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Well, we’ve begun a brand new school year and it’s been a minute since I’ve shared our homeschool curriculum choices here on the blog. Around two years ago, I switched our main curriculum from My Father’s World to a more Charlotte Mason curriculum. It has gone well, and today I want to share with you my Charlotte Mason inspired first grade curriculum choices!

Charlotte Mason Inspired First Grade Curriculum Choices

We use the free Catholic Charlotte Mason curriculum Mater Amabilis as the backbone of our curriculum. I love all of the booklists and lesson plans. The team has put so much work into creating the curriculum and it is all available to us at no cost.

While the books for religious education and a few for history are written from a Catholic perspective, many of the books are not. Even if you are not Catholic, I definitely think it is worth checking out some of the book lists.

Morning Time

We will use a morning basket, and my first grader is using our morning menus. This year we are pulling many of our morning time subjects from my Four Seasons Morning Time Menu Bundle. I’ll share more about our family subjects in another post.

Religious Education

Let’s start with what we are using for religious education. We are reading New Testament stories from the New Catholic Picture Bible, and we are doing Catechism with Faith and Life 1. I really love the simplicity of Faith and Life, plus all of the beautiful pictures of Sacred Art.

Phonics/Reading

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

I take a pretty simple approach to teaching reading. I start with Explode the Code’s Get Ready for the Code series, then I move into Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, along with the rest of the Explode the Code series. This year I plan to add in Bob books, and we also use Reading Eggs to supplement. Here’s a more detailed post on how I teach reading.

Literature

We are learning so many beautiful tales and stories this year! We are reading Aesop’s Fables, English Fairy Tales, American Tall Tales, and we will probably add in some of the Blue Fairy Book.

Math

I made a last minute decision to go with Math with Confidence this year for my first grader. I heard so many wonderful things about it, and decided I really wanted to give it a try.

History

So, I am doing something interesting for history. We are using some of the U.S. history content from My Father’s World for all of my younger kids. My first grader will participate in these lessons with us.

Geography

We are using Saints Around the World for both our saint reading and our world geography. I purchased some start stickers for him to put on a world map whenever we read about a saint.

Science

While I know my first grader will sit in on science with my older kids, I am also going to continue reading to him from the Berenstain Bears Big Book of Nature. He loves this book and we will be doing lots of nature study.

Handwriting

I decided to switch to Handwriting without Tears. My first grader is in intensive speech and occupational therapy and this program was recommended for him.

Notebooking

I am so excited about our plans for notebooking this year. I am using Schoolnest’s notebooks. Each of my younger children have a notebook that correlates for their grade for language arts and copywork, plus a science and history notebook that I plan for them to use for several years.