NEW Sixth Grade Language Arts Homeschool Curriculum Picks
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I know I say this every year, but I can’t believe how fast this year has gone. It feels like just yesterday that I was writing about my 5th grade homeschool curriculum choices for my twin girls!
But here we are. I actually have ALL of our new sixth grade homeschool curriculum picked out and sitting in my office, and I’m PUMPED to dig into it! I’m really excited about all of my choices, and think they’re going to be great fits for us.
Today, I’m going to be talking about just the 6th grade Language Arts curriculum we’ll be using. So if you are trying to figure out what to use for YOUR sixth graders (or want to get some ideas for future homeschooling years), read on.
Next year, I am going to be using My Father’s World Creation to the Greeks as our “spine” curriculum, and this includes history, science, art, and Bible. At the level my girls are at, you are required to supplement your own Language Arts and Math.
What Do I Need to Include for Language Arts?
To know for sure what you should be teaching as part of your homeschool Language Arts curriculum, check your homeschool state requirements. In our state (Missouri), we are required to teach a total number of “hours”, and “Reading” and “Language Arts” are two of the core subjects we must teach.
Language Arts, then, can encompass a lot of things. But a well-rounded homeschool language arts program typically aims to develop reading and writing skills, and also speaking and listening. So you’ll be teaching reading and reading comprehension, spelling, grammar, handwriting, and doing a few literature studies to name the main things.
What Did I Use This Past Year?
This past year, my girls used Learning Language Arts Through Literature (the Purple Book).
There were things I liked and disliked about it. Overall it wasn’t terrible; I absolutely loved that it was an integrated approach to learning Language Arts. This was a big time-saver for us as opposed to our previous BJU Press Curriculum (which I absolutely loved as well, but it was fairly time consuming for my girls, and I found that we needed to take a different approach to spelling specifically).
But I did ultimately decide that we needed a little bit more writing instruction, and still a different approach to spelling, than this curriculum provided…hence the changes I’ll talk about below!
If you’re curious to learn even more about THIS particular curriculum, check out my Learning Language Arts Through Literature Review.
6th Grade Homeschool Language Arts Curriculum Picks
For Language Arts this year, we are using a curriculum for Spelling, one for Writing, and one for Literature. In sharing, I hope to encourage you to maybe check out some of these resources if you haven’t heard about them, and maybe find something that will be a great fit for you!
6th Grade Spelling Curriculum
I FINALLY feel that we are making progress with improvements in spelling. I think I stuck with the “wrong” curriculums for too long, maybe out of comfort or habit, or because I thought that things would eventually “click”.
Well, this year we fully committed to returning to All About Spelling. We are currently finishing up All About Spelling Level 2, and we will be using All About Spelling Level 3 this fall.
We are going to be taking this at an easy pace. Realistically, we’ll only fit in about 3 lessons per week, but each lesson might take more than one day (depending on how quickly the kids pick up and learn the concepts). Level 3 has 30 total lessons, so once we do get through these I’ll decide then if we will move on to Level 4 (most likely) or if I need to reevaluate.
I love that All About Spelling is a multi-sensory program, and that it’s very much open-and-go. All of the lessons are scripted out, so prep and planning are a BREEZE for me — that’s much needed in this busy stage of life!
The continual review is really helpful for my girls as well, and like I said, I am already seeing improvements in their spelling and hopeful to continue on an upward trajectory with this.
6th Grade Homeschool Writing Curriculum
This is going to be new to us this year, but after shopping around a little bit, I settled on Essentials in Writing for my girls.
They have a free trial on their website, so you can try out a few lessons to see what they’re like. Basically, lessons include short video lessons that teach a step-by-step approach kids can easily follow and apply. Lots of models and graphic organizers are used, and it’s designed to help kids take that step towards independence in their lessons. This is something we need as my girls get older and are ready for this!
I chose Level 6 for my girls to use this year, and I think the short, daily assignments are going to help keep them engaged and encouraged in their writing.
This curriculum comes with a book for kids to follow along with during their video lessons, an assessment and resource booklet (with tests, posters, and checklists), and also a teacher handbook that outlines the scope of the lessons, gives answer keys, and shows you how to plan things out.
Essentials in Writing also offers a scoring service that I did take advantage of this year. This means we will be able to submit one composition per unit to be graded by their team. My girls will receive feedback and suggestions for improvement from someone else, which I also think is going to be a good thing for us this year. I’m excited to try it out!
6th Grade Homeschool Literature Curriculum
Finally, I wanted to find a good literature curriculum for this year. Essentials in Writing offers a literature curriculum starting in 7th grade (which I’ll be trying for my son this year), but nothing for 6th graders in that regard.
I considered both Not Consumed (I LOVE the concept behind their reading curriculum!), and possibly even using Sonlight readers and kind of making my own curriculum as we went.
But then, one day I was browsing the BJU Press catalog and realized that they were releasing a NEW Literature Curriculum this year for 6th graders. I love BJU Press and after flipping through the curriculum at a local convention, decided this was a coincidence I didn’t want to let pass by.
We will use the Online Video Lessons this year, which is super convenient, AND my girls do love these lesson videos. The BJU Press instructors always do such a great job of keeping their focus, making the material interesting, and teaching from a Biblical worldview.
This curriculum includes a textbook, an activity book, and also 3 books they’ll read during the year:
The BJU Press Homeschool Hub makes it very easy for kids to log in and watch their videos each day and see their scheduled assignments. The video lessons for this curriculum are about 15 minutes on average. Typically during a lesson, the teacher will teach the new material, any new vocabulary, and go over the big picture of the lesson. They will have the kids pause the video so they can read a certain number of pages from the textbook, and then they come back to the video and go over key points. At the end, there is an assignment in the activity book.
I’m definitely looking forward to giving this on a try this year!
Additional 6th Grade Curriculum
In case you’re curious, here’s what else I’m using for my 6th graders in our homeschool this fall:
- My Father’s World Creation to the Greeks
- 2nd Form Latin
- CTCMath
- Science in the Beginning
- Basics for a Biblical Worldview
We also use World Watch News, Typing.com, and attend Bible Study Fellowship and a homeschool co-op for a Drama class (and usually one other “elective”-type class). My 6th graders also take music lessons and play sports, so we don’t include any other formal music or PE or anything like that right now in our curriculum choices.
Other Curriculum Picks
If you’re interested in learning about what I’m doing with my 7th grader and my Kindergartner next year, I do have a couple of videos talking about my curriculum choices for them:
7th Grade Homeschool Curriculum Choices
Kindergarten Curriculum Choices
Final Thoughts
Sixth grade. It feels like it should be a big “leap” into the middle school years…but it’s really not so bad. We’ll be working on a little more independence during lessons, adding just a *tad* more responsibility to the workload, but other than that, not much is changing around here!
I hope you enjoyed reading about my 6th grade Language Arts choices for our upcoming homeschool year (I know I’m excited about them!). If you have any questions about anything, I’d love to chat — leave them in the comments below.
Related Posts
- Why Homeschool Hall is the Last Homeschooling Tracker You’ll Need
- Effortlessly Homeschool Pre-K with My Father’s World Preschool Curriculum
- Homeschool Planet: Is This Online Homeschool Planner Right For You?
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Your curriculum picks are amazing! AAS is on my shortlist to try for next year.