Our Fifth Grade Curriculum
We are getting ready to begin our sixth year of homeschooling and as I research and plan our subjects, I am realizing that our curriculum list has changed so much over the last 6 years. We started out by following a boxed curriculum set from Timberdoodle and have evolved into a much more eclectic style over the years. Today I wanted to share our choices for our 5th grade curriculum for the 2020-2021 school year.
History
Our history lessons have mainly been student driven and focused on specific events and historic figures over the last few years. With both girls taking such an interest in the United States since we started traveling with our camper, I thought it was a good year to start into a formal history curriculum and have wanted to check out Notgrass. We are starting with Our Star-Spangled Story with both girls and will branch out further next year.
Our Star-Spangled Story Curriculum Package
By Notgrass Company
FYI – this package recommends these eight literature books which are NOT included are:
- Benjamin West and His Cat Grimalkin (Marguerite Henry)
- Toliver’s Secret (Esther Wood Brady)
- Freedom Crossing (Margaret Goff Clark)
- Farmer Boy (Laura Ingalls Wilder)
- Mountain Born (Elizabeth Yates)
- Emily’s Runaway Imagination (Beverly Cleary)
- The Year of Miss Agnes (Kirkpatrick Hill)
- Katy (Mary Evelyn Notgrass)
Language Arts
Learning Language Arts Through Literature Student Activity Book: The Purple Book (Grade 5; 3rd Edition)
By Common Sense Press
Spelling
We had used Evan-Moor and their online subscription service for quite some time but felt it was lacking a bit in the spelling department. We used Spelling You See with Amelia for First Grade and loved all the copywork that it included. I think switching back this year will definitely help her penmanship.
Spelling You See Level G: Modern Milestones Universal Set
By Math-U-See
Math
We are switching it up this year at Amelia’s request and taking a break from Teaching Textbooks to try out Horizon’s Math. She wanted something that didn’t involve the computer or video lessons for a change so we thought this would be a good fit.
Horizons Math, Grade 5, Complete Set
By Alpha Omega Publications
Writing
Writing is definitely not Amelia’s favorite subject and we have struggled here for a few years. We started WriteShop last year with both girls and I decided to separate them and let Amelia work in Level D this year.
Activity Pack with Fold-N-Go Grammar, Level 1–Book D (Grades 3 to 6)
By Writeshop
This pack of WriteShop Junior Book D Activity Set Worksheets is designed to accompany the sold-separately Write Shop Junior Teacher’s Guide, Book D, and cannot be used independently. Be sure to grab the Time Saver Pack if you don’t want to create all the tools and paper resources on your own!
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We are focusing on different writing applications this year so I decided to add some additional Evan-Moor resources for Amelia. Their lessons are short and simple – perfect to pick up when we have some extra time during the day. You can also subscribe to their Teacher Filebox. This allows you to save and print pages from all of their resources, when you need them!
Science
I am so excited for science this year. We are breaking away from a traditional textbook and have picked up the Science and Nature Study Bundle from Blossom and Root. Yes, this is a first grade level curriculum but we are just using it as a base for our science since the girls really like to ask the questions and drive the conversation in this subject. We plan to move quickly through Blossom and Root and will probably complete 2 or more years of their curriculum this year.
Blossom and Root First Grade Science and Nature Study Bundle
Resources & Subscriptions
We have quite a few subscriptions and memberships that we use throughout the school year.
Adventure Academy – think ABC mouse for the big kids. Actually it’s from the same company 🙂 Both girls have accounts and love the interactive world. There are tons of educational games, ebooks and more that they can explore. Plus, they can create and dress their characters so it’s “cool” in their books.
Evan-Moor publishes so many amazing workbooks and activity books. We have purchased dozens of them over the years but were recently introduced to their Teacher Filebox subscription service. This gives you access to ALL their titles so you can print on demand! It’s been well worth the monthly subscription cost and probably one of our most used services.
Use TeacherFileBox FREE for 30 days!
Extras
We like to incorporate lots of unit studies and projects into our school weeks. I’ll update this over the next few weeks as I finish up our unit study calendar and pick up all the additional books and projects we will be working on.
