Back to Homeschool 2026: Routines, Books, and More Books!
This post shares our homeschool curriculum picks for the 2026-2027 school year, as well as our homeschool routine for 5 kids.
It’s time! Summer is officially winding down and we are prepping to dive into our first week of a new school year.
I LOVE THIS TIME OF YEAR! It’s exciting to start new books, everyone is ready for a change of pace after a busy and less structured summer, and I love the planning part of homeschool: picking out new books for everyone, restocking our art supplies, and dreaming about what this new year might hold.
Your plan for the year will probably look different than ours, but it’s fun to see what others are doing – so in that spirit, I’m sharing ALLLL of our plans for the year and our homeschool curriculum picks in this post.
Our Daily Routine: What’s the Same and What’s Changing
Our routine this year will have a few key differences from previous years.
Difference Number One: we are NOT doing the Foundations portion of Classical Conversations this year, for the first time in five years! No need to bore you with details, and no, there is NOT any juicy drama to share – thank goodness.
We still love our community, we love the people there, two of our boys will still be doing Essentials in the afternoon – but I simply felt a bit burned out with the Foundations curriculum and needed a break this year. Maybe we’ll be back next year, maybe we won’t!
I wrote once several years ago about how, at heart, we are not Classical homeschoolers – and I stand by what I wrote there, though I am still SO grateful for the community CC has given us and the flexibility they offer.
Difference Number Two: our oldest will be a part of the Challenge program in Classical Conversations – our first experience with this! So yes, we are still very much a part of our CC community… just in a different way. For those of you who are NOT part of the CC world, Challenge is an all-day drop off program once a week for middle school through high school, so the biggest practical difference for our homeschool this year is that Big Brother will not be at home on Tuesday mornings while the rest of us will be.
It will be a little odd to have a morning where one child is “missing,” but I foresee many benefits for him specifically from this program, and it will also be good to have some extra time with the four younger children.
On the rest of the week when everyone is home our routine will look mostly like this:
7:00 kids up, breakfast, chores
8:30ish (or when everyone is ready) Morning Time all together
9:00ish I plan to let the two older boys go start their independent work (which they have more of this year) and keep reading a few things to the younger three
9:45 rotate one-on-one time with the three younger children
when that’s done – breaks, snacks, send them all outside
during lunch – read aloud, as we’ve done since our oldest was five – we highly recommend this habit if you haven’t tried it yet!
after lunch – rest time for the younger two, more one-on-one time with the older boys if needed
As you can see, I am big on precise times and exact schedules (NOT). Haha! It seems to work well for us if we start the day together, with a little more structure, and then let things unfold more organically from there.
General Principle for Every Homeschool: your homeschool can (and will) change. It’s wise to keep the things that are working, but as your children grow – and as you grow! – you’ll find that old routines or habits aren’t serving you any more. Be willing to be flexible and try something new if needed!
Morning Time 2026: What We’re Reading With Everyone Together
Morning Time is my favorite time of day, hands down. Read this post about getting started with Morning Time if you want to find out more about what it is and why we love it! Here’s what we plan to read through this year (note that we do NOT read all of these every day, but we rotate between them).
History: Story of the World Volume 3
Science: Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Zoology 3; also the Burgess Bird Book for Children
Bible: we’ll be reading straight from the Old Testament
Hymns: I will be choosing a hymn each week for us to sing around the piano
Poetry: Ambleside Online Poetry Anthology Volume 5
Literature: Tales from Shakespeare (we read some of these last year, but not all yet!), The Heroes, Anne of Green Gables, and Smith of Wooton Major by Tolkien
Other: I will probably throw in random fairy tales and picture books as needed
Homeschool Curriculum Picks (Individual Work)
Here’s what we’re planning for each individual child, in addition to our whole family Morning Time.
For the 8th Grader (Age 13.5)
Books: WOW, our poor 13 year old has so much to read this year. Actually I’m more than a little jealous that he gets to read all this – they are fantastic books! And please remember that he won’t be reading them all at once – I am hoping he can work on 3-4 at a time. All the same, there’s a chance it might be too much, and I plan to remain flexible.
The Reason for All These Books: He has a list of literature to read for Challenge, a shorter list for the online Good Books class he is doing, AND several books I picked out from Ambleside Online that I want him to read as well.
My goal for the year is to strike the balance between challenging him to grow and do more, while also keeping it from being overwhelming or discouraging. We won’t do it perfectly but I am trying to hold everything lightly and be willing to adjust as needed!
Math: The Good and The Beautiful Math 8 (shhh, don’t tell the homeschool police – but we completely skipped 7th grade math! What happened was Big Brother got a year behind in math during the year our youngest was born – my fault, not his – so last year, during his seventh grade year, he was still doing sixth grade math. This year I decided I want to try to catch him up, so we are going to just jump into 8th grade math and see what happens! Yes, it might backfire on me, and yes, I will be completely honest with you and let you know how it goes.)
Handwriting: The Good and The Beautiful Handwriting 6 (note: we are technically “behind” in many of our handwriting books because we work through them pretty slowly, only a couple pages a week, but they are still practicing and making progress and that’s all that I care about)
Schoolnest Notebook: for written narrations and copywork
Challenge: for the Challenge program he will be reading through the Cartography book, starting to study Latin, and working through the Analogies book set
Other: he will be doing Challenge A at Classical Conversations, the Good Books class from the House of Humane Letters, and piano lessons
For the 6th Grader (Age 11 – almost 12)
Math: The Good and The Beautiful Math 6
Handwriting: The Good and The Beautiful Handwriting 5
Schoolnest Notebook: for written narrations and copywork
Readers: many books from different genres that will cover science, history, biography, and literature
Other: he will be doing the Essentials program at Classical Conversations, the Good Books class from House of Humane Letters, piano lessons, and homeschool chess club
For the 5th Grader (Age 10)
Math: The Good and The Beautiful Math 5
Handwriting: The Good and The Beautiful Handwriting 3
Schoolnest Notebook: for written narrations and copywork
Readers: many books from different genres that will cover science, history, biography, geography and literature
Other: he will be doing the Essentials program at Classical Conversations, swim lessons, piano lessons, and homeschool chess club
For the 2nd Grader (Age 7)
Math: The Good and The Beautiful Math 2
Handwriting: The Good and The Beautiful Handwriting 2
Phonics: continuing on with Logic of English, we will finish our last few pages of level B and then start level C
Readers: lots of short books to build fluency and stamina, as well as one longer one I picked out as a “stretching” book (Misty of Chincoteague) simply because she loves horses
Other: she will be doing some swim lessons and is continuing on with what I call “mini piano lessons” – short 15 minute lessons with just one (or two at the most) pieces to practice each week
For the Preschooler (Age 4.5)
We won’t be doing any official school yet.
I debated whether or not to start him on some simple phonics lessons this year, but I am leaning towards NOT simply because a) he’s still four and technically only in preschool and b) I have four other kids to homeschool and will be busy enough already!
I did buy him some alphabet and tracing workbooks simply because he loves having “school books” to scribble in while the other kids are working on math at the dining room table; but I will NOT be forcing him to do them, checking his work, or making him finish the books. He can do what he wants with them!
If you’d like to read more about how we approach the early years, check out this post on homeschooling preschool. We’ll be following this plan for the little guy again this year!
Conclusion
If you read all this, firstly – CONGRATULATIONS. You’ve made it to the end of an excessively long blog post which means you are determined and persistent: necessary qualities for a homeschool mom!
Secondly, please do not feel overwhelmed. Honestly, looking at this huge list makes ME feel overwhelmed – until I remember that we are just doing a little bit each day, we have a whole nine months to work on this (or longer, if you want!), and that my kids are growing in independence and ability each year – as yours are, too!
We NEVER could have done all this our first year homeschooling. And we shouldn’t have!
But as you slowly build your rhythms and routines, week by week and day by day, you will learn what works for your family and both you and your children will grow in your abilities.
Take a deep breath, grab your coffee, and dive in along with me! Our job is big but our God is bigger, and I can’t wait to see what this year holds.
