My Favorite Homeschool Curriculum Finds of the 2025-2026 School Year

It's nearly the middle of the school year and I've been happy with most of our curriculum picks so far this year. I'll post a more in-depth review of certain curriculum items later this year. For now, I wanted to share my favorite new curriculum finds of this 2025-2026 school year.

The first is Zealous for God by Demetrios L. Potopoulous, published by New Rome Press. This book is perfect for families that want to continue studying Old Testament Bible Stories, but have older children that are ready to move away from typical "Children's Bibles." Zealous for God covers all of the typical Genesis Bible stories from "Adam and Eve" to the stories of Joseph and his brothers, but ends each section with difficult , yet common, questions about the passage, with answers and explanations. (For example, many people have questions about the story of Abraham and his son Isaac, and this book will help you through those difficult questions!) This book has been a perfect fit for my 8 and 13 year old sons this year. We don't read this book every day, since we mix in various lives of the saints according to the calendar year, as well as use the Orthodox Christian Morning Time Curriculum.

Another favorite find of mine this year is the I Can Do All Things art curriculum by Barry Stebbing. I would consider this the "Life of Fred"of art. It's just as quirky, and breaks down learning art down into steps that are easy for my son to understand. This curriculum comes with videos on DVD, but I will say that my son did not enjoy those and preferred reading the directions himself (sometimes needing my help to interpret them.) I thought the videos were great, however, and I think many kids would find watching the instructional videos a relaxing part of the school day.

The curriculum is divided into 5 parts: warm-up drawing exercises, drawing, painting with paint, painting and coloring with markers (quality art markers), and using colored pencils. It's possible to skip around sections. For example, you can do a painting lesson one day, a drawing lesson another day, etc. This works great for us because sometimes we only have time for a 5 minute drawing exercise, whereas another day, we might dedicate an hour to a painting project. While this curriculum says that it is 6+, I don't think my son could have done this before age 8. The exercises require quite a bit of motor control and patience. The first painting exercises require the child to mix colors by themselves and make a color reference chart, labeling the created colors with the primary colors used. I don't think most 6 years old could handle this assignment, but your mileage may vary! We had to break the first color chart assignment over 2 days and I think we still didn't finish. There were spots for 36 colors. Other than recommending this curriculum with caution for anyone under 8, I can't recommend this curriculum highly enough for helping your child to develop their artistry skills in a technical/classical, yet fun, way. (I say classical because this curriculum teaches following steps, rather than an art curriculum like "Artistic Pursuits" that does not provide detailed guidance, but leaves the art projects open-ended. I tried that brand of art curriculum with both of my children, but the style did not work for us.)

The last curriculum item I wanted to share is Poems for Memorization by Milestone Books. For under $11, you cannot go wrong with this book. Over the years, I have tried a variety of sources from which to pull poetry for memory work, and dictation for spelling. This book tops them all! I have tried the much higher priced Spelling Wisdom and the The Laurel and the Harp but neither lasted very long on my homeschool shelf. I love Poems for Memorization because the poems are divided by grade level, not just in content, but also seemingly in the difficulty of the words. Some of the poems are written by Mennonites that are generally unknown poets, whereas other poems are by well-known poets from the public domain. While some of the poems seem to lack reference to a proper Trinitarian understanding of God, all of the poems that I have seen are "twaddle-free," encourage appreciating God's creation, encouraging learning from the "parables" found in observing nature, and encourage thoughtful, virtuous behavior. I have been using this book twice a week or so in my home for spelling dictation (in addition to a more traditional spelling approach), and for memory work anytime we are unable to use the full Orthodox Christian Morning Time Curriculum for some reason.

Well, thanks for reading about my favorite curriculum finds this year. What have your favorite curriculum finds been this year?