For those of you who want details of what our family uses for each subject for the various grades, including
- the curriculum which we develop ourselves
- the educational resources we sell or have in the past offered for sale and
- the items we don’t sell but recommend
as some main resources which we use time after time as we encounter the topic again as our children grow through the years, today’s post is for you! 🙂
“What resources do you recommend for ____?” is a very common question which all of us homeschool moms have asked as we make plans for educating our children. Hopefully some of our suggestions will help you! 🙂 Here’s how/where you can find these on our website!
Sometimes our family uses resources which are very well-known to other homeschooling families. Sometimes, however, we end up liking something less common better. After trying a variety of resources and previewing others along our journey, we’ve settled generally into using the resources you will read about on my lists.
Only YOU will know what will be the best fit for YOUR family. And just like us, sometimes that will only be discovered when you try something for a while. 🙂 These are just suggestions to help you on this quest for great educational resources to use for homeschooling!
For most of our lists (beyond just the free planning guides page),
please see the following blog posts…
(Note to explain the following set of “blog titles”: Homeschool schedules are only a tool and should be very flexible. The “days of the week” titles were given because I was giving examples of what our family might generally do on each day of the week. In no way does this suggest that you can only schedule certain subjects on certain days of the week. The original purpose of the posts was to provide ideas for homeschool moms who are wondering about how flexible scheduling can work well in a busy household. However, those posts written last year ALSO contain the lists of resources our family uses – towards the bottom part of those posts so keep scrolling on them. 🙂 )
(Full Disclosure: These links will take you within our website where there will be links to products we sell as well as mention of products we don’t sell.)
“Monday” – lists for Phys. Ed, Visual Art (some), Geography, Printing/Penmanship, Creative Writing (some), Music (some), Math for Grades 3 and up, Homesteading/Agriculture/Family Studies.
“Tuesday” – lists for Health, Math for Grades JK-2, Grammar, Upper Level Visual Art, Reading (literacy, including phonics, readiness), Spelling, Science.
“Wednesday” – lists for French, Writing (e.g. Compositions, Creative).
“Thursday” – lists for Reading (including comprehension, literature studies), Special Languages (e.g. Latin).
“Friday and Summary” – a few more resources listed for Science.
For Bible-related Resources – see this page here and/or this page here and you can follow links from those.
You might notice that I did not include a few subjects in those blogs (e.g. history). I am working to add to my lists about those “missing subjects” BELOW on this page until I get time to make a single blog on it. When I get to the specific subjects for the “Links for ____” posts later, I hope to transfer that information over there at that time and be included as a link on the links page (e.g. Links for History). In the meantime, when I see questions and I jot down an answer to them, I’ll put that below on this page.
My aim is to write a series of key posts with links to various blogs within our website on the topic plus the products which we have published. So far in this series we have…
- Links for Writing (Creative Writing & Composition)
- Links for Printing and Penmanship
- Links for Math
- Links for Art
- Links for Canadian Geography
- Links for Science
And now for the additional subjects/topics which weren’t already covered in the above links:
What does our family use for ____?
World History – Early Church Period to 1600’s, European History (Dark Ages, Renaissance, Reformation)
For Grades 4-8:
- Images of the Middle Ages by Apple Press (fun worksheets, project ideas). It is currently part of this World History Bundle in our online shop; we sometimes also sell it separately as a single product.
- Story of the Middle Ages (a textbook) by Michael J. McHugh and John Southworth (Christian Liberty Press). Note: This book might also be a part of our World History Bundle in our online shop. I don’t use the test/answer key part because we make a notebook with small projects instead. My children tend to work more so independently at this stage for history. The textbook gives enough details in a great way but is NOT overwhelming like so many other world history curriculum. It’s readable but not verbose, has some pictures and maps but doesn’t put every little detail (which is unnecessary anyways) in it. We use it almost more like a reference book rather than a textbook but it does come with discussion questions, vocabulary, etc. I supplement with the Apple Press reproducible book as the topics come up. These 2 books work very well together.)
My other comment about this history topic is that I’d also suggest supplementing the “early church” history and the “reformation church history” part with videos, especially if also doing this topic with teens. Note: We do not sell these videos. Examples: Christian History Institute’s “Reformation Overview” (Gateway Films/Vision Video), “History of Christianity” with Dr. Timothy George. Day of Discovery’s video series by Dr. Joe Stowell “The Dawning: Christianity in the Roman Empire” is something I’m planning to use the next time around that we study this period of history as well.
For studying more in the early church period, our family really likes Discipleland’s Acts curriculum (Eyewitnesses, Powerful Messengers, Valiant Voyagers, World Ambassadors) and the Visual Bible’s Acts of the Apostles (Scripture word-for-word acted out). (We do not sell these.) “Homeschool in the Woods” also has some visuals (cut-and-paste) which we have used occasionally. (We do not sell these either.)
For British History, you might like to read about the links in the high school English unit study we like here.
Canadian History – for now, please see our current listings in our shop here. For a study on Canada in the 1900’s to present day, I have liked using the Powerpoint slides created by Mike Zietsma (designed for high school level).
World History – Ancient Civilizations – for now, please see our current listings in our shop here.