I can’t believe we’re at the end of our very first year of homeschooling. It has been a year full of trial, error, growth, and lots of memories. Most importantly, it was a year full of learning!

Before I dive into what we’re using next year for curriculum, I want to share a review of our Kindergarten and Preschool curriculum that we used this year. So, let’s get into the review!

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What we used for curriculum

Kindergarten
Math: The Good and The Beautiful Level K
LA: The Good and The Beautiful Level K
Social Studies/Geography: Little School of Smith’s Me on the Map
Nature Study: A Year of Learning Slow Down

Preschool
Little House of Learning Let Them Be Little Preschool
The Peaceful Press Peaceful Preschool

Kindergarten Curriculum Review

Let’s start with Kindergarten!

For our core subjects (Language Arts and Math), we used The Good and the Beautiful ( you’ll see me refer to it as TGATB). The Good and the Beautiful (TGATB) is a spiral curriculum, meaning that you come back to skills/topics repeatedly throughout the book. Your child isn’t expected to master topics completely before moving on. This was a hard thing for me to grasp at first, but I really developed a love for the spiral method at the end of the year. The big thing that sold me on TGATB is that it is open and go, and you can literally take it on the go (to the park, in the car, on a trip)! Here’s what I thought of each subject….

• Math. For math my 6-year-old used TGATB Level K. This level comes with a fun math box that includes cars, counting sticks, pegs, and number dice to be used during lessons. Our favorite thing about TGATB math is that there are lots of fun math games incorporated throughout the curriculum! In my opinion, this level starts out easy but it gets progressively harder (so don’t skip it!). My son had a lot of fun with the games and he picked up on the skills pretty fast. One thing to note though is that if your child is more visual you may need to expand on some skills at home with fun manipulatives or videos.
• Language Arts. This year we used TGATB Level K. I was SO impressed by this curriculum! LA level K comes with reading booster cards, decodable readers, and there are free booster card games in the app. I love how everything works together to teach your child to read! I was blown away by how quickly my son went from knowing just his letter sounds to being able to read short stories by the end of the year. I have seen a lot of other people who supplement this curriculum. I did not supplement with any other phonics curriculum. I truly think its everything you need to teach your child to read and more! I did take a lot of the activities and make them more hands on though (we used flashcards, a moveable alphabet to spell words, sidewalk chalk to practice sight words, etc.). In my opinion, this curriculum is more advanced. I highly recommend taking the placement tests before choosing a level!

• Nature Study. This is easily my favorite subject. We have been using A Year of Learning’s Slow Down collection for a couple of years now. It has over 1,000 pages of digital material and so many amazing activities/ worksheets for kids. This guide uses the book Slow Down: 50 Mindful Moments in Nature by Rachel Williams. There is no specific timeline with this guide, so you can choose topics that go with the season or align with your child’s interests at the moment! One thing to note with this collection is that you don’t have to do it all (it would be hard to fit it all in). There’s a lot of great material, so choose what interests your kids/family!
• Social Studies/Geography. While TGATB covers some geography, I wanted to find a study that would allow us to dive deeper into this topic. When I found Little School of Smith’s Me on the Map guide, I knew it was the perfect fit! Me on the Map is a great introduction to social studies/geography for early elementary. This guide is taught in 8 units and focuses on teaching kids about their homes, streets, cities, states, country, continents, and world. Each unit has fun hands-on activities for the kids to complete, a book list, video suggestions, and even field trip opportunities. We chose to stretch this guide out over the year and it was perfect for us. My favorite part about this guide was the projects. My boys had SO much fun doing all the activities and they really helped them understand more about their place on the map!

Preschool Curriculum Review

Now, let’s talk about my favorite age…preschool!

With Rhett, we did a half day preschool program and I implemented a preschool curriculum on his off days at home. We used the The Peaceful Press Peaceful Preschool for 3k and 4k and we loved it both times. It focuses on a letter a week and uses living books and life skills to teach young children.

This was my first year doing school with my youngest son, who was three when we started. I always plan for a gentle year of learning for that first year of “preschool” and go into it with the no expectations of mastery by the end of the year. This age is all about play! We started out our year using The Peaceful Preschool and while I love this curriculum and was hopeful we would love it just as much as we have in previous years, we found ourselves struggling to keep up with all the activities throughout the year (mainly because I was now juggling two kids to teach and not just one).

Halfway through the school year we started using Let them Be Little Preschool . This curriculum focuses on similar things found in The Peaceful Press like life skills and learning through living books, but it’s not as overwhelming. It also does not focus on teaching one letter a week. Instead, children practice letter recognition and letter sounds with the whole alphabet. I really enjoyed this curriculum, but if your child is struggling with learning letters, I would suggest starting with The Peaceful Preschool.

Overall, we loved all of the curriculum we used this year and we’d recommend everything we used.

Be on the look out for our curriculum picks for the 2024-25 school year soon!