Second / Third Grade Christian Homeschool Curriculum Reviews for 2025-2026
- stirenepress
- 7 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
I can't believe we are more than halfway through the 2025 - 2026 school year! With the snow storm here this weekend, I decided it was a good time to start assessing my curriculum choices for this current year, and thinking about what I might want to change for next year. This year my son has been in 2nd/3rd grade, but next year, he will be in 3rd/4th grade. (My oldest son will be taking most of his 9th grade classes through online providers (whether live or self-paced) except for math! This post is for anyone that enjoys reading curriculum reviews, or about the curriculum picks of others (I know I do!)
MATH
We are using Christian Light Education (CLE) Math again this year. It is working well for my son so I have no plans to change it. CLE includes so much review in the worksheets that I have found that the speed drills and flash card work at the beginning of the lessons are a bit unnecessary. (Though I did include many of those for my older son that had a harder time memorizing math facts.)
LATIN
Last year, my son completed Song School Spanish 1. This year we are getting some Latin exposure with Prima Latina. He really enjoys memorizing the Latin prayers. We tend to do this curriculum for about five to ten minutes most days, rather than a longer lesson once a week, and that has worked well. I would recommend this program to anyone that has children that might find the Song School series "too silly."
SCIENCE
A few months ago, I posted a glowing review of Exploring God's Creation by Christian Liberty Press. While I still really like the curriculum, I tend to want to change up science after the winter break. I have a hard time sticking with a history and science curriculum for the whole year! I also noticed that the lessons in Exploring God's Creation got longer as the year went on and my son was having trouble listening and processing what I was reading. It seems that he needed a change too! The hands-on learning of Common Sense Science was just what he needed to help him focus. Technically, Common Sense Science is not a classical curriculum - it is quite innovative in its education methods - but I think of it as classical education for a kinesthetic learner. The content is very focused on the grammar of science, with focus on facts and vocabulary. The children are told almost exactly what to do and what to write on their lap books/ graphic organizers. My son has always had a interest in anatomy and how the body works, so I ordered a digital unit study on the Human Body by Common Sense Press. With that said, while this is a nice change from what we doing, I haven't really liked the experiments in the curriculum, and the hands-on work is probably more than necessary. As of now, I don't plan to use it again, but it will be a nice change to finish out the year. Sometimes I have to remind myself that this is just his second grade year, and that everything is going great overall with his core subjects!
CRITICAL THINKING AND GEOGRAPHY
We used Building Thinking Skills each day until Christmas. I love the content and ease-of-use of this curriculum. We will pull it out again for summer. We just needed a change so we switched to a Geography workbook for the rest of the year. I discovered Down to Earth Geography at a used bookstore and just loved it. It actually contains a ton of critical thinking within the exercises. I think that geography workbooks are often overlooked by many homeschool moms because they do not fit neatly into the Charlotte Mason or Classical methods. However, I think that geography workbooks are unique in how they require synthesis of information that, in many ways, mimics the sort of thinking required in the business world. They are very practical! Also, this particular series of books was published in 2008 and I have not come across anything questionable yet!
ART
We are still enjoying the I Can Do All Things art curriculum. When I first ordered the curriculum, I didn't realize that the material was supposed to be spread out over three years. Once I figured that out, we started only using the book about twice a week since my son is already practicing the violin each day and working on other handicrafts. I realize he is getting older and developing specific interests, so I'm trying not to overload him with an art lesson if we don't have time, but we still love the book.
SPELLING AND DICTATION
We are using Building Spelling Skills mostly as spelling lists. I give my son the words as a pre-test and if he gets most of them right, we focus on poem dictation for a few days. This seems to be working well! There are some exercises in Building Spelling Skills that are fun, or develop critical thinking or vocabulary skills and we do tend to do those even if we skip most of it.
CURSIVE
This cursive book has taken my son from mastering cursive letters to copying entire paragraphs so I'm very pleased with it! We are almost finished with the book, and will sub in Pentime Cursive 3 for handwriting time.
ENGLISH
Two years ago, I decided to give BJU Press English a try after having mostly used Rod and Staff English and CLE Language Arts. While R&S English and CLE LA worked great for my older son, I knew they would not be good fit for my younger son. He needed a program that did not require too much handwriting (as does Rod & Staff) and had built-in review, but did not spiral too much. BJU Press has been perfect for him! It has mostly been a breeze to use. While it mostly covers the same material as the other programs, I feel that is does so in a more approachable, more interesting way. For the most part, I also love how the writing assignments are structured. I do feel that, so far, it's not quite enough writing practice. For my son's 2nd grade year the amount in the 3rd grade book was fine, but I plan to supplement the writing component next year.
READING
We are trucking along with CLE Reading, however I am not loving it as much as I used to love it. Perhaps it is because I have used the curriculum for so long, or because it's simply not meeting the needs of my younger son. When I started using this curriculum with my older son that has hyperlexia, we used it as a way to connect. My son was about 6 years old and was reading every novel in sight that we would let him read. He no longer wanted me to read to him and that was hard. (He started tolerating me reading to him again at about age 8 or so). He also needed help practicing speech and understanding social situations. This curriculum did so much for him! However, I am finding that my second son, that does not have hyperlexia, would benefit from more time reading actual literature with me. I have been trying to squeeze in reading novels and doing CLE Reading and it's been hard to fit in both. While I love CLE Reading, I may try a different approach next year.
HISTORY
History has been a bit frustrating this year! I started out using a living books curriculum that I designed myself. It was going great until it wasn't. We mostly read the "If You Were" series. We covered the Mayflower, Pilgrims, colonies, Lewis & Clark, and so forth. (After I read, I was having him write three sentences in his history notebook.) Then, my son started to get really bored. It may sound like I caved to him, but I realized I had designed the curriculum myself, and thought that might be the problem, so I purchased Our Star Spangled Story by Notgrass. I thought if I used a textbook that kept things age-appropriate as far as reading comprehension, depth, etc. goes it would work better. Unfortunately, after 14 lessons that was a flop here too. I'm really surprised, too, because it's a very highly rated curriculum. I found that the worksheets were very simple, and did not encourage retention of the information, while the text contained details that seemed completely unnecessary to early elementary students, and that would distract them from grasping the main points of history. I had trouble staying focused on the curriculum, so I can't even imagine how it must have felt to be on the other end of it. I don't want to criticize it further here, because it is a very popular curriculum and so many people love it, it just didn't work for us. We have really enjoyed the two literature choices we have read so far: the book about Benjamin West, the "father" of American painting, and Toliver's Secret. So, I finally pulled out A Child's History of the World and decided we would read through that and do the workbook until the next school year. That is sure to work!
Happy Homeschooling!
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