2nd/3rd Grade Homeschool Curriculum Choices for Orthodox Christian Family

It is the end of May 2025 and we are starting to wind down school and get ready for summer. While we do some "summer school" at my house, we definitely take a break from school and prioritize fun activities and taking care our our small homestead during the summer months. However, I am already thinking about our homeschool curriculum choices for 2nd/3rd grade. Because in mid-August, it will be back to school!

My youngest son (turning 8 in late summer) will be homeschooled for 2nd/3rd grade this upcoming year. His birthday is right near the cut off, so for some subjects I have him in 2nd grade and in others I have him in 3rd grade. In addition to homeschooling, during the year he will be in participating in a ninja warrior class, and taking Suzuki violin.

So in case anyone likes learning about curriculum plans as much as I do, I will share ours below! Doing this each year also helps me get organized and see if there is anything I forgot about!

So here is what we plan to use for my son's 2nd/3rd grade year -

1. Grammar and Writing: Bob Jones English 3

   
   

   We are going to continue with Bob Jones English for one more year. I really like that the program includes all of the writing and grammar needed in one book. I felt that a few of the writing lessons in English 2 were a little confusing and needed some modification in how they were presented, so if that happens in English 3, I will probably switch to Rod and Staff English the following year. Overall though, it worked great. Since I didn't use the teacher's manual much, I ordered the curriculum from the Christian Liberty Press website without the teacher's manual and just a homeschool guide instead.

   
   

2. 

   Spelling: Building Spelling Skills 2 and Spelling by Dictation

   
   

   I like switching between traditional spelling curriculum and dictation. Building Spelling Skills is an inexpensive phonics and spelling rules based curriculum that also has exercises that aid in critical thinking and learning vocabulary as well. I also like mixing in dictation sometimes. (Nov 25 update: I have been doing dictation instead with Poems for Memorization by Milestone Books. They have poems divided by age and some of them are perfect for my son's spelling ability. I tried Spelling Wisdom by Simply Charlotte Mason years ago and that did not work in our house since the poems were so above age and ability level. This poem book is nearly perfect without any "twaddle." Their might be a few that are "too Mennonite/Protestant" or that don't align with Orthodoxy (I haven't read them all) but I haven't run into one yet. As far as finding poems to memorize goes, this book has been my favorite so far, and it's very inexpensive.)

3. 
   

   

3. Math: Christian Light Education Math 3, supplemented with Singapore Dimension Math 3

   We will continue with the traditional program Christian Light Education. It is a spiral program that builds at a good pace and leads to solid arithmetic skills. I am planning to supplement with Singapore Dimensions Math so my son can also have some exposure to that style in case he needs it later. (Updated: Singapore Dimensions Math caused significant tears on day 2 of trying it out and went into the crawl space. Thankfully, I found it for only $5 dollars at a homeschool sale.)

   

4. Reading: Christian Light Education Reading 3

We read novels and living books together, but I still like to use CLE Reading as a formal reading comprehension program. Many of the stories contain moral lessons related to a Bible verse, or historical fiction regarding America history. The guided discussion questions also help my son and I connect, and helps him practice speaking. Sometimes I skip the questions if he does a really thorough job summarizing the story on this own.

5. History Stories for Children by Christian Liberty Press, history read-alouds

   
   

   Instead of a full history curriculum next year, I am going to spend a year on general history stories, read alouds from my shelf, and geography workbooks.

6. Science: Exploring God's Creation 3 and Christian Liberty Nature Reader 3

I am excited to use Exploring God's Creation by Christian Liberty Press for the first time. My son really loves science and this includes some simple science experiments that I don't think will be too hard to do at home. If we finish early enough, we might start Book 3 in the CLP Nature Reader series.

7. Art Study: Come Look with Me, Exploring Art with Children

Come Look with Me is a great series I started using this year. Each layout contains the art piece, guided questions, and a short biography of the artist and sometimes some trivia about the painting. We do this about once a week together. (Just a heads up, every now and then the book series includes some art that might be too abstract/modern for our tastes, but that has led to some good discussions.)

8. Handwriting: Pentime 2 and Pentime 3

9. Critical Thinking: Building Thinking Skills

Every now and then, I have my son do some pages in Building Thinking Skills.

10. Foreign Language: Prima Latina by Memoria Press

This past year, my son used Song School Spanish 1 but would not listen to the songs on the CD because they were "too silly." I told him that if we did Song School Spanish 2, it would be harder and he would have to listen to the songs. So, he decided to start Latin instead! I told him that Prima Latina includes serious prayers instead of silly songs and that seems to be more his style. We'll see!

11. Orthodox Christian Morning Time Curriculum

    
    

We are going to use the Orthodox Christian Morning Time Curriculum (Update November 2025. Now that everyone is back to full time homeschool we can use the Orthodox Christian Morning Time Curriculum again!)

12. Arts/Craft Instruction

We are going to use I Can Do All Things as our Art Curriculum this year. The program comes with DVDs so I think that will be really helpful for my son to have an actual art lesson before he tries it himself.

13. Simply Social

I'm so glad I came across this Social Skills curriculum at a homeschool bookstore. I had never heard of it before, but it's perfect for our needs.

Well that's it! It seems like a lot when it's all written out, but some subjects get done very fast.

Happy homeschooling!