our curriculum picks for the 2021-2022 school year

Homeschool year THREE is upon us!  Wow!  Here’s a look into our 2021 homeschool curriculum picks for this upcoming year.  This will be my first year homeschooling two kiddos – I’ll have one in second grade and one in kindergarten.

Looking for other curriculum info?  Here’s what we used for first grade and for kindergarten

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(scroll to the bottom for a video if you prefer watching/listening over reading)

Main Curriculum: Classical Conversations

This will be our third year with Classical Conversations.  We have absolutely loved the Classical Conversations program so far and are so excited about being back again this year!

If you aren’t familiar with Classical Conversations I wrote a pretty in depth blog post about what it is, how it works, what a typical CC day looks like, and our thoughts after our first year.

The Classical Conversations curriculum is very comprehensive and touches on a little bit of English grammar, Latin, history, geography, science, and math each week. The only additional things that need to be added to CC to have a full curriculum are a language arts curriculum and a math curriculum and I’ll share what I’ve chosen for those in just a minute.

CC runs in a three year cycle and this year we’ll be doing Cycle 1.

RELATED VIDEOS

More about our CC curriculum in these videos (some are from a few years ago but are still applicable for this year since the curriculum doesn’t really change):

 

Language Arts: Logic of English

Yep, we are continuing with Logic of English for our Language Arts!  I still absolutely love this program and have been so impressed with how much it teaches!

My second grader will be starting Foundations D and my kindergartener will be starting Foundations A (and will likely also do Foundations B during kindergarten).

LOE covers grammar, spelling, reading, reading comprehension, and handwriting so you only need the one curriculum (so nice!).  And of course as I’ve shared before (and the name indicates) it teaches the actual logic and rules behind the English language.

My Logic of English Foundations A review blog post

Order Logic of English here

RELATED VIDEOS

Here’s my LOE Foundations A unboxing video so you can see what comes in the curriculum:

My LOE Foundations A review:

My LOE Foundations B review:

My LOE Foundations C review:

 

Math: RightStart Math

We will continue this year to use RightStart Math for our math curriculum.  My second grader will be moving on to RightStart Math Level C and my kindergartener will begin Level A.

I am still so happy that we picked RSM.  I picked it because of the use of manipulatives, the emphasis on mental math, and how games are used instead of worksheets to reinforce concepts.  I am constantly blown away by how much my oldest has learned and how good his number sense is!

My RightStart Math Level A Review blog post

Order Right Start Math here

RELATED VIDEOS

Check out what all comes with the RightStart Math Level A curriculum here:

RightStart Math Level A review:

RightStart Math Level B review: 

Science: Various Supplemental Books

As I mentioned before, Classical Conversations plus language arts and math is a full curriculum.  There is no need to add anything else unless you just want to.  I am not adding in any additional science curriculum at this time but I did buy several books from Usborne, Amazon, and Thriftbooks to use as supplements.

Our science focus this year in CC is animals, plants, and geology so I got several books that go along with those topics.  I will do video later showing a flip through of some of those books!

History: Various supplemental books

Last year I decided to add in a separate history curriculum in addition to Classical Conversations (Notgrass’ Our Star-Spangled Story – you can see my review on that here) because my kids LOVE history and that aligned perfectly with the history we were covering in CC.

This year I am not adding in any additional history curriculum.  We will read lots and lots of related books to supplement our CC history focus (ancient world history, Greeks, Romans, etc.) but I’m not doing anything structured.  With it being our first year homeschooling two kids at once plus having a newborn (and an active toddler!) I’m trying to keep things as simple as possible and not add in a bunch of things that will overwhelm us.

RELATED VIDEOS

Notgrass’ Our Star-Spangled Story review

Bible: How Great is Our God and Shaping Hearts

We finished up Indescribable (a devotional book about God and science that aligns well with the science topics we cover in CC) last year and began the second book by that author, How Great is Our God.  We’ll continue How Great is Our God until that’s finished and then I’m not sure what we’ll use.  We have quite a few devotional books that we haven’t read through yet so I’ll likely pick one of those.

We are also going to do a couple of workbooks from Shaping Hearts.  The boy’s Bible classes at church use these workbooks and send them home each quarter so we go through them again as part of homeschool time.

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And there we go!  We’re adding a little bit more in this year, which I’m excited about, but still keeping it very simple.

Prefer videos? Here’s a video I made sharing what we’re using this year

Here’s what we used for first grade

Here’s what we used for kindergarten

You might also like:

My homeschool planner for 2021-2022

A look at a typical homeschool day

A tour of our homeschool room