I recently met a young mom who is early in her homeschooling journey, with one kiddo finishing up her Kindergarten year and another baby on the way. After hearing me talk about homeschooling all of my kids “from the beginning,” my new friend asked what advice I—as a seasoned homeschooler—would offer someone who was just starting out.*
I was slightly taken aback by the term “seasoned homeschooler” because in many ways I feel like I am just getting started myself! I haven’t mastered homeschooling by any means, and each year is different as I figure out what works for us and what doesn’t. (And realizing that just because something works for ONE kid does not mean it will work for all four.) But after six years of dedicated homeschooling, I have definitely accumulated an arsenal of resources that are helping make our time learning at home a success.
We wrapped up our sixth year of homeschooling just last week, “graduating” Charleston from 5th grade and Kali and Sully from Kinder. And since we have decided to transition into more of a year-round model, we will be picking up with 1st Grade and 6th Grade in early June. Per usual, I will be sharing a detailed post documenting our curriculum and schedule plans for the school year. Today, though, I thought it would be fun (and hopefully helpful) to share a big list of resources that we’ve utilized over the past six years.
Not everything on this list falls under the traditional umbrella of “homeschooling tool,” but each item has been useful for furthering the education of my children. It’s not an exhaustive list, but I’ve tried to include most of our tried-and-true favorites.
Curriculum Favorites
1. The Good and the Beautiful Everything I’ve seen from this company lives up to the name; it really is very good and exceedingly beautiful. We use the Language Arts, Math, Science, and Handwriting materials and have found the faith-based, open-and-go curriculum to be comprehensive, engaging, and decently rigorous without feeling overwhelming.
2. The Mystery of History After cycling through several history curriculums that weren’t a good fit, we landed on this one that was. Excellent content written from a Biblical worldview and easy to use in a whole-family setting.
3. Foundation World View Perfect for giving kids a comprehensive Christian world view. We have done every curriculum, with Studying the Bible being the most beneficial (I really haven’t found anything else like it). The podcast is also awesome.
4. Institute for Excellence in Writing We started using IEW (specifically this Medeival History-based curriculum) last year with our Classical Conversations Essentials class and I’ve seen great improvements in Charleston’s writing. I’m excited to continue with the US History-based curriculum in our community this year, and if we were doing it on our own we’d do this Bible-Based one!
5. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons This was amazing for teaching Charleston and Sully to read. It wasn’t a good fit for Kali, though, so I can’t claim it will work for every kiddo.
CC Memory Tools (Beyond the Official Classical Conversations Foundations Curriculum)
The best (and probably the only) way to truly engage with the Classical Conversations curriculum is to enroll in a CC community, but these are some resources I would have loved to have my hands on even before we enrolled ourselves.
6. Foundations Memory Work Tutorials App Cycle 2 (which we used last year) and Cycle 3 (will use in the coming year) The app is admittedly pretty clunky, but outside of using the official guide—which is only available to those enrolled in Classical Conversations—this is the best way to access the Foundations content, which includes 24 weeks of memory work across seven subjects (Math, History, Geography, Science, English, Timeline, and Latin).
7. Driven By Grace YouTube Channel Lindsey’s fun songs have been key to helping us master our CC memory work, which we practice daily through games and while out on family walks.
8. Skip Counting Songs Thanks to these fun songs, all three of my little pupils can skip-count through the 15s as well as the squares and cubes! This would have been SO helpful when Charleston was memorizing his multiplication facts in second grade. With the help of these songs, even Kali and Sully can multiply in their heads, even though they are still learning basic addition and subtraction in their formal math lessons.
9. The Presidents Song We used this song to memorize the presidents in just two days!
10. The CC Timeline Song This song helped us memorize 161 key historical events, beginning with ancient empires and landing in the present day.
Tech-Related Resources
11. Simply Piano Not as good as in-person lessons, but it gets the job done.
12. Typsey Charleston has become an excellent typist thanks to this app.
13. World Watch Daily videos that share the news in an age-appropriate context and from a Christian perspective.
14. Art for Kids Hub Fun, easy-to-follow lessons that guide kids in drawing almost anything. Pair with personal art kits. (Each of the kids has a huge box that holds all of their individual arts and crafts supplies.)
15. Adventures in Odyssey Club Membership Membership gets access to more than 1,000 high-quality, entertaining audio dramas that have taught our kids so much about the Bible and living out our faith. We love to listen at mealtimes or while the kids are doing chores, working on crafts, or playing with Legos. I grew up with Odyssey, and a great deal of my own faith was shaped through these programs! It has been fun to pass my love for Odyssey on to my kids.
Educational Books We Use Daily
16. Leap Frog Leap Reader System Kali, who still is not reading on her own, enjoys reading with this system during our family’s independent reading time.
17. CSB Explorer Bible for Kids The best study Bible I’ve found for children. Each of our kids have their own!
18. God’s Big Picture Bible Storybook: 140 Connecting Bible Stories of God’s Faithful Promises We have MANY storybook Bibles, but this one tops the list in terms of engaging prose, faithfulness to Scripture, and attractiveness.
19. Merriam-Webster’s Elementary Dictionary and The Synonym Finder Every young writer needs his or her own dictionary and thesaurus; these are the ones that Charleston uses.
20. Tuttle Twins For teaching government and economics. We love the show as well as the various books, from the graphic novels and adorable board books to the topical picture books, Choose Your Consequence series, and engaging guidebooks for older readers. I am looking forward to using the American History volumes for our History curriculum this school year.
Geography Aids
These items are probably my three favorite things on this whole list!
21. Book of Maps This gorgeous pictorial atlas could be an entire Social Studies and Geography curriculum in itself! We use this book as a launching point for deep-dives into countries we encounter in History and Literature.
22. National Geographic World Wall Map My parents gifted us this map that hangs on our playroom wall. Beautiful AND functional, we use it each morning to practice our geography memory work (using these pointers).
23. LeapFrog Magic Adventures Globe I can’t get over how much my kids have learned from this interactive globe that teaches geography through videos, quizzes, games, and more.
All the Rest of the Good Stuff
24. Hanging File Boxes We have several of these boxes: I use them to organize past work, and each kid has their own box that holds all of their individual books and workbooks for the year. We keep them in a cabinet in the playroom so they are easy to pull out for school time and put away when the school day is over.
25. Melissa & Doug Magnet Calendar All three of my kids learned their seasons, months, and days of the week with this calendar that we still use each day.
26. Every Day’s An Amazing Holiday Wall Calendar This calendar adds a little whimsy to our day. We don’t honor every holiday, but have had a lot of fun with quite a few of them. It hangs in Charleston’s room and they all have fun checking off the days and looking to see what’s ahead.
27. My Reading Adventures Journal for Kids Charleston records all of our read-alouds in this creative journal. I wish I had a record like this one of all of MY childhood reads!
28. American Heritage Girls and Trail Life These Christian scouting organizations have been amazing for teaching our kids life skills and helping us find community among like-minded families.
Bonus List: Stuff for Mom
Guides for Choosing Quality Literature for Our Family:
Book: Honey for a Child’s Heart
Book: The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids
Book: The Redeemed Reader: Cultivating a Child’s Discernment and Imagination Through Truth and Story
Website: Redeemed Reader Book Reviews
Homeschooling Podcasts:
The Christy Faith Show Relatable conversations on education and motherhood.
Everyday Educator Podcast Helpful resource for a CC Newbie.
Homefires Two seasoned homeschoolers share about life as Christian homemakers, home educators, and homesteaders.
If you are a homeschooler—seasoned or otherwise—what advice would YOU offer someone just getting started? What resources would you add to this list?
*Wondering about my answer? It was threefold: the first was to READ, as much as possible! I told her to fill her home with books, make frequent trips to the library, listen to audiobooks in the car, and spend time each day reading aloud together or even side-by-side. (She was fascinated by our daily DEAR time, when our whole family gathers in the living room with our individual books to Drop Everything And Read.) My second piece of advice was to join a homeschooling community. My one big regret of homeschooling is that we did not join our Classical Conversations co-op sooner! And my final recommendation was to begin each day with a walk, preferably combined with some sort of memory work. This habit gets our minds and bodies moving first thing in the morning, introduces some Vitamin D into our systems, and forces us to get up and dressed for the day, which I find is CRUCIAL for keeping homeschool chaos at bay. Some families are great at getting their work done while sleeping in and hanging out in pajamas all day; we have learned from experience that WE ARE NOT THAT FAMILY!
