STAR Whole-Family Homeschool Reading Plans

The STAR Cycles

Hi, I’m Brenda…

I’m so excited you’re here, exploring the work I’ve created! I pray it is a blessing to you in your homeschool journey. May your days with your children be lovely!

I’ve been homeschooling for twenty years, and I love encouraging homeschool moms as much as I adore books and making spreadsheets. I combine all of these passions at STAR Homeschool where I create flexible, whole-family, Charlotte Mason-style reading plans around four chronological cycles. I also write posts about homeschooling and life right here, and I love what I do.

Let me introduce you to what STAR Homeschool is all about….

(Click on any of the links below to learn more…This page is long, feel free to read it all or scroll through it to find what you’re looking for!)

I believe that whole-family homeschooling is the key to beautiful days. Because of this, I schedule reading plans, with living books, around four chronological cycles, and include resource for all of the “forms” (grade groups).

The STAR reading plans are:

Christ-Centered

Start your day with Bible reading, hymns and apologetics. Memorize Scripture together using Claritas Publishing memory work. You and your children will be able to see how God’s Word applies to every other subject throughout the school day.

Charlotte Mason-Style
These reading plans include living-books, lots of read-aloud time, opportunity for recitation and memory work and nature study. These are just some of the key components of a Charlotte Mason-style curriculum. Ever since I first learned about her, I’ve soaked up every bit of information I could about Charlotte Mason and her educational philosophies. I’m not a Charlotte Mason-purist, but I would call these reading plans Charlotte Mason-ish, or Charlotte Mason-style. I am learning more and more about Charlotte Mason regularly. If you have suggestions for me about how to make these plans more aligned with Charlotte Mason’s philosophy, please make sure to comment and let me know!

Full of great literature
Members of STAR Homeschool Community read one chapter book at a time aloud to their children and then discuss it in class each week when we meet. You can feel free to join us and read beautiful stories to your children.

Created for Whole-Family Learning
One of the most beautiful things about homeschooling is the opportunity to gather the whole family together around the table, on a rug, or on comfy couches and study a subject together. It’s a different picture from public school, where every grade is studying a different period of history, a different science subject and different authors altogether. So many homeschool programs tend to mimic public school in this way, and the family’s learning is disjointed. It takes more time for a homeschooling mom to keep up on what each child is doing, and there is no discussion amongst siblings about the topics they are learning together.

While it may not be possible to study math and language arts all together (unless your children are very close in age), there are still several subjects that can be taught in this way. These reading plans are designed so that the following subjects can be learned together as a family:

  • Bible
  • Hymns
  • Apologetics*
  • Literature*
  • History*
  • Geography*
  • Nature Study
  • Science*
  • Composer
  • Artist
  • Poet
  • Character
  • Life Skills
  • Handicrafts

*Middle and High School students have additional reading with bigger concepts than their younger siblings might be able to grasp, of course, in the subjects with the asterisks beside them. We call our Middle and High School students our Form 4 and Form 5 students at STAR. 

Gentle
Reading aloud is one of the most gentle, precious and connection-creating ways of teaching children. Singing hymns together and memorizing God’s Word and other fun and useful facts together is also a gentle and beautiful way to teach. To top it all off, make sure to head outside every day to explore God’s creation!

Thorough
The reading plans include every subject you can think of! There is no expectation that your family will get through every single subject in every year. Grab bits and pieces of this feast and add it to your plate, however big it is, and enjoy.

Customizable & Flexible
Choose the subjects that you would like to study and how much of each subject you would like to accomplish through the school year. You might read one history book at a time, or five, depending on your preference and time. If the curriculum isn’t working for you part-way through the year, no problem–change it to fit your family’s needs.

A Four-Cycle Program
The reading plans take students from the beginning of time (Cycle 1) through current day (Cycle 4). If you begin using STAR in pre-school or kindergarten, your student will cycle through all four cycles three times before they graduate from high school. This is a beautiful way to absorb and reinforce information!

Four or Five Days Per Week, 28 Weeks
Whether you are attending STAR Homeschool Community one day per week or doing something else with your time, four days per week is a doable schedule for most families. This is flexible, too. If you want to get all of your assignments done in two or three days per week, or read ahead for an upcoming vacation, feel free!

STAR Homeschool Community meets for 28 weeks through the school year, and therefore the reading plans are also set up as a 28-week program. Feel free to stretch this out longer if you’d like, or to get through it at a faster pace. Twenty-eight weeks allows for ample holiday breaks and does not take away from the summer months. 

FREE!!

I’ve posted these reading plans for free for you, because like Charlotte Mason, I believe everyone should have access to a liberal (broad, wide, full) education. If you would like to support the work I do, you can donate here (STAR Homeschool is a non-profit, 501(c)(3), you can purchase products that I create at the STAR Homeschool Store, and/or you can click on the affiliate links on this site and make a purchase. Thank you for your help!

The Forms

The Forms listed on this site are the suggested forms for reading each book. This is flexible, and many of these books are great for whole-family reading, and would be good resources for younger or older students than suggested. The goal is to find a book for each subject that can be read aloud to all of your children at once. After you find the right book (or two!), choose a book (or two!) for each child who can read independently.

The Forms on this page are like Charlotte Mason’s, as follows:

  • Form 1: first through third grade (6-9 years old)
  • Form 2: fourth through sixth grade (9-12 years old)
  • Form 3: seventh and eighth grade (12-14 years old)
  • Form 4: ninth and tenth grade (14-16 years old)
  • Form 5: eleventh grade (16-17 years old)
  • Form 6: twelfth grade (17-18 years old)

When I first started STAR Homeschool Community, the forms were set up a little differently. I have been working on lining up the reading plans to Charlotte Mason’s forms, as listed above.

How I Created These Plans…

To create these reading plans, I started with Claritas Publishing’s classical memory work guides. The memory work is optional, but it does provide a nice outline for what to focus on each week. I love that the Claritas work is only for twenty-eight weeks and divided into four terms of seven weeks. I’ve been homeschooling for twenty years now, and I find that a 36-week program is daunting and difficult for many people.

The Claritas Memory Work includes the following subjects:

  • Scripture
  • Hymns
  • Math
  • Science
  • English Grammar & Advanced English Grammar
  • History
  • Geography
  • Latin

We use this memory work in the homeschool group I created in Lynchburg, Virginia: STAR Homeschool Community, except for the Latin. One cool thing about homeschooling is that you get to decide which subjects you want to include and which ones you want to leave out.

When I made the reading plans that are now on this site, they were originally for families at STAR. I wanted to include some other subjects at STAR, so I added the following components to the four cycles:

  • Read aloud books for Form 1
  • Read aloud books for Form 2, or for the whole family
  • A composer, an artist, and a poet for each term, along with post card-sized art cards for each week of the term, poetry books to print, and song selections with Spotify links to listen to each week
  • Weekly projects that line up with either the week’s history, geography, science, or the term’s artist
  • An extra hymn each week
  • Apologetics topics for each week (which often line up nicely with catechism questions)

Then, I remembered being in a classical community when our kids were younger & feeling like there wasn’t any context for the memory work. I wanted the families at STAR to have a different experience, so I started scheduling the following:

  • History reading plans for all forms—so that students would be studying the same time period, people and places no matter their age
  • Biography reading plans for all forms, with ten or more people to choose from each term of each cycle
  • Geography reading plans for all forms
  • Apologetics and Worldview reading plans for all forms
  • Science reading plans for all forms—then I added more science and nature subjects, and reading plans for all of those
  • Hymn reading plans to learn about a hymn each week, from several different resources
  • Extra memory verses for people who go through the four cycles two or three times
  • Bible reading plans to take a family through the whole Bible over two, four or eight years
  • Extra literature for all forms—both historic literature that’s just for fun but isn’t twaddle
  • Character traits for each cycle
  • Life Skills for each cycle, and Life Reading & Survival Skills for Forms 4 & 5
  • Electives for each cycle
  • Language Arts suggestions and schedules
  • Math suggests and schedules

…and I have so many more ideas!

I created STAR because I wanted a different model from the two popular options in our area:

The Classical homeschool community

The Hybrid “homeschool” community


I happen to think STAR is a pretty nice alternative, and I would love to see STAR communities pop up all over! (With freedom to run a community how you like—with gentle guidance, but nobody telling you what to do and when to do it). If you think you might want to start one of these communities, make sure to join me on social media and chat with me!

When I first started STAR, I made custom “family guides” for each STAR family. Now, I teach people how to make their own family guides. I love this, because it’s totally flexible and you can adjust it to fit your family’s needs anytime during the school year. Once you’ve chosen the books you want to use from the year (from the many suggestions I provide here), creating the schedule is easy and quick! Think of it like a Sonlight guide or an Ambleside Online checklist—but with the ability to copy and paste the resources of your choice and add them to the schedule. You can even make a schedule (or, check-off list) for every one of your children who is able to work independently. I dreamed up this kind of flexibility when I was homeschooling our three sons (who are now grown adults), and now it’s a reality!

Want to dive in? Feel free to click on any link below.

Memory Work

The four cycles line up perfectly with the Claritas Publishing classical memory work. Using this memory work in your homeschool days is optional, but it is really rich and full. Each cycle contains 28-weeks worth of memory work on the following subjects: English Grammar, Math, Science, History, Geography, Hymns, Scripture and Latin. The STAR cycles were built around the Claritas cycles. I wrote a blog post about the memory work here.

It is questionable whether this kind of memory work is truly in line with Charlotte Mason’s philosophies, because it is rote memory work without context. If you scroll below, you’ll find that I provide a lot of context for the memory work in the reading plans here. You may opt to skip the memory work if you do not believe that it lines up with the Charlotte Mason method or with your personal homeschool philosophy.

I made really basic spreadsheets to serve as check off lists for doing the Memory Work. You can see these sheets here:

Bible

The STAR cycles include two options for Bible reading plans:

PLAN A: This Bible reading plan will take you through the whole Bible in four years; reading just one chapter per day. This is a doable plan for a family! Start reading in any Cycle, and go through all four cycles.

PLAN B: A chronological Bible reading plan to take you through the whole Bible in one year, two years, four years, or eight years. You can read more about Bible Reading Plan B in this blog post: A Flexible, Chronological Bible Reading Plan.

If you choose to use Plan B and go through the Bible in eight years, these are the books of the Bible you’ll be reading from:

Bible

Bible Memory

Scripture MemoryIn addition to the Scripture memory work that is included in Claritas Publishing’s guides, I have added two additional verses per week for all twenty-eight weeks of each cycle. I am also working on a Scripture Memory-to Music project on this site here.

Apologetics & Worldview

I love Apologetics! This is the subject where kids get to learn more about God’s Word, why God is worthy of our belief and devotion, and they get to wrestle with really important life-questions, in light of God’s Word.

There are twenty-eight apologetics questions in each cycle. There is one main apologetics book scheduled for Forms 1-3 that follows these questions, and then the Form 4 & 5 students are addressing the same questions in books at their level. My goal in planning it this way was so that your family can have Apologetics discussions around the dinner table. Your older children will be digging deep into these topics, and the younger children will be facing the same topics, but at their own level. The conversations your family has about these subjects are going to solidify your kids’ knowledge in such beautiful ways!

You can learn more about this subject in this post: How to Teach Apologetics and Worldview.

Hymn Study

There are four hymns scheduled for singing each week (two per day, rotating) and there is one hymn scheduled for reading about each week (and at least 8 books suggested to read from per term, with reading schedules). If you follow the four STAR cycles, you will study more than 100 hymns in 4 years’ time!

I have scheduled my favorite hymn books for kids, and though they’re out of print, I highly recommend trying to find a copy of each volume of Bobbie Wolgemuth & Joni Eareckson Tada’s Hymns for a Kid’s’Heart. There are pictures of these books below, and a list of some sample hymns that are sung in each cycle (some of the hymns will be found in these books, but not all). There are other hymn study books scheduled as well (including several that are still in print and easy to find).

I’m also working on creating a page for every hymn we sing and study, with information, videos to sing along to, and videos for learning how to sign the hymn or play it on piano or guitar. You’ll find these hymn pages if you see that a hymn title is a clickable link on any of the following pages:

Read Aloud Books

There are read aloud books scheduled for each week, at a pace of approximately four chapters per week (depending on the length of the length of the chapters). At STAR Homeschool Community, families with students in Forms 2 and 3 are reading these books and discussing them in class. Below are pictures of just two of the books for each cycle.

In addition, there is one story per week (28 stories total) scheduled for Form 1 students (picture books).

History

This is my favorite part of the STAR cycles: history is taught chronologically, over four years! And then, once you’ve covered every year of His Story and learning about the people and places He created, you get to start over. Only, your kids will be a little older, and maybe you’ll read different books, and dig a little deeper into a different subject. Keep a timeline book and draw maps and solidify all of these ideas in your kids’ minds!

There are several options for living history books scheduled in the STAR reading plans. There are two options for most books: read them cover-to-cover, or simply read the chapters that line up perfectly with the week’s memory work. This is really a choose-your-own-adventure curriculum.

History Books By Subject

The history books included on the pages above are history “spines”–or, books that you will use for the entire school year. I personally like using at least one spine for a couple of reasons:

  • It’s cheaper to purchase one thick book than buying picture books or chapter books for every history topic I want to cover in the school year.
  • Our school days go smoother when I know exactly which book I am opening up and reading from.
  • There is something really special about getting through a whole history book by the end of the year.
  • I enjoy the breadth of subjects covered in a single book that goes through a time period of history.

All of that said, there is also a benefit in having some picture books and chapter books that line up perfectly with the subjects we are currently reading about. These are perfect for independent reading for children. Some families will gather a stack of various history books that line up with the current cycle and place them in a basket in the family room. These are the books that the children can grab from and read during free or scheduled reading time.

If you’re really organized, you can also find many of these books in public or private libraries, so that you don’t face any extra cost in the pursuit of learning deeper knowledge about the cycle’s history topics.

The following pages are a major work in progress. If you have ideas for books, please tell me! I would love to have tons of lists of books about every event in history! (Side note: there are SO many books about American and European accomplishments–like the Revolutionary War, and about the British monarchy, for example–but hardly any books about other parts of the world. If you want to write children’s books about lesser-known historic events, please do–and tell me!)

These pages are a work in progress:

History: Biographies

In addition to the history spines and the history-books-by-subject, I’ve created some Biography pages on this site. These are also a work in progress. The lists of people were not divided by time periods. If I did that, the majority of the people with books written about them would fall under Cycles 3 and 4 because of the years the people lived. There would be hardly any biographies for Cycles 1 and 2. For example, our family really enjoys the YWAM Heroes of the Faith books, but all of those books were written about people in relatively modern times. Since I want children reading about lots of different people, and not just during two cycles, I decided that I needed a different way to divide up these biographies. I divided the names up based on the following ideas:

  • Anthologies
  • Geography
  • Claritas Publishing Memory Work

If you’d like to learn more about how I chose which list to place each name on, see the How to Teach Biographies post.

Geography

The STAR Geography reading plans follow the Claritas Geography memory work. There are several books scheduled as options for your family. Sit together at the couch or at your dining room table and look at maps, read about places, enjoy photos of what people eat and how they live in other parts of the world, and pray for people who live far away from you.

Science & Nature

The Claritas Publishing memory work guides include one or two main science subjects each year. I have added to those subjects to provide a large buffet of choices for your family. When you come back around to a cycle again, you can either dig deeper into a science subject you have already covered, or choose to move on and cover another subject. It’s also Charlotte Mason-style to read little bits of lots of different subjects, over time, so don’t feel limited to covering only one or two science topics per year. You can read more about the Science & Nature Scope and Sequence here.

Nature

Animals

Astronomy

Biology

Birds

Chemistry

Creation

Ecosystems and Habitats

Food Science

Forests & Trees

Geology

Oceans

Physical Science/Physics

Weather

Enrichment

Each cycle includes 4 artists (with 7 paintings each), 4 composers (with 7 songs each), 4 poets (with 4 poems each) and eight or more handicrafts.

Habit Training, Life Reading & Survival

Each cycle includes four character traits and twenty-eight life skills, as well as suggested books and schedules for reading about these important habits. In addition, Form 4 & 5 students “Worldview,” or “Life” reading books as well, and worth through a list of Survival topics as independent study.

Character Training

Life Skills

Life Reading

Survival

Math

There are so many options for math, and it’s hard to narrow down the very best program for each child. I wanted to give you some options, though, so I have scheduled out five different math curriculums. Take your pick, or use another one of your choice.

Language Arts

A Charlotte Mason purist would only use narration, dictation and copywork until the student is in middle school or higher. I describe how to do all of that in the online portal. I also suggest multiple language arts programs and I suggest how to schedule those, as well.

Form 4 and 5 students are introduced to beautiful and classic literature and have writing assignments scheduled as well.

Electives

Electives are coming soon!

Make Your Own Custom Curriculum Guide

If you’ve ever come across a curriculum that was almost right for your family but you wished you could tweak it just a little bit, I think you’re going to love this custom spreadsheet I’ve created. I want moms to be able to use the STAR reading schedules–or whatever books they like–to make their own 28-week homeschool schedule. Want to learn how? Check out my post about Planning your homeschool schedule (with a really cool spreadsheet).

The Four Cycles

(Click on the links to learn more, or scroll below to see a list of posts for all four cycles).

STAR Homeschool Cycle 1

STAR Homeschool Cycle 2

STAR Homeschool Cycle 3