Well, big news over here: after years of attending our local school, one of my kiddos has transitioned back to homeschooling. Back when schools shut down, we used a local charter homeschool program which provides support and a stipend to cover costs for 1st grade. You can read all about our 1st grade homeschool experience in this post.
After a lot of thought and conversations, we’ve decided to go back to Visions for 5th grade. I know that homeschooling can be a controversial subject and people have polarizing ideas on it. For us, this was really what our son wanted and what we think is the best fit for him right now. So, since this is life right now, I thought it’d be fun to share a great collection of ideas and supplies that we are trying out this year for 5th grade. I did a ton of research when making selections and included my son in the decision making process.
But, I know all about best laid plans – so I’m prepared to revise, try something else, pivot, until we find what works. I do have a teaching background and taught in the public school system for ten years prior to having him. I have my single subject ELA credential (still active – hooray!) and a masters degree in teaching and educational psychology. I think I had the most fun picking out his language arts curriculum – for pretty obvious reasons.
I’m going to share everything we’ve picked so far and I’ll share more soon about how everything is going. His desk area is a work in progress and I’ll share more as it comes together. All of the furniture and the lightup pencil light are from IKEA.
Our Favorite School Supplies:
It’s so important to set up a dedicated work space and have fun picking out new school supplies. We went shopping together at IKEA so he could pick his desk, chair, and some fun desk decor and built it together. It helped build anticipation and excitement for what the new school year will bring and ease the transition. We also found some great supplies, and he loved getting whatever he wanted now that we didn’t have to follow a teacher’s list.
- #2 Mechanical Pencils – These have thicker lead for less breakage and a wide pencil to grip.
- Erasable Pens – These are not the smearing erasable pens of our youth, folks! These are fantastic!
- Erasable Highlighters – Did you know this was a thing? I didn’t! These are so cool!
- 3×3 Sticky Notes – Got a whole box of these because they’re so handy!
- Scented Stickers – These scratch and sniff stickers are awesome! All completed work gets a sticker. It’s surprisingly motivating for kids and the cute designs and delicious scents add extra incentive to earn them!
- Lightsaber Pens – Come on, these are just too cool.
- Clickable Markers – Amazing. He says they’re his favorite markers of all time. They are very cool. And, I love that there’s no caps to fish off the floor or dried out markers.
- Smiling Timer – This smiling timer is perfect for tracking timed activities or even using for less preferred activities. Also cuts back on anxiety from not knowing how much longer you have.
Reading/Language Arts:
For literature, reading comprehension and other similar standards, we’re doing the Lightning Literature Grade 5 full year curriculum for most of this. I really love novel based units. I prefer this to lots of individual short stories. I also liked the books in this collection, compared to some other novel based units that I looked at. There was only one missing that I really wanted to do, so I bought the book Wonder and comprehension activities I found on Etsy separately and we are starting the year with it. Here are the books included in the 5th grade Lightning Literature curriculum:
5th grade Lightning Literature books
I also really liked this 5th grade novel based literature unit. It had all the books I was looking for.
I think it’s one of the best books for 5th graders. The protagonist, Auggie, is going into 5th grade and has had many facial surgeries to correct facial abnormalities he was born with. It’s a fantastic book for teaching about differences and being kind.
For deeper dives into grammar, weekly spelling, and writing, I’m using the workbooks by Jack Kris.The books break everything down by day and they’re printed and ready to use in sprial bound notebooks. The activities are short, focused, and easy to understand. So far, we are happy with it.
Math:
For math, we looked at several different curriculums before making a choice. I really wanted to go with Beast Academy math, but after a few years in public school, we needed to go with something more familiar or similar in style to what was used there. OpenUp ended up being the choice and so far, we are enjoying the hands on activities and math discussions. Its a free curriculum online, but you can’t click any of the answers. So, I ordered the workbooks – they’re very affordable – as a way to keep track of his progress.
We added this cube set for the volume unit. The cubes are great and we love the little storage container it comes in, too.
Also, love these flash cards for math facts. We’ve had them since he was in 1st grade and they’re still going strong. Really well made and love the boxes they come in.
I’m a fan of game based learning whenever possible, so I also grabbed these decimal and fraction war card games .
I still have a bunch of math games we bought for 1st grade and shared all about them. Check out this post on math games if you’re looking for more ideas.
Science:
I really prefer to do hands on science, but with the amount of standards we need to cover, it isn’t going to be possible. So, we’ll do a mashup of different things, making sure to slow down in units where he really loves it and wants to do more with it.
For the base curriculum, we got the Studies Weekly newspapers. It’s very easy to use. There’s one newspaper for each week with one piece to read a day. Corresponding worksheets and activity ideas are in the teacher’s guide. I put the teacher’s guide in a 3-inch, 3 ring binder. Plus, you get a free online account where you can access everything and easily print worksheets. I’ve been printing a week at a time.
Generation Genius – We also got a subscription to Generation Genius. It’s a really fun program with videos that show experiments, short and interesting articles, and even built-in assessments. I’m hoping to use this as inspiration for some science experiments and activities we can do.
For younger kid, check out Mystery Doug. We used it for 1st grade and it was a huge hit. Science can be so much fun, but a little scary for teachers/parents because of the work involved in setting up experiments or activities. Mystery Doug really simplifies it and it was super easy and quick to set up the activities. Definitely recommend.
Social Studies:
5th grade social studies is the history of California, as well as United States history, from the colonization of America to the 20th century. There’s a lot of great topics in there that I’m excited to get into with him.
For the core curriculum, we are using Studies Weekly for this, too. The lessons are quick enough where I think we can condense a couple days into one day, which will free up some time on other days for electives.
We will also do expansion activities for units he’s particularly interested in and because this is an election year, we’ll get to watch some of it in real time. I really liked these history activity boxes by History Unboxed.
PE:
For physical education, we have a few different activities we’re going to do. We’re lucky to live in California, where it’s nice 300 days a year, so going outside is always an option to ride a scooter, a bike, walk the dogs, etc. Also, we are adding a few more things:
Rebounding – YouTube kids has great rebounder workouts. Rebounding has been shown to be very effective for supporting our lymphatic systems in properly draining. Also, rebounding can help children develop their body awareness, vision, visual-motor skills, hearing, and auditory-motor skills. It can also help them improve their balance, coordination, and motor skills. Rebounding is a weight-bearing exercise that can burn calories, strengthen bones, and improve endurance. It’s especially helpful for neurodivergent kids, since lymphatic drainage and proprioception are two areas where these kiddos need more support.
Swimming – We love our pool! Swimming for just 20-30 minutes is a great workout.
Pickleball – We love close to some new courts and we were gifted a great pickleball set. I bought some extra balls and when it cools down, we’ll be hitting the court for some exercise!
Hiveclass.co – A great resource for PE as well
Electives:
We are excited to incorporate a lot of fun electives/extracurricular activities. School is so exhausting for some kiddos that they just don’t have the ability to do these things after a long school day. Now that school is less overwhelming, I’m looking forward to adding these enrichment activities back.
Piano – He did piano a couple years ago and then stopped for awhile to focus on school. Now that school is less time consuming, he’s going to start back up again. I taught piano for a long time, so I’ll be teaching him. He’s worked with a teacher in the past and he does better with me, so we’re going to try it out.
Coding – He’s been in coding classes for over a year and he’ll be continuing to go once a week. His goal is to eventually be able to code apps he can sell in the iTunes store!
Art – Occasional art projects will be fun! I love the idea of following a painting video or doing a craft box.
Chess – He’s become obsessed with playing chess! I picked up this chess teacher set. The pieces are marked with what they can do. Chess.com has a ton of free resources and kids can play Ai bots on there. Also, he loves watching GothamChess – a YouTube channel by international chess player and former tutor. He taught a lot of kids pre-pandemic, so he is able to explain what he’s doing in a way that kids can understand. Very, very quickly, my son got better than me and I have no hope when I play him now. There’s a free chess club at our local library and I’m hoping to take him to that in the future.
Karate – Still discussing this. But I do want to incorporate some kind of group, physical activity.
Friday Fun Day:
Our big plan is to make Friday a fun day, which means finishing up school work early so we have enough time to go to a library or bookstore, get some books for the week, and then go to lunch. It’s something we both really love to do and looking forward to it each week gives us both motivation to stay on track. There are a lot of little libraries and bookstores in our area, so we’ve already been mixing it up, visiting new ones, and looking for our favorites. He averages a book a day right now, so keeping up with that takes effort. I don’t want to buy all of the books, so we find as much as we can at local libraries and buy the ones we can’t find. Last week we found this little indie book shop that was just packed, floor to ceiling, with used and new books. It was so cozy and we just loved it.
One of the coolest parts of parenting is discovering what your kids are passionate about. I love seeing what makes them come alive. And it’s even more cool when they happen to love something that I love, too, and we can enjoy it together.
Field Trips:
Nothing has been booked yet, but I’m hoping to do some fun field trips. Here’s some ideas we’ve had:
- Crocker Art Museum in Sac
- Visit the capitol building in Sac
- Train museum in Sac
- Visit some of the California missions. I’m thinking of a road trip that takes us from the San Francisco mission down to Southern California. It’ll stop in several beautiful locations where we can hang out for a couple days.
- California Academy of Sciences in SF
- Tech Museum in San Jose
- Visit a farm – future veterinarian here, so I’d love to get him around more animals with hands-on activities
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Whew, that was a lot! I hope that this gives you some ideas for setting up your home classroom, or gathering ideas for 5th grade curriculum. I’ll share more soon as we continue to set up our classroom and get to know all of the materials we’ve selected.
Hoping you and yours are off to a great school year!
Have a fabulous day,
E
