The homeschool curriculum choices blog posts are great, but what I really want to know is what families thought AFTER they used the curriculum they chose! I have shared many of these posts, you can see them all here. This is my third child to homeschool 5th grade, which is why the post is titled “Round 3!”
First up, 5th grade! Here’s a reminder of the original 5th Grade Curriculum Choices post.
Below I will give a small review of each subject, if you have more specific questions about anything, just leave me a comment and I will do my best to answer!
Math ~ Teaching Textbooks 6
Once again, Teaching Textbooks does the job for us! She completed Math 6 and will be continuing on with Teaching Textbooks Math 7 for 6th grade.
History~ Notgrass – From Adam to Us
My kids were combined for this {5th and 8th} and it worked well. They don’t love it but they don’t hate it either. Neither of my kids loves history in general so the fact that they don’t hate it is a plus. I love it and was really happy with my choice.
Geography ~ Country by Country
We completed Country by Country AFRICA and got through 3/4 of ASIA!
Reading ~ 5th grade reading list
Books read together :
- A Long Walk to Water
- Sing Down the Moon
- Wonderland
- Harry Potter 1, 2, 3
- The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Books read independently:
- Warriors {series}
- Wings of Fire {series}
- Spark
- Star in the Forest
- The Familiars
- Race the Night
- The One and Only Ivan
- Crenshaw
- The White Giraffe
- I Love You, Michael Collins
She LOVES reading, but only loves reading books she chooses. I tried to change things up a bit, and encourage her to read some books independently that weren’t her top choices, Of those books that were “pushed” by me, she LOVED a couple of them – The One and Only Ivan {which was a big push because she dislikes gorillas, thankfully she loved the story}, and I Love You, Michael Collins. I plan to push her even more out of her reading comfort zone in the coming year!
Grammar ~ Fix It Grammar
We continued with IEW’s Fix It Grammar and it is a good fit! We picked up about halfway through The Nose Tree {book 1} and completed it. We didn’t do another book, honestly when the virus hit I decided to just stop.
Writing ~ IEW
We finished up SWI B {I combined my kids for this 5th/8th}. I knew we were planning to dive into the all-new IEW {Structure & Style Level B Year 1} this coming year {6th grade} so I let her spend the rest of the year free writing – which she does a LOT. We used her free writing to work on writing skills together in a low-stress way. We did get a small jump start on our new curriculum, which I shared on Instagram here!
Vocabulary ~ Spectrum 5th Grade
No photos of this one, but I continue to like Spectrum Vocabulary workbooks for my kids.
Spelling & Reading Comprehension ~ Reading Eggspress
Honestly, my daughter wishes I wouldn’t have chosen this. The main reason – it is difficult! This is also the reason I love it. She can’t just fly right through it, and she is learning things I am not good at remembering to teach. Read my blog post about why we switched to this mid-year.
Science ~ Evan Moor 5th Grade & Apologia Swimming Creatures {with her weekly enrichment class}
Most of her science came from her weekly enrichment class which she did not enjoy this year. They used Apologia Swimming Creatures which she likes, she just didn’t enjoy the actual class this year. We enjoyed learning about other science topics at home using Evan Moor 5th Grade.
End of the Year Addition – Miacademy
Around March she asked me about possibly trying a curriculum that was more on her computer. I figured it couldn’t hurt and allowed her to try Miacademy. This ended up being fantastic once quarantine hit. I bought a year-long subscription and we will be using portions of it for the upcoming 6th-grade year also. I particularly love their USA and Africa portions.
See all of our past reviews and choices for other grade levels here!
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