t believe this will be my 13th year homeschooling. It’s just as exciting as all the others! My 2023-2024 Homeschool Curriculum Selections for my 5th and 6th graders are finally here. My daughter has graduated and it will be me and the boys. Wow, just writing that makes me realize how fast life is moving. One of my goals this year is to slow down and savor our learning time. For me, that means purchasing less curriculum and resources.
I’m looking forward to reading more books with tons of hot cocoa and playing fun board games together. Since my boys are so close in age I’ve always used the same curriculum but different levels for both of them. This made teaching multiple kids and multiple grade levels so much easier for me to teach. In this post, I’m sharing my homeschool curriculum selections for the 5th and 6th grades.
2023-2024 Homeschool Curriculum Selections for the 5th and 6th Grades
Math
For math, we are using Simply Charlotte Mason’s business math course. I used this with my daughter years ago and we loved it. Two days a week we will supplement with Interactive Math Notebooks I found on Amazon. I’m trying to incorporate more hands-on learning with more difficult subjects so hopefully, these will be a great fit. Board games on Monday and Friday have worked well for us. Some of our favorites are Shut the Box, Sleeping Queens, and Hi Lo Flip .
2023-2024 Homeschool Curriculum Selections for 5th and 6th Grades
History
This will be our 2nd year using The Story of the World. The boys enjoyed how I structured this course last year and asked if we could continue with volume 2 Middle Ages. Two or three days a week I read a chapter while they drew or played with Legos. We answered the narration questions and did the map work. That’s it! I’m tempted to add some of the crafts but only a few throughout the year.
I purchased a few picture books and hands-on activities they will enjoy. We will also begin our History Timeline notebook since I forgot about it last year, eek!
Language Arts
For Language Arts, I’m trying something new this year. Writing Strands from masterbooks will help us focus on sentence variety, paragraphing, writing narratives, and grammar. These are all areas both my boys need more structured focus. I like that the lessons are short but still challenging.
We will also be reading The Chronicles of Narnia series. I won’t have them answer comprehension questions but we’ll have a snack and a cup of tea or hot cocoa while we read together. I’ll add in board games and writing letters to friends and family.
Here are a few of our favorite language arts games: Upwords, Wordical, WordSearch Game
Science
So after asking the boys what they wanted to learn they unanimously decided on dinosaurs. I picked Elementary Paleontology from Masterbooks. This is a robust curriculum that we probably won’t complete this year and that’s okay. At the end of last year, we started a Human Body unit study from The Waldock Way and I want to complete it before we begin our dinosaur study.
Foreign Language
This will be our first year joining a Co-Op. I picked a beginner Spanish class. They already know a few basic words and would love for them to be able to have an entire conversation with some of their relatives.
Art & Enrichment
We will continue to work through Living Art Lessons from Masterbooks once or twice a week. For physical education, we will attend a class at our new co-op.
The boys will continue their Pokemon class on Outschool just for fun.
I plan to incorporate more field trips and outings with our co-op. I’ve heard many mixed reviews about co-ops, so I’m hoping this works for us.
2023-2024 Homeschool Curriculum Selections for the 5th/6th Grades Summary
- Simply Charlotte Mason Business Math
- Interactive Math Notebook
- Story of the World Volume 2
- Living Art Lesson
- Writing Strands for Language Arts
- Elementary Paleontology: Dinosaurs
- CoOp for Spanish and Physical Education class
