Homeschool Curriculum Review: Elective Subjects

If you love chatting Homeschool Curriculum, you’ve come to the right place! Maybe you just finished reading the post on my Curriculum Choices for Core Subjects; a meaty post with (hopefully) lots of great info! I certainly am no expert, and am learning as I go. Even so, I hope that my experiences can be helpful or useful to even one new homeschool mom out there!

Fun fact about me– I am fluent in Spanish! I first fell in love with the language in 8th grade. This was my first opportunity to study Spanish at school. Any millennials out there may remember our semi-cringey Spanish class experiences, including any of the following:

• Choosing a “Spanish name” to go by in Spanish class. Mine was always “Violeta!”
• Having to do “oral presentations” where you would memorize a Spanish conversation with your partner, and recite it, badly, in front of the class! (Ha!)
• Watching the same few Spanish movies over and over again in class, including Selena (or was that just my class? :))

Overall, my opinions have changed a lot in the years since I first got a taste of the beautiful Spanish language. I went on to study Spanish at Wheaton College, and double-majored with Elementary Education. In order to major in Spanish, there was a requirement to study in a Spanish-speaking country for 6 weeks. I felt this was subpar, so I enrolled in a program to go for a whole semester! Any guesses where? (Hint: it’s the flag flying at the beginning of this post!)

My background in Spanish

If you guessed Spain, you’re right! Seville, Spain was a beautiful place to study abroad. I learned a lot, then came home, finished college, got married, and entered a series of adventures I never could have planned! I taught in Guatemala City, Guatemala, then later in Texas. When my husband and I moved home to Minnesota, I taught Kindergarten Spanish Immersion at my favorite school of all time.

After some years teaching, we had our first baby, and I chose to stay home with him. Over the past 10 years we have added three more to the mix, and in a crazy series of events, in 2023 decided to take the plunge into homeschooling!

This brings me to our first homeschool elective subject: Spanish. I had so many dreams for how this would play out. I will save those for a different post. For now, I will say: immersion worked the best. My husband and I were diligent with our first two kids, speaking Spanish to them at home. It became harder with each kid. We also lack any truly authentic environment for them to use Spanish, besides with us, so over time, it has dropped off. This has saddened me greatly! But–I have tried to adjust my expectation.

Homeschool Spanish Curriculum

Niños & Nature: Naomi is a beautiful soul! She creates nature-and-play-based Spanish curriculum. I have messaged her personally and she has responded and been so helpful. I love her work!

Llamitas Spanish: I also really like this curriculum and website! If you are curious about a resource, she has an amazing freebie library that you can test out, if you’re curious about her content.

Spanish with Vicky: I first found Vicky on Instagram, and thought she had great content. I have one of her video curriculum series, which we have used in previous years.

Talkbox.Mom: I love this concept, especially if there are moms out there who want to learn and teach a language that they themselves do not speak. The methods behind this model are awesome. It does require diligence on the parental part!

Standalone Spanish Enrichment

Other methods I’ve tried are simple worksheets from Teachers Pay Teachers, whether to learn vocabulary, practice describing parts of life, or other topics. They even have free Spanish games available!

At the beginning of this year we did a trifold board “Todo Sobre Mi” (All About Me) and I had the kids do a collage for different questions, and practice describing their answers to various “All About Me” questions, in Spanish.

Teaching Homeschool Art

Let’s move on from foreign language, to art! You may have seen my series on Our Surprise Art History Success, which is a standalone miracle that I never saw coming. I also want to talk about teaching Art!

My daughter is the main artist and crafter in our family; she never met a medium she didn’t like! However, I wanted to include my boys in the fun, too, even if they didn’t always find it as fun. 😉 Here are a few resources that we have really loved, exploring art mediums:

• Art for Kids Hub: this YouTube channel features the most kind, wholesome family you will meet! The dad, Rob, hosts most of the drawing videos, and he always has one of his four kids accompany him. He does the videos in such a gentle, kind manner that is encouraging to even the most hesitant artist. My daughter did these daily for over a year! (I always plug them into SafeShare so that we skip the ads.) They even have a preschool selection of drawing videos that my preschooler son loves. They’re a bit simpler and go at a slower pace. I love these for his fine-motor development!
• Andrea Nelson Art: this YouTube channel features a charming watercolor artist, Andrea, who does simple watercolor projects! We did her 2025 Watercolor Challenge at the beginning of the year last year, and it was great.
• The Art Sherpa: Another spectacular YouTube find. My daughter and I do these videos together a lot! My daughter really got into acrylic painting last fall. So into it, we decided to host an Art Show at our house, featuring a lot of her paintings! (More on that to come). Here is the acrylic elephant tutorial my daughter used, to create this painting:

Art History in Homeschooling

Ok, you may be sick of hearing about this by now! Art History was the subject I never intended to teach. Not that I don’t love Art History–I absolutely do! However, it is safe to say that Art History was not on my radar, my first year of homeschooling. I ended up stumbling upon the incredible resource of Ambleside Online, and from there, a fairly-simply-Art-History plan was born! I have added a few more artists each year, and my kids love to review! A few weeks ago we covered Pablo Picasso.

Building Our Family Culture

There are so many cool things you can do to strengthen and build up your “family culture,” it could be standalone post! Today I want to mention a few sweet things we’ve added to our dinnertime routine. These are simple, 5-minute-or-less activities that we try to do every evening. I think they have made our mealtimes very sweet!

Table Topics: I got these for Christmas a few years ago, and I thought they were perfect! They are simple questions, on a variety of topics, that kids and adults can answer. We typically pick a few every night. They remind me a lot of the “Pass the Pepper” rhymtm that Justin Whitmel Early talks about in his book, Habits of the Household. If you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend!

Piggies Manners Cards: my kids call these the “Piggies Cards,” but technically they are called Good Manners Conversation Flash Cards. These have been great, especially for our preschooler! I have the kids pick out 2-3 per dinnertime, and we talk about the question and answer. It’s nice to be proactive teaching them about manners, while also providing guidance in real-time, when things happen.

An Easily-Missed Skill: Typing!

For typing, we keep it simple! We have an inexpensive subscription to typingclub.com, and have really enjoyed it. Both of my kids use it, and track which lesson they are on. It gives great tips, and I have seen their typing improve! For writing projects, my son (fourth grade) prefers to type his final drafts now, while my daughter (2nd grade) is working her way to that.

Entrepreneurship in Homeschooling

One thing I love about homeschooling is that despite the meticulous planning (which you know I love!) a lot of things happen organically. When you spend all day every day with your kids, there is so much more time for conversation, problem-solving, and living life together, as cliche as that sounds! Along those lines, entrepreneurship has become an enriching topic in our family.

My husband and I have both been entrepreneurs. He had a woodworking business and Etsy shop, and I was a wedding photographer! So, talking about entrepreneurship was natural. Around the holidays last year, we found out about the “chunky knit” blanket trend! One thing led to another, and my crafter-girl (2nd grader) soon created a “test blanket” to show others.

We found the yarn at Hobby Lobby, and set to work! Through a series of very informative trial-and-error, my husband ended up making her a loom, to help with product consistency. She ended up making 15 blankets for customers! Some of the concepts we covered during this endeavor were:

• Vocabulary like: materials, customer service, expense, profit
• Communication with customers
• Over-delivering
• Showing gratitude (she wrote a thank-you-note for each person, and included a candy cane with their ribbon-wrapped finished blanket)

It was an amazing experience! I can’t wait to see what she does next year!

What would you add?

I hope this post covering Homeschool Electives was helpful for you! Don’t forget to skim over the Core Subjects Curriculum post as well. Which homeschool electives am I missing? I would love to hear your own elective lineup! Send me a message here and let’s chat!

Cait