Our 5th Grade Homeschool Curriculum

With the new school year just around the corner, I’m excited to reveal the 5th grade homeschool curriculum we’ll be using for 2024-2025. This year, I’ve selected a mix of tried-and-true family-style homeschool curriculum resources and exciting new materials to enrich our educational experience. I’m looking forward to a year filled with engaging lessons, hands-on activities, and plenty of opportunities for curiosity, exploration, and, most of all, fun!

Image displaying a detailed 5th grade homeschool curriculum, highlighting various subjects and activities to create an engaging and comprehensive learning experience, including Joy Hakim's A History of US, the Global Explorers Club's Africa unit study, United Stories: An American History Homeschool Curriculum, Mathematical Reasoning by the Critical Thinking Co., and more.

5th Grade Homeschool Curriculum

MORNING BASKET

Here’s what I plan to include in our morning basket this school year. If you haven’t used one, a morning basket is a really simple way to incorporate family-style learning into your homeschooling routine. Our poetry selection will also include the works of some early American poets, including Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley.

  1. Poetry: The Complete Book of the Flower Fairies + A Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme
  2. Art History: A Year in Art: The Activity Book
  3. Character Education: The Virtues Project
  4. Life Skills: Connoisseur Kids: Etiquette, Manners, and Living Well for Parents and Their Little Ones + How to Be a Person: 65 Hugely Useful, Super-Important Skills to Learn before You’re Grown Up
  5. Geography: Mapwork Activities
  6. Spanish: Español En Vivo + The Fable Cottage
  7. Math Warm-Up: The Hands-On Equations Verbal Problems Book + Upper Elementary Challenge Math

Curious about our morning basket routine? Click [HERE] to see how we implement it into our daily homeschool routine and tips on creating your own.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Here’s the Language Arts resources we’ll be using this coming school year. In our experience, integrating reading, writing, and vocabulary into our history and geography lessons makes learning more fun and connected, plus it saves time. Therefore, most of our literature selections and writing, spelling, and grammar activities are found within our Africa unit study and United Stories: A Journey Through America’s Past.

  1. Literature: The Global Explorers Club’s Africa unit study (book list) + United Stories: A Journey Through America’s Past (book list)
  2. Writing: The Writing Revolution 2.0: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades
  3. Spelling: Making Big Words: Multilevel, Hands-On Spelling and Phonics Activities
  4. Grammar: A Sentence a Day: Short, Playful Proofreading Exercises to Help Students Avoid Tripping Up When They Write
  5. Copywork: Poems Every Child Should Know in Cursive: Poem and D’Nealian Cursive Copywork Book, Part 1
  6. Reading Comprehension: Narration + Notebooking
  7. Creative Writing: Once Upon a Time Storytelling Card Game + Once Upon a Time Writer’s Handbook
  8. Extra: Prodigy English

MATHEMATICS

My DD (10) will be working through Beast Academy 5 this year. However, she requested a math workbook for the days when her brain needs a bit of a break from Beast Academy since sometimes it can be more intense. For this reason, we’re adding in Critical Thinking Co.’s Mathematical Reasoning curriculum, too. For our daily math warm-up during our morning basket time, she will alternate between The Hands-On Equations Verbal Problems Book and Edward Zaccaro’s Upper Elementary Challenge Math . For extra review and practice, we’ll keep playing plenty of math-based board games and using Prodigy.

  1. Mathematical Reasoning
  2. Beast Academy
  3. Extra: Prodigy Math + Make Math Facts Fun: Games and Activities

SOCIAL STUDIES

This year we’ll dive into American history again, starting with pre-civilization and continuing through the War of 1812. Plus, we’ll continue to work our way through the Global Explorers Club’s Africa unit study. Both our curricula here are interdisciplinary, incorporating language arts, science, art, music, and more.

  1. The Global Explorers Club: Africa Unit Study
  2. United Stories: A Journey Through America’s Past, Part I

SCIENCE

In addition to nature study, we’ll continue with family-style science this year, utilizing Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, Volume II. We’ll also be adding Science Magic Tricks for Kids: 50 Amazing Experiments That Explode, Change Color, Glow, and More! for hands-on fun, and The Extraordinary Book that Invents Itself to add a creative twist to our learning. Our aim is to keep our science lessons engaging and varied throughout the year.

  1. Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, Vol. II: I’m using the lesson plans and the notebook pages found [HERE] as a guide. They’re located near the bottom of the forum. Our goal is to do 1-2 lessons per week.
  2. Nature Journal: I’ll be using John Muir Laws’s free How to Teach Nature Journaling curriculum alongside The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling with my kids this year. If you prefer something more open-and go for nature study, the Wild Nature Journal looks like a fun alternative.
  3. Science Magic Tricks for Kids: 50 Amazing Experiments That Explode, Change Color, Glow, and More!
  4. The Extraordinary Book that Invents Itself
  5. Extra: Generation Genius (free through our charter program) and N*Gen (part of our Africa unit study)

HANDICRAFTS

Alongside the arts and crafts projects from our Africa unit study, we have some exciting new handicrafts planned for this year. Since my kids have both shown an interest in photography, we’ll be using Kidamento’s Through My Lens for weekly photo challenges. We’ll also explore the whimsical Make This Book Wild to enhance our nature study, and we’ll continue to develop our skills in brushwork, sewing, embroidery, and knitting.

  1. Mixed Media: Make This Book Wild
  2. Photography: Through My Lens: 43 Flip-the-Flap Challenges and Activities
  3. Brushwork: Brushwork
  4. Drawing: Sachiko Umoto’s Illustration School series (Let’s Draw Happy People, Let’s Draw Cute Animals, and Let’s Draw a Story)
  5. Sewing & Embroidery: Twelve Days Ornament Series
  6. Knitting: Loom Knitting

More Curriculum Picks

Looking for more curriculum ideas? Explore our past curriculum choices for more inspiration and ideas.

2023-2024
2020-2021
2021-2022