Teaching your children doesn’t have to be complicated. With so many different curriculum choices and various teaching approaches, it can get a little overwhelming for parents, especially new homeschooling parents! That’s why homeschool curriculum packages are a popular option. They provide what you need to teach your children in every subject. They do the planning and organizing for you so you can just follow along and guide your children in their educational life.
SchoolhouseTeachers.com has added virtual homeschool curriculum packages for grades K–12, which they call School Boxes. Each package provides everything your child needs for an engaging year of learning:
- A curriculum guide for each subject that correlates objectives with the SchoolhouseTeachers.com Scope and Sequence
- Weekly checklists to keep you on track
- Daily checklists that guide you—and your student—through each activity
- Direct links to the SchoolhouseTeachers.com courses and resources you need weekly
- Links to additional resources for the days you want to explore a topic further
- All the additional suggested materials for the year listed in one place, like art supplies and notepaper
What makes these curriculum packages unique is that they are a part of an extensive curriculum site with hundreds of additional courses and tools. You pay one membership price for the whole family, and you have access to all the site has to offer.
While each School Box has covered all the courses for your child’s age, you can use what most appeals to you. Some have several other options available for additional courses at different grade levels and on a wide range of subjects. The image below is a screenshot of the SchoolhouseTeachers.com home page to show the variety of subjects covered with membership.
Subject List for Fourth Grade Virtual Homeschool Curriculum Package
The Scope and Sequence Charts go into more detail about what skills are being taught for each subject. Here is a list of general topics for the fourth grade School Box:
- Math: negative numbers; expanded form of numbers; mean, median, and mode; multiplying 2-3 digit by 3 digit; dividing 2-3 digit by 2 digit; geometry concepts; use a protractor; converting mixed numbers to fractions; multiplying fractions
- English/Language Arts:
- Reading and Comprehension: read age-appropriate text, create an outline based on text, recognize character changes, identify haiku and other poetry forms, detect mood and dialect, determine fact and fiction
- Handwriting: continue cursive handwriting
- Composition: compose quality paragraphs with distinctive beginning, middle, and end; begin creating essays with bibliography entries; persuasive writing
- Grammar: types of sentences, punctuation, parts of speech, independent and dependent clauses, diagramming, Greek and Latin roots
- Research: use a thesaurus, encyclopedia, sections of library, Bible concordance, and timelines
- Spelling: lists derived from scripture, literature, and famous speeches
- Science: plants, insects, body systems, weather and seasons, layers of Earth, electricity, building blocks of chemistry
- History- Traditional: Establishment of American government; Declaration of Independence; famous Revolutionary figures in history; identify and explain significance of key events in 1720-1845
- History- Classical: Study of the culture, writings, government, and geographical contexts from 1756 to the present day, including prominent historical figures; the Industrial Revolution; the Great Depression; World War II
- Health: Nutrition; first aid; body systems; study of the eyes; exercise; physical activity
- Social Studies/ Geography: Map scales; use features of a globe/map to locate specific locations; mountain ranges; democracy and voting; 50 states; exports; producers and consumers
- Music: Classify music into genres; integrate the study of instruments, rhythm, music notation through the study of the works of specific composers
- Art: Recognize important pieces of art; utilize a variety of media in creating art; classify art by various characteristics and elements; following directions to complete specific types of art
Curriculum Laid Out and Ready For You
Virtual Homeschool Curriculum Packages, such as the School Boxes, are a set of online materials, including downloadable pdf files, streaming videos, and other resources that are available immediately upon purchase of a SchoolhouseTeachers.com membership. There is no physical box of materials to store, no shipping cost, and no delay while waiting for materials to arrive.
All you have to do is choose the grade level, choose the subjects and get started. There are checklists to keep you and your child on track, and everything is always right at your fingertips. Virtual School Boxes are just one more of the many options available to you as part of the SchoolhouseTeachers.com family. Always one low all-inclusive family rate to access everything. This includes a huge streaming video library, World Book Online, and special needs resources.
See the video interview with the Curriculum Specialist that helped develop the SchoolhouseTeachers.com School Boxes. In this interview learn more about these simple, self-paced virtual homeschool curriculum packages and more of what you can get from a membership.
Guest Authors
This article has been written by homeschooling staff writers of The Canadian Schoolhouse (TCS).