CKLA Free Language Arts Curriculum

I found another free reading and language arts curriculum I want to share:  CKLA Skills series.    This is a full language arts curriculum, but I've mainly used the reader (which are included from KG Level 4 up, and are decodable and engaging and have great illustrations .  I really adore the free printable readers and have been using them to supplement the readers from the other curriculum I use with the kids I tutor in reading.    New skills are added gradually and in the earlier grades are marked in the text.   While I haven't used the rest of the curriculum, it looks solid (at least at the Kindergarten level, which is what I've mainly looked through). 

But man, I wish they made these easier to find on their site.   They aren't all listed in one place  (at least that I could see).  In stead you have to use their search function to find them, and they don't always come up in order.   So, I thought I would link to these resources in order to make it easier for you all to find.

The curriculum covers grade KG - 3.   They have other curriculum on their site that goes further which you can also find here.   Also, this site has interactive online versions of  3-4 of the stories for these levels.


CKLA Language Arts Skills Series


Kindergarten Skills

Note:  Readers are not offered until KG Unit 4.  The names of the readers are included next to the unit link.

KG Ancillary Materials (Used in various levels)

KG Unit 1

KG Unit 2

KG Unit 3

KG Unit 4 - Pet Fun

KG Unit 5 - Ox and Man

KG Unit 6 - Kit

KG Unit 7 - Seth

KG Unit 8 - Sam

KG Unit 9 - Zack and Ann

KG Unit 10 - Scott



1st Grade Skills
 

1st Grade Ancillary Materials

1st Grade Unit 1 - Snap Shots

1st Grade Unit 2 - Gran

1st Grade Unit 3 - Fables

1st Grade Unit 4 - The Green Fern Zoo

1st Grade Unit 5 - Kate's Book

1st Grade Unit 6 - Grace

1st Grade Unit 7 - Kay and Martez

2nd Grade Skills

2nd Grade Ancillary Material

2nd Grade Unit 1 - The Cat Bandit

2nd Grade Unit 2 - Bedtime Tales

2nd Grade Unit 3 - Kids Excel

2nd Grade Unit 4 - The Job Hunt

2nd Grade Unit 5 - Sir Gus (Chapter Book)

2nd Grade Unit 6 - The War of 1812

3rd Grade Skills

3rd Grade Ancillary Material

3rd Grade Unit 1 - Classic Tales

3rd Grade Unit 2 - Rattenborough's Guide to Animals

3rd Grade Unit 3 - How Does Your Body Work

3rd Grade Unit 4 - Stories of Ancient Rome

3rd Grade Unit 5 - Adventures in Light and Sound

3rd Grade Unit 6 - Gods, Giants and Dwarves

3rd Grade Unit 7 - What's in Our Universe

3rd Grade Unit 8 - Native American Stories

3rd Grade Unit 9 - The Age of Exploration

3rd Grade Unit 10 - Living in Colonial America

3rd Grade Unit 11 - Intro to Ecology

Why I Love Visual Guide Workbooks

I'm not big on workbooks generally, but I love the Visual Guide Workbooks.   They feature colorful, fun, infographics packed with great information, and questions and activities to go with them.    I have a child who often struggled to pay attention to long written passages but  almost always remembered the stuff he saw in the pictures and diagrams.  That made these workbooks perfect for him.   

While the lessons aren't in any particular order they do tend to focus on some major themes.    And so I've put together a free printable guide to the topics in these books so that, if you wanted to you could use them to supplement things you are already learning about in your homeschool. I've found that it's ok to skip around in the books a little.   A friend of mine who's a reading teacher says it's good for kids to have access to both reading passages exactly at their levels, and ones a little lower and a little above their level, and I find this good advice.   So I organized my "guide to the guides" in a way that you could find all the pages in all levels of the book on a certain subject.   That could be useful if you were using this with more than one child as well. 

Solar System page from the Visual Guide to 3rd Grade

Look at that gorgeous page on space!  Space is a major theme in several of the Visual Guide books (see the bottom of this page for links to all the books and a listing of their major themes).   My child really responds well to colorful, quality graphics in workbooks and worksheets like these.  But while you can find a loot of great free worksheets online, pages with colorful backgrounds like this are expensive to print, so if you want something like this, it's actually cheaper in the long run to buy workbooks like these.  

Animals of Africa Map page from the Visual Guide to 1st Grade

All infographics are followed by activities and questions.  You can see what these are like on the lesson on Animals of Africa above.   There are more hands on cut and paste activities as well.

Ben Franklin page from the Visual Guide to 3rd Grade

 

Ancient Egypt page from the Visual Guide to 1st Grade

These books include a lot of pages from History too.    Most are are related to US history but in the 1st grade book there's a little world history sprinkled in as well, like the page on ancient Egypt shown above.   Each of these pages is followed up by questions, and often activities, on the following pages.

Human Anatomy page from the Visual Guide to 3rd Grade

Monarch butterfly page from the Visual Guide to 2nd Grade

 

There's so many great science topics included, too.   Animals, human health and anatomy, earth science, conservation, and more.  

Below you can find links to these books, and major themes in them.   I considered it a major theme if there were 3 or more sections related in some way to it.   These are of course just a few of the topics included in these books.

Visual Guide to Kindergarten

US Symbols, Plants and Farming,
Animals Life, Inventions


Visual Guide to 1st Grade
National Parks and Monuments,
American History, Native Americans*, 
US Government/Our Capitol, Africa, World Cultures,
Animal Life, Environment and Conservation,
Space, Weather

Visual Guide to 2nd Grade
American History, Presidents/Patriotic Symbols,
National Parks and Monuments,
Animal Life, Earth Science, Sports, Weather*



Visual Guide to 3rd Grade
National Parks and Monuments, American History,

 Environment and Conservation, Animal Life, Sea life,
Earth Science, Space, Technology, Health

Free Printable Topics Guide
Use this guide to find topics in the
Visual Guidebooks to supplement
your homeschool lessons

Opinions are all my own.   I was not paid to promote these products but this post does contain affiliate links through which I could earn commission.