In this post, I thought I would discuss choosing curriculum. The hard part with this is that it will look different for each family. But, I will try to give you some tools I've come across that have helped me in making choices for our family.
For our family, I wanted to go with a classical curriculum, and I found Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise's book, A Well Trained Mind, to be very helpful in guiding me with my choices. There are other styles of homeschooling though. The seven main styles are classical, Charlotte Mason, Montessori, Unschooling, School-at-Home, Unit Studies, and Eclectic. Because others have already explained in length, much better than I could, all these different methods, I'll leave you with a link to The Best Schools that describes all these methods. You can read through it and decide which style best suits your teaching style and your children's learning styles. I would suggest to pick one style and go with it, and not try to fit a style to each child.
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| Cathy Duffy Reviews |
Once you've figured out what style of homeschooling is right for your family, start researching curriculum that fits into that style. My favorite site to helping to select what I want is Cathy Duffy Reviews. She has detailed reviews of pretty much any curriculum out there. I would suggest looking at her website on a computer instead of your phone. One of my favorite parts of her website is the "Instant Key" (on phones you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find this, which is why I suggest using a computer instead). This can tell you at a quick glace some of the key things you'll want to know. Another thing you'll notice is by many of the links to reviews have a little red apple next to them. These are her top picks. Many times they'll also be "endorsed" by other sources as well, such as "A Well-Trained Mind," that I mentioned above. If you're not sure where to start, these are some good ones!
If hand-picking curricula for each subject seems overwhelming to you, there are many "boxed sets" of curricula to choose. Cathy Duffy Reviews has a list with links to all of their reviews for boxed sets.
Once you have selected the curriculum you want to use with your children, you can being the search to buy it. When it's not a workbook, I like to buy second hand books. It's cheaper, and if you're friends with me, you know that that's how I roll! There are plenty of places to buy curriculum. Cathy Duffy does provide links for you, making it super convenient, but sometimes with a little looking around, you can find it elsewhere cheaper. Some curriculum is only sold through the publisher's website though, unless you can find it on Ebay or a Facebook curriculum re-sale site. A few places that I've bought curriculum from that aren't specific to just one publisher are The Curriculum Store and Amazon. With Amazon, when I'm looking at non-consumables (things that aren't workbooks), I always look at the used copies and select either a "Very Good," "Like New," or occasionally a "New" copy from a seller that has decent reviews. It can save you some money! Remember to use your sales tax exempt status and to save your receipts using an organization system that will work best for you as I discussed in my second post about homeschooling.
I think it's important to make many of these decisions yourself and choose what you think will work best for your family, so I don't want to list the curricula we use in this post. For now, start your own research. I know some of you have specifically asked me about math, since I was a math teacher before having kids. In my next post, I'll share my math recommendations and what we use for other subjects, along with why I chose them. If my reasons for choosing them seem like reasons that would work well in your family, then I'm happy to recommend it!
Here are quick links to the other posts in this series.
Part 1: Reporting to Your School District and Assessments
Part 2: Reimbursement and Tax Exempt Status
Part 4: Our Curriculum Choices
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