Learning Well Homeschool Curriculum Directory: Grades K-12
You’ve already spent too much time trying to figure out the right homeschool curriculum right?
You’re no closer to figuring it out than you were three days ago and you just want those boxes checked.
About 10 years ago when we began our homeschooling journey, I went over to my friends house. She’d been homeschooling forever and had an entire room/library dedicated to their homeschool curriculum. She brought me a coffee and I spread out with my notebook and she left me to it.
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I spent hours in that room that day pouring over the pages of her curriculum choices. Some things I knew weren’t going to be for us. But other resources I knew would be amazing and they’re still some of our favorites to this day.
You might not have a friend with a library like that, but I want to be yours.
Hi, I’m Alicia, welcome to my virtual library.
LWC Homeschool Curriculum Directory
Below you’ll find a visual curriculum directory for all the grades we’ve home-schooled thus far. For now, I have compiled grades K-10 of our very favorite, tried and true curriculum resources. Of course we’ve tried much more than this, but these are our favorites.
Come on in, grab a coffee, and settle in.
My hope is with this resource, you’ll shave tons of time off your decision-making time.
Take your time, friend.
Enjoy!
Below you’ll find three tables…don’t you just love visuals?? Each table includes our favorite resources for primary grades, middle grades, and high school.
I’ve linked directly to the resource’s websites and since I’ve written reviews on quite a few of these resources, I’ve included links to those as well.
See my full page of curriculum reviews
Primary Grades: Homeschool Curriculum Resources
For primary grades, my focus is on reading readiness, then reading and basic math functions. We also do a lot of reading together as a family. You’ll notice our kindergarten year doesn’t have a lot of curriculum purchases. This is because we’re mostly playing, watching Sesame Street, and spending time outside. Don’t stress about these early years…they’re meant to be fun!
Learning to Read in the Primary Grades
Learning to read is so high on our priority (worry!) lists when we begin to homeschool. Rightly so too, as a whole new world is opened when our children learn to read on their own. I think about it like this: first, learn to read. Then, read to learn.
Sometimes I think we complicate this task of teaching our children to read. We make this process 4,864 steps and stress about each and every one of them. After teaching several kids to read, I can look back at it now and recognize the beautiful process that takes place. Watching that light bulb slowly ignite after plugging away at Bob Books and phonics exercise is quite amazing.
Here is a summation of my process in teaching my kids to read, along with the resources we love. I didn’t put ages on any of these steps because I think we can get hung up here. Start reading to your kids at birth–this is learning to read. Other than that, we have to work with the progression of our child’s development. Trying to push to hard to fast will only slow the process.
Teaching to Read in a Few Steps:
- Start with letter recognition. This does not have to be done with any fancy tools. Magnetic letters on your refrigerator or foam pieces in the bathtub are perfect. They need to know each letter before they can proceed any further.
- Letter sounds. As they have mastered naming all the letters, it’s time to add in the sounds for each one.
- When your child can easily pick out a letter and their sound, they’re ready to move on to smooshing two sounds together. For this, and for a couple of months/years, I loved using Hooked on Phonics. We started with Kindergarten level when they were able to easily make each letter’s sound.
- Keep pressing on with Hooked on Phonics. I did not use every piece of this curriculum. We used the workbook, videos, flashcards, and storybooks. Move as slowly or as quickly as your child needs and don’t pay attention to the grade level.
- When they have a good grasp on the phonics, I added in Explode the Code workbooks. This proposed a tactical way they could show what they were learning. I don’t think the teacher guides are necessary for these books.
- Add in Bob Books when you are seeing them easily string sounds and short words together. These can be very tedious and feel boring at times, but they are so simple and useful for this step.
- Usually here, by the time they can easily read through the Bob Books, there is a big jump in progression. At this point, your child is probably trying to read and sound out everything: signs, billboards, covers on magazines in the checkout lane (yikes!), and more! If not, go slower. Don’t push too hard here.
- Next, lots of books! Picture books, easy readers, even abridged novels!
I have found that around step 7, when they really get it, I no longer really need to do the Explode the Code or Hooked on Phonics. They’ve got it, so no need to continue with those!
Also, I will add this: if your child can’t read well, they can’t spell well. I always wonder: how can my child possibly know how to spell a word that they can’t read? So my approach was, no spelling or grammar at all until they could read well.
- Read well.
- Learn to spell well.
- Start with Easy Grammar.
I hope this process helps to alleviate a little “pain” in this area! It’s such a beautiful process, and certainly there are learning issues that hinder these steps and something else needs to take place sometimes. But by and large, this is amazing to watch!
Using games in our homeschool is a great way to learn without making it too serious. We have many games and play them every single week. Here’s a list of our all-time favorite card games.
Middle Grades: Homeschool Curriculum Resources
During the middle grades, I like to start diving a little deeper. We start working on more in-depth grammar and spelling and using their reading skills that they learned in the primary grades to actually LEARN things.
Learn to read then read to learn, right?
They start spending a bit more time doing their seat work like math lessons and language arts. I also assign individual reading as well.
High School: Homeschool Curriculum Resources
Teaching high school has been so so fun. Below you’ll see what we’ve worked on in the past. I have kind of squashed together both of my older kids’ classes into this one table for you.
My high schooler(s) still joins us for read aloud and Bible, but loves to blast his music while working on his math assignments in his room. 🙂
But I guess that’s the point, right? Training our kids to work independently. It’s a lot less scary than I thought it would be, now that we’re in throes of it.
| Subject | 9th | 10th | 11th | 12th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Math | BJU Press Alegebra 1 (co-op class) (1 cr) OR Saxon Algebra 1/2 (1 cr) Key to Algebra | Teaching Textbooks Geometry (1 cr) OR Algebra2 (1 cr) | Algebra 101 (college course: 3 cr) (1 cr) OR Finance (1 cr) Foundations in Entrepreneurship Foundations in Personal Finance | Business Math + Money Matters for Teens |
| Logic | Mathability in the Real World Mind Benders B3 (1/2 cr) Balance Benders | Masterbook’s Intro to Logic OR Think-A-Grams C1 Hands-On Math Projects Dr. Ransom’s Bestiary of Adorable Fallacies What’s Your Worldview? (1/2 cr) | Masterbook’s Creation/Evolution and the Bible Mind Benders Level 6 | Sonlight’s Advanced Apologetics OR Masterbook’s Worldviews in Conflict |
| Literature + Language Arts | Easy Grammar 9 {review} Editor-in-Chief Root Words Level 2 (1 cr) {review} Sentence Diagramming Fix It Grammar | Movies as Literature Editor-In-Chief Easy Grammar 10 (1 cr) | Masterbook’s American Literature Sentence Diagramming Fix It Grammar Easy Grammar | |
| Writing | WriteShop II {review} (1 cr) | Composition Class (at co-op) (1 cr) | College Writing + Research | |
| History + Social Studies | American Government Unit Study (1 cr) Mystery of History-Volume IV (1 cr) | Beautiful Feet Books: Early American + World History (1 cr) OR Masterbook’s World Story III OR Church History | HIS 2520 Topics in US History Mystery of History-Volume IV (1 cr) | |
| Science | Apologia General Science + Lab (co-op class) (1 cr) Physics 101 (1 cr) Apologia Health & Nutrition | Apologia Biology | Apologia Chemistry Physics 101 (1 cr) Apologia Health & Nutrition | |
| Art | Drawing: How to Draw Almost Everything {review} (1/2 cr) OR Band Piano Lessons | Studying Under the Masters: Vincent Van Gogh e-course (1/2 cr) OR Band | General Guitar OR Band | Band |
| Electives | P.E: Baseball (1 cr) Apologetics (1 cr) Creation vs. Evolution Economics (1 cr) Economics for Everybody Bluestocking Guide to Economics | P.E: Fitness + Running (1 cr) | PSY 103 General Psychology Leadership Apologetics (1 cr) Creation vs. Evolution Economics (1 cr) Economics for Everybody Bluestocking Guide to Economics | |
| Total Credits | 8 | 8 | 8 |
Good luck in your quest for your favorite homeschool curriculum!
I hope you enjoy some of our favorites and I’d love to see YOUR favorites in the comments below.
Thank you SO much for putting this together! This is our first year home schooling, you helped put my mind at ease. I have spent so much time looking at curriculum. Your Instagram account has also been such a help to me too!
I didn’t get to finish watching your planning live video earlier and can’t seem to find it on ig now, I’m so bummed! Kids were arguing while I was listening! Ugh?