Curriculum

If you're looking for homeschool curriculum reviews, the most thorough website I've seen is Cathy Duffy Reviews. I share what we use below.

Julie's Math Pick
Julie's Language Arts Pick
Julie's Science Pick
Julie's History Pick
What we do for PE
What we do for Music

My goal in curriculum is to be as screen free, fun, and as thorough as possible. We've been homeschooling since February of 2016.

Math Curriculum

The math curriculum that I use with my kids in our homeschool is called Beast Academy, which leads to Art of Problem Solving.

The math lessons are taught in a comic book. The beasts at Beast Academy are learning the math lessons, and the reader gets to learn with them. There are some silly jokes in there along with the math information. The beasts have competitions and challenges against other schools, and one of their professors has an evil twin who sometimes kidnaps him and the beasts have to figure out math challenges in order to find him again. There's a pirate captain who frequently needs help with his math on his ship. There are caretakers who see what the beasts are learning and put their sneaky math knowledge to work on the grounds. The characters are colorful and they age as the books progress.

Most of the accompanying workbooks are puzzles and games. They are challenging but incredibly engaging. My mom is a math prof, and has been impressed with what my kids have retained mathematically. She's told me that this math curriculum goes more in depth and pushes for better thinking than she's seen in many other textbooks. The same authors also wrote Art of Problem Solving, which takes math learners from Beast Academy's elementary math all the way to Calculus. You can see what each level of Beast Academy covers by scrolling down on their All Books page. I should add that this curriculum is considered advanced, so it is worth checking their Placement Tests before ordering. The best place I've found to order through in Canada is Rainbow Resource.

UPDATE: We've been using Art of Problem Solving for a few years now, and while I love how thorough it is, there are a few issues we've found with it.
1. No unit/chapter tests included, which became more important to us at Geometry, which we do in grade 9 as part of high school for transcripts.
2. The textbooks are VERY thorough. There is a lot of trimming that needs to happen so that we aren't drowning in math.
The solution we've found is to go thru each chapter for the earlier books and decide which actual problems we want done, and skip the rest.
For Geometry to the end, we've switched to Math-U-See, because the trimming is already done, and there are tests already written and ready to go.

Language Arts Curriculum

NEW: I've had so many people ask me about teaching kids to read. These are my tips:
First, set a good example! My husband and I both love to read, and our girls frequently see us with books. I think this has made a big difference in our home.
Second, just read lots together.
Our kids LOVED the Elephant & Piggie books. To the point where, even now, we still frequently get these books from the library. They're just hilarious! Even we as the parents would laugh and laugh as we read these with our kids. And so good for sight words ;)

For language arts, we use The Good and The Beautiful.

Before we found TGTB, we tried a few different resources and hated all of them. When we found The Good and The Beautiful, everything in our homeschool became lovely! The creator of The Good and The Beautiful made her dream curriculum for her children, and then hired more people to improve it. The curriculum itself is colorful and beautiful, and is full of beautiful things. It is also academically rigorous and thorough. You can check out their Level Assessments.

I'd like to shout from the rooftops that TGTB's Language Arts levels 1-5 are FREE to download in their entirety. What you can download as a PDF is the same as what you'd purchase already printed. You are free to print the curriculum yourself, which can save you $ on shipping to Canada. Their Marine Biology science unit is also free to download, and so is their Book List.

We also have really enjoyed TGTB's Handwriting and Creative Writing.

Science

We also use The Good and The Beautiful's Science units. We've loved the suggested read alouds. My kids love the hands on activities. I love that TGTB has started making YouTube videos of the experiments ;)

The science units we've used and loved so far are:

Every year we get through about 3 science units, doing 2-ish lessons per week. I have three girls, so at the beginning of the year, I open a tab for each science unit I'm considering, and then let each of my girls pick one for the year.

The maturation unit is amazing. We've also used a kids book called "Good Pictures, Bad Pictures" to teach kids about pornography, and also a book called My Underpants Rule about safety. We've started opening our school year with the maturation unit and these extra read-alouds for science - two years now and I think doing it at the start of each year has been good.

A tradition in our family has been (we have three girls) that when our girls turn 10, for their birthday, the birthday girl and mom go to a hotel for the weekend for a girls' weekend. We get pedicures, go out for dinner, swim in the hotel pool, watch movies together. And we also take time to read a book about maturation and sexuality, so that the information is coming from mom and not from outside sources. 10 felt young when we started, but as time has gone on, I'm so glad that we started this tradition for 10, because the world is nuts. We also establish a "Mom Daughter Journal" that weekend, which we start together - pages with things like "would you rather" questions, or "favorite things" lists etc, and then also lots of blank pages at the back so that if she ever has a concern, she can write me in the journal and leave it on my pillow, and we can pass it back and forth and communicate that way. When that journal gets filled up, we just start another notebook and keep going 😉 Has been a good extra avenue of communication for both of my older girls as they're getting into their teenage years.

History

I know, I know. We're die hard TGTB fans over here. We also use their History. My girls especially enjoy TGTB's history games—we've done both History 1, 2, and 3 so far. And the read aloud suggestions are fantastic.

If you are wanting to use something more Canadian-focused, my friend Christina has done a lot with Canadian history with her five kids. She's got an incredibly informative YouTube Channel, or you can see her specific playlist about her Canadian Mini Units here

In 2021, we added some basics of economics and principles of freedom using The Tuttle Twins combo pack, which has 12 books written for kids, and accompanying PDFs. The books are based on classic books throughout history, and made great read-alouds while the kids worked on the worksheets.

Phys Ed

I find out the most about activities going on for sports in our area on Facebook. I can't even keep up with all of the opportunities available. There are homeschool gymnastics classes, homeschool soccer groups, homeschool baseball... And if you can't find what you want, some of the best programs have been started by parents... like you ;)

Also, I want to tell you a story. When we first began homeschooling, my husband's aunt (who had homeschooled her now-grown kids) shared the advice that she always started each day with a walk.

I will admit to you that at that time, I felt so frazzled trying to figure out curriculum and how to squeeze everything in into each day, that the idea of something so leisurely as a walk each morning didn't make any sense to me.

Fast forward 4 years later, and we ALWAYS start each day with a walk. Or some kind of exercise inside if it is too cold outside. AND, we often have a dance party at lunch time where each of us picks a song, and the only rule is no sitting still.

Taking the time out to get fresh air and some exercise has made a phenomenal difference in how our day goes—even academically. I highly recommend it ;)

Music

I admit to having a bias (as a music teacher) when it comes to music, but I think it is incredibly important. There are tons of studies that show how impactful music is on brain development. I've already got some thoughts and links here.

My girls each play several instruments. If you are in the Calgary area, I highly recommend the Calgary Homeschool Band. Their rates are fantastic and the instructors are wonderful.

One more note about music. If you're looking for a new teacher, interview a few in person. Bring your aspiring musician with you and let them be part of the process. When my daughter wanted to learn violin, I initially picked out the teacher without giving her any say. This turned out to be a huge mistake; they were not a good fit at all. We eventually said goodbye to that teacher and I picked out several other teachers to interview. I asked around for recommendations and also searched online. My criteria were location, experience, and cost. After that, I brought my daughter with me to the interviews and she got to pick. That helped a lot with helping her feel self-motivated to practice, because she liked her teacher and wanted to please her.