Blossom & Root Level 0

Blossom & Root Level 0 is the kindergarten tier of Kristina Garner's nature-based, secular homeschool curriculum, a 36-week PDF package designed for children ages five through seven that pairs Charlotte-Mason-inflected gentleness with a clean, intentionally secular book list.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Charlotte Mason / Waldorf-inspired / nature-study-centered / literature-based
Worldview	Secular (strictly non-religious; inclusive book list and holiday treatment)
Grades	Kindergarten (ages 5-7)
Formats	Digital PDF download (print at home); no print-and-ship edition
Cost tier	Budget
Parent intensity	3
ESA-common	Varies (digital curricula handled unevenly by state programs)
Accredited	No
Established	2015 (Blossom & Root company); Level 0 added subsequently
Website	blossomandroot.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	3	Appropriate kindergarten pacing, phonics review, CVC words, narration introduction, without forcing early academics
Ease of teaching	4	Teacher guides walk parents through lesson-by-lesson; 10-to-30-minute blocks keep sessions short
Content quality	4	Well-curated book list, 9 artists and 9 composers for picture and music study, thoughtful nature-study rotation
Flexibility	5	PDF delivery, suggested rather than rigid sequence, mix-and-match with other programs
Value for money	5	One price buys 36 weeks across five subject strands for the whole family
Worldview scope	5	Strictly secular; usable by any worldview family without modification
Visual/design	4	Cleanly designed parent guides and student notebooks; not overly ornate
Support resources	3	Active user community; publisher support is small-operation rather than national

Who the publisher is

Blossom & Root was founded in 2015 by Kristina Garner, a former kindergarten teacher, elementary tutor, and early-childhood educator based in the United States. Garner began the company to share her family's nature-based homeschool rhythm with other secular homeschoolers, and the curriculum has grown to cover kindergarten (Level 0) through sixth grade (Level 6), plus supplementary products including Early Years Volumes 1 and 2 (the true preschool tier for ages 3-5), U.S. History units, and the Book Seeds single-book unit-study line. The operation remains small and family-run; Garner is still the primary curriculum writer and designer, and the company's distribution runs through its own website, Gumroad, and a handful of secular-homeschool marketplaces like Modulo.

Blossom & Root is one of a small number of credibly secular homeschool curricula with Charlotte Mason and Waldorf sensibility. Most Charlotte Mason-styled programs carry explicit or implicit Christian framing (Ambleside Online, Simply Charlotte Mason, A Gentle Feast); most strictly secular homeschool programs (Oak Meadow aside) lean Waldorf or progressive-education. Garner's positioning, nature-study-centered, literature-heavy, kindergarten-appropriate, and fully secular, fills a gap that other publishers have not built for. The company's public About materials describe the curriculum as "creative, nature-based, secular homeschooling," and the framing is consistent in the product itself: the book list avoids religious titles, the holiday rotation observes cultural and seasonal rather than religious occasions, and nature-study content treats the natural world as phenomenon rather than creation.

The curriculum is delivered entirely as digital PDF download. Garner has elected not to move into print-and-ship fulfillment, and that design choice shapes the customer experience. Families print the guides and student notebooks themselves or send the PDFs to a local print shop. The trade-off is lower cost (no inventory, no shipping) at the price of parents doing the printing.

The core pedagogy

The Level 0 spine is five interconnected strands that rotate across a 36-week calendar: Language Arts, Nature Study, Science (with integrated math), Picture and Music Study, and what Garner calls "The History of Me", a personal history and geography exploration centered on the child's own family and neighborhood. Each strand ships as a parent guide and a corresponding student notebook. The publisher's own Level 0 product page lists concrete page counts: an 84-page Language Arts parent guide with a 124-page student notebook, a 105-page Science parent guide, a 73-page Nature Study parent guide with a 53-page notebook, and a 128-page Arts and History parent guide. This is substantial material for a kindergarten product; the density belies the "gentle" framing.

Scope and sequence is genuinely Charlotte-Mason-adjacent. Short lessons, a lot of read-aloud time, hands-on nature observation, and narration, the child retelling a story in their own words, anchor the early-literacy work. Phonics is present but reviewed rather than newly taught: Garner assumes letter sounds have been introduced in the Early Years volumes or in general household reading, and Level 0 practices CVC-word building rather than starting from scratch. Science is presented as phenomenon and exploration rather than as mastery of a fixed content list. The nature-study rotation covers North American mammals, eggs and seeds, and the astronomy basics, a thoughtfully-chosen first-year sequence rather than a comprehensive survey.

Signature mechanics: (1) Five-strand weekly rotation, language arts, nature, science, arts, history-of-me, each touched on every week but not every day. (2) Ten-to-thirty-minute lessons, deliberately short focus blocks, appropriate to a five-year-old's attention span. (3) Picture study and music study with specific artists and composers, nine of each per year, including Van Gogh, O'Keeffe, Matisse, Vivaldi, Brahms, Copland. (4) Parent guide plus student notebook per strand, every subject area ships with both the teaching-side guide and the child-facing notebook, rather than a single all-in-one workbook.

A day in the life

A five-year-old using Blossom & Root Level 0 starts the day informally. Breakfast, outside time, a casual morning block. Around 9:30, the parent opens the Language Arts guide and works for 15-20 minutes on the week's phoneme review and a short CVC-word-building activity from the student notebook. A 10-minute break, typically outside, is followed by a 20-minute nature study block using the week's Nature Study prompt (observing a bird, drawing a seed, sketching an egg shape) and logging in the Captain's Log student notebook. Morning might end with a 15-minute read-aloud from the week's literature selection.

After lunch and a nap or rest, the afternoon is lighter. A picture study block introduces the week's artist (the parent reads a short biography, shows a few reproductions, asks the child what they notice). A music study block plays a recording of the week's composer. On some days the afternoon includes a 20-minute science exploration, a simple experiment, a living/non-living classification game, an anatomy conversation, pulled from the Science parent guide. Total focused instructional time runs 90 minutes to two hours, distributed across the morning and afternoon, with most of the remaining day being unstructured play, outdoor time, and household rhythm.

The curriculum is intentionally designed to occupy a small fraction of the day. Garner's assumption, explicit in the parent guides, is that young children need ample unstructured time alongside structured learning.

What they do exceptionally well

Secular Charlotte Mason with real Charlotte Mason craft. This is the single hardest positioning to find in homeschool publishing. Garner manages it by leaning on Mason's "living books" and narration principles while excluding the religious content that typically accompanies them. The result is a curriculum that non-religious families can use without editing and that sympathetic Christian families can still find valuable for its literary and nature-study frame.

The art and music curriculum. Nine artists and nine composers in a single kindergarten year, with real biographical sketches and curated works, is denser than most kindergarten programs attempt. For families who treat arts exposure as foundational, this is a real strength.

Production values at the price point. The parent guides and student notebooks are cleanly designed, legibly typeset, and visually consistent. For a small-publisher PDF product in the budget tier, the craft level is notably higher than most peer products.

Genuine flexibility. Garner explicitly designs the strands to be usable independently, a family can buy only the Nature Study component and use it alongside a different Language Arts program, or vice versa. The product works as a whole and as parts.

What they do poorly

PDF-only delivery pushes printing costs to families. At the price point, this is a reasonable trade, but families who don't own a decent printer or who want bound copies will spend $40-$80 per year on print-shop work on top of the curriculum purchase. Some families find this a deal-breaker.

Not a phonics-from-scratch program. Level 0 reviews phonics rather than teaching it from zero. Families whose five-year-old hasn't had any letter-sound exposure will need a separate phonics program (The Good and the Beautiful Primer, All About Reading Level 1, or Logic of English Foundations) paired alongside. The Level 0 guide states this assumption explicitly, but it surprises first-time homeschool parents.

No Catholic, Orthodox, or explicitly Christian content. This is the design, not a flaw, but it means Christian families who want integrated faith content throughout will need a separate religion curriculum. For most Christian families, that's easy to handle; for some, the absence is an active mismatch.

Small-operation support. Garner and a small team run the company. Customer service is responsive but not scaled. Families who need deep technical help with a specific learning challenge will find the support thinner than what a larger publisher's staff can offer.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Blossom & Root Level 0 if: you want a genuinely secular Charlotte Mason-inflected kindergarten; you have a five-to-seven-year-old who has had some letter-sound exposure and is ready to review rather than start phonics; you value art and music study at the kindergarten level; you are willing to print PDFs; you want flexibility to use strands independently.

• Skip Blossom & Root Level 0 if: your child needs phonics-from-scratch instruction (pair with a dedicated phonics program or choose a different curriculum); you want a bound, print-shipped product; you need Christian, Catholic, or other religious content integrated throughout; you want a heavily-scripted, minute-by-minute teacher guide; your child is under five and still in the preschool age range (look at Early Years Vol. 1 or Vol. 2 instead).

Cost honest assessment

Blossom & Root Level 0 retails at approximately $65-$90 for the full digital package as of April 2026 per the publisher's Gumroad listings, with frequent seasonal discounts that bring the price lower. Families can buy the Level 0 bundle as a whole or purchase individual strands (Language Arts, Nature Study, Science, and so on) à la carte for $20-$25 each. Printing costs on top add roughly $40-$80 per year depending on whether families print at home or at a print shop, and companion book purchases add another $50-$150 depending on how much of the book list a family borrows versus buys.

By comparison: Oak Meadow Grade K retails around $450-$550 for the print package. Torchlight Kindergarten (PreK-2) runs around $150-$200. Sonlight PreK package runs $400-$500. Blossom & Root Level 0 is clearly in the budget tier; the trade-off is the publisher's small scale and PDF-only delivery, not academic content quality.

All-in cost for a family of one kindergartner at Blossom & Root Level 0 with printing and a few book purchases: $150-$250 for the year. Pair with a stand-alone phonics program (e.g., All About Reading Level 1 at $120) and the family is still under $400 for a complete kindergarten setup.

ESA eligibility notes

Blossom & Root is not consistently listed on state ESA marketplaces. Several state programs (Florida's MyScholarShop, Arizona's ClassWallet) sometimes carry Blossom & Root products through retailer intermediaries; families should search their state marketplace directly before assuming eligibility. Digital PDF curricula are handled unevenly by ESA programs, some states cover them like any other curriculum purchase, others require physical deliverables. ESA-funded families should verify with their state program administrator whether Blossom & Root's PDF delivery qualifies under their state's rules before purchasing. Because the curriculum is secular, it does not run into the religious-materials restrictions that complicate ESA purchases of some Christian curricula.

Alternatives

• Oak Meadow Grade K, a family would pick Oak Meadow over Blossom & Root for a more substantial, Waldorf-leaning kindergarten with print-shipped materials and optional teacher support, at a meaningfully higher price point.
• Torchlight Kindergarten, a family would pick Torchlight over Blossom & Root for a similarly secular, literature-based kindergarten with a different book list leaning more into diverse and contemporary titles, also at the budget tier.
• Build Your Library Kindergarten, a family would pick Build Your Library over Blossom & Root for a secular literature-based program with Charlotte Mason influence and a different book rotation, especially if they want a more heavily scheduled daily guide.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed Blossom & Root's publisher site at blossomandroot.com, the Level 0 product page at blossomandroot.com/level-0, the Gumroad listings at blossomandroot.gumroad.com, and Kristina Garner's published bio via LinkedIn. We cross-referenced the company's founding year and curriculum scope against a Teach Your Kids interview with the founder and the Modulo product listing. Prices and program details verified April 2026.