2026-2027 school year

HEY PALS! the school year is upon us! not going to lie, i am sort of sad that summer is over bc i genuinely had the BEST summer w my kids - beach days, movie nights, camping trip, cross country flight to see family, regular ol park days - it truly was just so much fun and i'm a little sad to see it go. feel like it went so quickly this year! most of y'all know i partially homeschool my kids - to give you a little backstory, homeschool has been part of my kids' education since my first kid was in TK. we started out at a public charter school that had him in school two days a week, and homeschooled the other three. absolutely loved that situation, forest was there for three years and fern also attended TK there. and then right after we had our fifth baby, i decided i really wanted to try full-time homeschool. i only had two in school, i was really eager to have the freedom to tailor my kids' education to their learning style and their personality, was looking forward to getting to utilize the funding for curriculum and activities, etc. it was honestly a great two yearsandat the same time also became very clear that both my kids and i needed a little something else when it comes to schooling. fast-forward to last fall, my kids got into a very small charter school that has a super sweet community, small classes, wonderful teachers, etc. we'd actually been on the waitlist for awhile and finally they had space for us, so we joined and will be doing the same thing this year! similar setup as the first charter school, my kids are in school twice a week and we homeschool the other three days. at home, we're responsible for language arts (which turns into grammar, writing, spelling, vocabulary, etc.) and math, and they do history/social studies, science, and math at school w their teachers! the classes are very hands-on but also very academic-forward - which is exactly what i wanted for them. i did my best with full-time homeschool and am proud of those two years, but definitely worried they were lacking in certain areas, and the academic structure that this school requires is exactly what we all needed. all that to say - we've found what seems to be a perfect situation for our family, and this year i have FOUR KIDS in school (idk how we got here already), and so here's what we're working with, curriculum-wise (bc i do always get asked about this lol). (everything islinked hereby grade, with more of an explanation below :) (and like i previously mentioned, we don't do science or history at home so those won't be mentioned, but i do have recommendations for that, if you're curious!) my oldest is in6ththis year! i remember 6th grade so vividly, it was one of my favorite year of school. and technically he is in middle school - wild. and my daughters are in3rd,1st, andkinder!forgrammar, we use JacKris - kinda bare bones but gets the job done. this is what the school recommends, so we use it! (for my 6th grader and 3rd grader)forspelling,we use Zaner Bloser spelling. this is what we've used since our first year of full-time homeschool and we've loved it! includes vocab/word study and reading comprehension in each week. (you could probably get away with just the student workbook, but personally i do prefer to use the teacher guide along with it). (for my 6th grader and 3rd grader)