5 Curriculum Changes I Am Making After the First Month of Homeschooling

The Short Version

Homeschooling is going great! 

I love it, and I am learning so much alongside him every day.

But after our first month, I noticed a few things that weren't quite working for either of us.

So we're making some changes.

READING: UFLI → All About Reading Level 2 + All About Spelling Level 1

HISTORY: Power of the People → Curiosity Chronicles: Ancient Times

LANGUAGE ARTS: A combination of Brave Writer, Hearth & Story, and The Writing Revolution 2.0

MATH: Math With Confidence Grade 4 → Math With Confidence Grade 3

ADD: World Geography from Mint & Bloom

WAIT: Social-Emotional Learning + Morning Basket — These were simply too much. Let's figure out the big stuff first.

SAME: Campfire Curriculum for Science. We're finishing up our volcano unit and then moving on to meteorology.

The Detailed Version

We did it.

My 5th-grade son and I completed our first month of homeschooling, and oh my goodness, it has been so much fun.

There have been a few tears (mostly from me wondering if I can actually do this), but mostly there has been fun, intentional, curious, unbound learning.

If you're new here, I decided over the summer to homeschool my 11-year-old neurodivergent son, who has ADHD, dyslexia, and mild autism, after four years of an unproductive IEP, social struggles, and growing low self-esteem.

I had never homeschooled before and, quite frankly, never wanted to homeschool my children.

I work part-time as a Licensed Professional Counselor in my own private practice, so I am fortunate enough to have the flexibility to make homeschooling work. But that doesn't mean I came into this knowing what I was doing.

And after our first month, I've already learned a lot.

The Things I Noticed

After the first few weeks, I noticed several themes coming up — for both my son and me.

1. He keeps noticing how different home is from school.

My son has made continuous comments about how different it feels to be at school versus being at home.

He keeps saying how grateful he is that he can get a drink of water, go to the bathroom, use a fidget, take frequent breaks or grab a snack when he needs to.

There has been story after story about having to wait an hour to go to the bathroom, being so thirsty that he couldn't focus because he wasn't allowed to get his water bottle, or trying to work while uncomfortable.

Goodness. This was heartbreaking to hear.

In addition to the school environment being socially, emotionally, and academically overwhelming for him, it sounds like he often had a difficult time taking care of his most basic needs.

On one hand, I cannot imagine being a teacher of 25+ students who all need to go to the bathroom at different times, are thirsty, or are hungry. I have so much empathy for how difficult that must be to manage.

On the other hand, I also understand that for a neurodivergent kid, being thirsty, hungry, uncomfortable, or needing the bathroom can make focus, stamina, and attention disappear very quickly.

One of the biggest gifts of homeschooling so far has been simply allowing him to take care of those needs without them becoming a battle.

2. I keep wanting to teach what I think he should learn.

The second theme that kept coming up was my desire to push what I think we should learn instead of really acknowledging what he wants to learn.

This came up this week with both history and language arts.

One of the most beautiful aspects of homeschooling is the freedom to be child-led or interest-led. I'm still learning how to actually embrace that freedom instead of recreating school at home.

Apparently, I need some deschooling too.

3. I chose a LOT of parent-led curriculum.

The third thing I noticed is that almost all of the curriculum I chose is parent-led.

And, quite frankly, it is exhausting.

Math, reading, language arts, history, science, art, and social-emotional learning all depend on me reading aloud and then facilitating or teaching a lesson, discussion, or activity.

I'm confident my stamina will increase as I get more comfortable with homeschooling, but by the end of the first few weeks I overwhelmed, to say the least.

The feeling was very similar to starting a new job—which, I suppose, is exactly what this is.

I was somewhat aware that everything was parent-led when I selected our curriculum, but my thought was that we would simply spread everything out.

We would do reading and math every day, and then he would choose one of the other subjects—history, science, art, or social-emotional learning—to work on.

It made sense in theory.

But this month confirmed that it is probably still too much for me to facilitate, even as my capacity and my son's capacity increase.

4. I selected way too much.

I had read in homeschooling books and heard in Facebook groups that this might happen.

Apparently, homeschool moms get excited about curriculum.

Well... I definitely got excited.

I wanted to learn about all of these subjects, too.

I wanted to do the history. And the geography. And the science. And the literature. And the art.

And all the fun projects.

The problem is that there are only so many hours in the day, and homeschooling isn't just about the amount of curriculum on the shelf. It's about the amount of energy it takes to actually facilitate it.

So we're simplifying.

5. I am slightly obsessed with middle grade novels nonfiction books

My new hobby is researching homeschool curriculum language arts reading list and purchasing used middle grade novels from thrift stores. I have. Goodwill next to my house where I can get 6 books (hardcover or softcover) for $10.00. I have found so many incredible novels and built up a fantastic little library that will provide us with a great reading selection for the next several years.

Discovering my love for middle grade novels has been like discovering the Harry Potter series all over aagin.

What We're Going to Experiment With Changing

Reading

My initial plan was to use UFLI for reading. I noticed pretty quickly that it was moving at too fast of a pace for my son.

We needed to slow down and spend more time on certain phonemic concepts.

He was getting frustrated and starting to feel like he couldn't do it.

That was a major clue that we needed something slower, with more review and repetition.

I'm also not going to lie: without any formal training in UFLI, I was struggling with not having a scripted curriculum.

I've heard from basically everyone on the internet that All About Reading is one of the most recommended reading curricula for struggling and dyslexic readers, but I worried it would be too babyish for my 11-year-old.

I decided to give it a try.

Thanks to my local homeschool curriculum library, we were able to start in the last third of Level 1 and we are almost finished with it. Most of what we did using the last part of level 1 was a review, but I could tell he was not ready to jump right in to level 2.

When he completes level 1 we will move onto All About Reading Level 2 and add All About Spelling Level 1. I think adding the spelling will be fantastic, becuase it is a review and will continue to solidify the concepts from level 1 reading.

So far, he likes most of the stories in the readers.

Some of them are a little strange, but that's simply because they are trying to teach a very specific phonics concept that requires certain words.

He's also just started attending a co-op two days per week, so we're going to do a page or two of Explode the Code on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for additional review since we won't be doing an All About Reading lesson those days.

I just received Explode the Code Levels 3 and 4 in the mail, and I'm excited to have something he can work on more independently that will reinforce what he's learning.

For now, we're going to slow down, focus on building confidence, and keep moving forward one skill at a time.

History

We switched to Curiosity Chronicles: Ancient Times instead of Power of the People from Mint & Bloom.

Our first Power of the People lesson largely went over my son's head.

I don't expect him to catch everything, but the lesson was also emotionally heavy.

We were talking about Black Lives Matter, which is a subject he is genuinely interested in, but it ended up being a lot for my sensitive learner.

I love the book and the curriculum, but I think it is simply too intense for him right now.

I'm going to save it for a later year.

Also, my brain needs history in order.

So I decided to start at the beginning with ancient history.

I bought the audiobook version of Curiosity Chronicles so I don't have to read it aloud to him.

Then we complete some notebooking for the week, add to our timeline, and do the occasional Minecraft build.

It's already feeling much more manageable.

Language Arts

This subject is very much a work in progress. Langauge arts is very overwhelming because it includes so many important components.

Reading

Writing

Spelling

Grammer

Literature

I have basically arrived at wanting to create my own dyslexia friendly upper elementary, middle and high school curriculum. (So stay tuned!)

I purchased both Hearth & Story Grade 3 Language Arts and Brave Writer Dart novel studies for language arts, and I'm still figuring out how I want to use them. I also purchased a novel study from Lithouse Learning and Torchlight Level 1.

We're experimenting with elements from the Brave Writer Darts, and we're planning to do a Hearth & Story novel study on The Umbrella Maker's Son when we get to our meteorology unit for science. I also love the format of Lithouse Learning becuase the creator uses The Writing Revolution 2.0 by Judith C. Hochman & Natalie Wexler. I recently purchased this book and began creating my own novel study components.

I love having a solid, research-backed process for teaching sentences, paragraphs, and eventually essays.

Instead of trying to make him complete a separate writing program every day, I'm going to use The Writing Revolution as a framework and incorporate those skills into our literature studies.

My hope is that we can read good books, talk about them, learn a little grammar and writing along the way, and actually write about things he is interested in.

This feels much more natural to me than adding yet another subject to our homeschool day.

Lastly, I'm changing our read-aloud book list on a weekly basis but have landed on the following books.

Nadia Knox and the Eye of Zinnia by Jessica McDougle (We've already completed this one and it was 4 out of 5 stars)

It is about a girl with antropologist parents travel to Africa to find a tribe that has never been found. It explores themes of culture and ethics. I loved the setting and it took me back to taking anthropology classes in college. I thought it brought some though provocking discussions about culture and the issues with our modern world.

Nim's Island by Wendy Orr (Dart) (We are reading this right now. It's so cute!)

Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt(DIY!) (This is about a girl who has dyslexia! I'm currently prereading it and it is so good!)

Wishtree by Katherine Applegate (Lithouse Learning)

Turtles of Oman by Naomi Shihab Nye (Dart)

Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi (DIY!)

My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George (DIY!)

All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team by Christina Soontornvat (DIY!)

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate (Dart)

The Umbrella Maker's Son by Katrina Leno(Hearth & Story)

This list will probably change tomorrow, as I continue to preread them first and find new ideas on the daily. hope with these novels is to provide great stories, diverse perspectives, cultural knowledge and some expsoure to classic literature. I will keep you all posted as the year goes on.

Do you have a middle grade novel you love for read aloud?? Please let me know! I would love to hear!

Math

For math, I initially chose Math With Confidence Grade 4, but I quickly realized we needed to go back and review some concepts that he likely learned this last year, but I'm not sure.

Division and fractions were two concepts I noticed right away needed review.

So I purchased Math With Confidence Grade 3 instead.

So far, I love how this curriculum provides a step-by-step manual for me as the teacher because math is definitely my weakest subject.

My son has also enjoyed the colorful student workbook, especially the games.

We're jumping around a little bit in Grade 3 based on what he already knows and what he needs to work on.

We just completed a unit on fractions, and we'll continue filling in the gaps as we go.

I'm learning that there is no reason we have to move through a curriculum in a perfectly linear fashion.

We can teach what he needs.

Geography

This one was a surprise.

I decided to add World Geography from Mint & Bloom to our weekly rotation.

I purchased this curriculum when it was first released on August 1, but initially decided I wasn't going to use it.

After a few weeks, I realized there was a major geography gap in my son's knowledge.

We were constantly talking about where other countries were located when discussing our read-alouds, science, and history.

So I decided to add the world geography curriculum.

Interestingly, it could also very much be considered an earth science course.

Our first unit has been on volcanoes, and then we're moving on to weather, so it all ties together really nicely.

In the World Geography curriculum, we look at a feature of the Earth each week, watch videos about it, do some notebooking, and then learn about an animal and do map work.

It's a lot to do in one week and is intended to be spread throughout the week, but we're doing a lesson over a day or two and keeping it pretty relaxed.

I also purchased a few world maps and a world geography puzzle, and I'm planning to get a game called Trekking the World that we can play together throughout the year.

This is one of the additions I'm really excited about.

What We're Putting on Hold

There are also a couple of things we're not adding right now.

Social-Emotional Learning

I decided to put our social emotional learning curriculum on hold. It all feels like too much when I am just trying to get the basics in on a weekly basis.

We're working on emotional regulation as well as expressing emotions at home. My son also just started with a therapist who speicalizes in neurodiversity after taking a break for several years.

Morning Basket

I really wanted to be a morning basket homeschool mom.

I had visions of beautiful books, poetry, music, nature study, and meaningful conversations over breakfast.

The reality? We don't need another thing to do. So the morning basket is going on the shelf for now. Maybe later this year we can revisit the idea.

The Things That Are Staying

Science

We're sticking with Campfire Curriculums for Science.

We're currently finishing up our volcano unit and then moving into meteorology.

I love having science be something we can explore together without feeling like we're racing through a textbook.

And honestly, that's what I'm trying to remember about this entire homeschool experience.

We don't have to do everything.

We don't have to recreate school at home.

We don't have to finish every curriculum we buy.

We have time.

Subscription-Based Extras

One thing I decided to add that has actually been a huge success is a little bit of independent learning.

We have an iBrick subscription that gives him a new LEGO build every week connected to some kind of physics or science concept.

He also gets a KiwiCo engineering box every month.

Last month he made a lock box, and this month he made an actual pinball machine.

It was amazing.

And the best part?

He can do these hands on learning activities on his own.

I don't have to read the lesson, facilitate a discussion, or teach a concept.

He gets to build, experiment, problem-solve, and learn independently.

That has been really good for both of us.

One Month In

If there's one thing I'm learning after our first month, it's that homeschooling isn't about finding the perfect curriculum.

It's about paying attention.

Paying attention to what my son is telling me.

Paying attention to when he is frustrated.

Paying attention to what makes him light up.

Paying attention to what is draining both of us.

And then being willing to change course.

That's probably the biggest difference between homeschooling and the school experience we've had.

We can change course.

We can slow down.

We can go back.

We can skip something.

We can follow an interest.

We can spend an entire morning pursuing thrift stores for books.

We can learn in a way that actually works for his brain.

And maybe that's what this whole Unbound Learning thing is really about.

How is your first mont of homeschool going? What are you loving? What are you changing? I would love to hear!