Bilingual Homeschool Curriculum Choices 2024-2025: 5th Grade, 3rd Grade, Jr. Kindergarten

Here we are, ending the month of February, and I’m just rolling in with my curriculum choices now, but there’s no shame in this game! Although my kids generally move up a grade each August, we school year-round and always have, so I’m not too worried about posting this in the late winter. Hopefully, it might help some early bird moms plan their homeschool curricula for next year!

This is my first year teaching all three of my sons (although my youngest is only in “junior kindergarten”). When choosing curriculum, my priorities are:

To do as many subjects together as possible, in order to foster a family culture of meaningful discussion and shared experiences of truth, goodness, and beauty… and to save my sanity.
To continue to pursue as many subjects as possible in Spanish, especially since my oldest son will “age out” of most of our Spanish-language curricula next year.
To keep using high quality resources for skill-based subjects. Basic skills mastery is really my focus for the elementary years, so I have chosen rather teacher-intensive curricula for skill-based subjects like math.

Family Subjects

Literature
This is a family subject that we do bilingually. For English literature and grammar instruction, we use English Lessons Through Literature, which I am very happy with, having used it now for over a year. After we read two books from the ELTL curriculum, we pause and read a book in Spanish. This year, we’re working our way through Roald Dahl’s books (translated into Spanish), and will also read Pinocchio and probably some Plutarch in Spanish. I make our own copywork from these books, but it’s mostly for handwriting practice at this point. We haven’t delved into writing in Spanish beyond regular oral narrations–I’m still figuring that out. My kids also have assigned independent reading (in both languages) for about an hour/day.

We also memorize poetry as a family using IEW’s Linguistic Development Through Poetry Memorization, which my children absolutely adore. I am so grateful to Andrew Pudewa for that resource; it is the perfect collection of poetry and speeches for young people (especially boys). I’ve also made my own collection of Spanish poetry that we’re memorizing, emphasizing my favorite poets and very kinesthetic poems (again, it’s all boys here).

In the summers, we always pick a Shakespeare play to learn. Last summer, we had a lot of fun reading through and acting out Macbeth as a family, using Macbeth for Children; this year, we plan to join with friends to learn and perform The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.

Science
This is our third year using Mystery Science, which is available entirely in Spanish. We choose units to complete according to my kids’ interests and do the experiments together. Even with the 5-year-old in the mix, we’re able to make it work. I especially appreciate that the experiments of Mystery Science are designed to encourage conversation and critical thinking–so we get lots of Spanish practice in while we’re doing them!

History
This is another subject that we do all together. We’ve just finished the fourth Story of the World volume (Modern History) and will restart our history cycle in March. I’ll repeat Story of the World again, adding in supplementary work (outside readings and narrations) for my oldest, and doing some activities from the activity book.

Piano
Three of us are studying piano with Hoffman Academy this year: myself and my two youngest sons. We all love Mr. Hoffman!

Architecture
As part of my (very unique) high school education, I had to take a number of classes in architectural drafting. At one point, I even got certified for the job! It’s been a long time, but since we’re studying the ancients this year, I thought it would be fun to go through this architecture for kids workbook as we learn about the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and other skilled builders of history. We’re a few lessons in and so far, my kids are really enjoying it, particularly the hands-on projects. We’re also pulling in from our collection of David Macaulay books and DK Visual Encyclopedias, as appropriate.

Government
My husband has spent the year leading our kids through For Which We Stand, a primer on American government. As a result, my five-year-old can tell you the three branches of government and give a pretty good explanation of how the electoral college works. I would say it’s been a success!

Christian Education
We read from the Bible in Spanish each morning and have also enjoyed a few devotionals in Spanish. After finishing Louie Giglio’s Indescriptible, we’re about to dive into his new devotional on God and science, ¡Cuan grande es nuestro Dios!

I have yet to find great Scripture memorization tools in Spanish, so we use English language songs from The Harrow Family to learn verses and larger chunks of Scripture.

Individual Subjects

Reading and Spelling
We’re using Logic of English for the Junior Kindergartener, because I really like their method of teaching encoding with decoding AND I like teaching cursive first.

For spelling, I’m teaching my second-born with All About Spelling and my oldest with Barton Reading and Spelling. We also use TTRS to teach touch-typing to my oldest.

Math
After five happy years with RightStart Math, I abandoned this curriculum for my oldest in the middle of Level E–it was no longer meeting his needs or mine. We switched to BJU math and everybody is happier.

The younger two are still in RightStart, which I supplement with some Beast Academy puzzles for the 8-year-old. We also use the games from Kate Snow’s Facts That Stick books to practice math facts–I can’t recommend them more highly!

That’s it—I hope that you enjoyed reading what we’re using this year! I am simply grateful for the chance to be with my kids, teaching and learning with them all day, and for the myriad blessings that homeschooling has brought us thus far.

If you’d like to take a look at our bilingual curriculum choices for past years, you can find those here: