Today I will show you what we are doing in addition to our Catholic Schoolhouse co-op. This curriculum that I have pieced together is whole enough without the co-op and anyone can use it at as a model for their own homeschool, even non Catholics.

I have to be honest about homeschooling, my favorite part may be the curriculum shopping! There is just so much good stuff out there that many people don’t even realize. Even sometimes non-homeschool people will ask me, “How do you just pick a curriculum?” I think many people are unaware of just how BIG the homeschool curriculum market is! There’s so much out there for us to choose from whether it is Christian, Catholic, secular, Charlotte Mason style, classical, etc… To be honest, it can be overwhelming when you have such a large market of materials to search for just the right one but thankfully you can view samples and read reviews online to help you make the best decision.

Since our Catholic faith is the backbone of our curriculum and homeschooling, I start my research with Catholic companies and then from there move to Christian curriculum if I still can’t find what I am looking for. The spine of our curriculum comes from Catholic Schoolhouse, as we are officially now part of a chapter here in Louisiana. We are so excited to be embarking on this journey into a slightly simpler structure and just one day a week of co-op (we were all previously in a two day a week Catholic hybrid).

Catholic Schoolhouse will be providing us with what we need for our Geography, Art, Music, Science, Religion and History. I will be supplementing with some beautiful history picture books that coordinate with our history cards from Catholic Schoolhouse and we will also do some fun science units from The Good and the Beautiful to coordinate with our science. Catholic Schoolhouse provides us with so much - even math and language arts memory work!

Language Arts (4x per week): We are using the Good and the Beautiful, a Christian program, that incorporates some spelling, phonics, geography, reading and writing all into their program. We have dabbled with it before for my second grader and loved it! The program adds in fun games, simple activities and lots of beautiful artwork! We truly love it and actually started it back in April with him. In addition to this, we will use Catholic Heritage spelling book for weekly spelling words/lessons/quizzes.

Math (4x per week): We have previously used Abeka and really enjoyed it, however this time I wanted to try the Good and the Beautiful as I already had the books and it truly is such a beautiful and appealing way of learning. This is a Christian program and there are many beautiful Christian elements to it, as well as fun games, manipulatives and much more. We also have a speed drill book from Rod and Staff with Memoria Press just for simple facts practice. This book is not for every day, but mostly just for Fridays and lighter days where we may not learn new material.

History (2x per week): Our spine is Catholic Schoolhouse Timeline Cards for history for this year. Thankfully I have quite and extensive library of children’s history books (we have way more than this) and we can pair it up for the children to dig deeper into their timeline cards. We are not using any workbooks or any other formal curriculum for history. We will likely do narration/illustration pages to go along with our history readings. My plan is to do this twice per week, but to work on the memory cards daily. *Disclaimer: I may not get through all of these books and that is okay! Also some of them are probably better for my third grader and not my first. It will be short and simple for first grade.

Handwriting and Reading: We LOVE the Dash Into Learning phonics books and we will always use them for extra readers for our children. In addition to their readers, this year my first grader will be using their handwriting curriculum just to perfect that handwriting AND there’s many fun activity pages with the same lovable characters from the Dash books. Make sure to use code themushymommy for 20% off and shop my link!

We will also be doing the storytime treasures set from Memoria Press. These will be fun read aloud that have reading comprehension pages to go along with it! We are actually starting some now before August.

Religion and Science (2x per week): For religion our spine is from Catholic Schoolhouse were we will learn hymns, psalms, touch on topics from the St. Joseph’s Baltimore Catechism and the lives of the saints. In our home, we will be reading bible stories, saint stories and more as usual. In addition to this, we are starting the religion series from Catholic Heritage that my first grader and third grader can complete together. I am loving the artwork within the book and the fun activities for the kids to do with it! We will likely do a less from here twice per week and otherwise just stick to our memory work for CSH and our breakfast bible stories.

Science: The Good and the Beautiful has some amazing science units and we have recently received Birds, Mammals and Weather. It just so happens that this year with CSH, we are study weather and zoo animals - so it’s the perfect combination! While our chapter days at CSH will cover experiments and such, we will do short lessons from these units twice per week as of now. The units are short, around 14 lessons, and can be done at your own pace. We may zoom through them or take our time!

What is your favorite curriculum for little ones or beginner readers?

use code themushymommy at dash

First Grade Curriculum for the Catholic Homeschool

pin us below