Choosing Homeschool Curriculum

Where do I begin to discuss a topic as huge and diverse as Homeschool Curriculum? I’ll just tell you what I know. After 16 full years of homeschooling I have tried a lot of different brands of curriculum. But first things first. Here are the most important lessons I have learned about curriculum.

There are three areas which you must satisfy in choosing Homeschool Curriculum:
1. Cost.
2. Effectiveness for the children.
3. Ease of use for you, the teacher.

These have been my four constant observations through the years of homeschooling:

1. One curriculum may not meet all the needs of all your children.

2. If you have just one child, you will still probably make some mistakes in choosing curriculum before you find curriculum that works for your child.

3. Your child/children will grow and the brand of curriculum that worked two years ago or more may not work as the child gets older.

4. Homeschooling isn’t cheap.

Now about that last one; I am a frugal person. I want to save money and get the most for my dollar in all things, including curriculum. With homeschooling curriculum you don’t always get what you pay for it…. but that is highly subjective. What is “worth it” to me may not be so to you. You can see that it is essential that you read, read, read about a particular curriculum. Read reviews, look at examples. Take advantage of free samples. Talk to parents who have used the curriculum, join Yahoo Groups and ask lots of questions so that you can satisfy those first three areas I mentioned.

Don’t be discouraged if you buy a curriculum and it doesn’t work. Check your sources and make sure you can return materials if they don’t satisfy you. If you end up with something you can’t return, try to use it and if you just cannot, look for resale opportunities like these:
HomeSchool Buy
Homeschoolers Buyers Co-op
Veg-Source
PaperBack Swap
HSLDA Curriculum Market

Keep your homeschool materials in good condition. Not only is it a good lesson for your children on taking care of their possessions, material in good condition brings a higher price if you decide to resell it.

Different kinds of learning styles will need different kinds of curriculum. You will need to read about learning styles and then determine which kind of learner your child is, then you will need to find out what kind of learner a particular curriculum works best for. Since Learning Styles is a very important part of teaching and many homeschoolers are using that information to teach their children, most curriculum brands address learning styles on their web sites or in their catalogs.

A child’s learning style is how he or she learns the best. The usual styles are:
Visual Learners: Learn from seeing
Auditory Learners: Learn from listening
Tactile/Kinesthetic Learners: Learn through moving, doing and touching

There are lots of ways to find out what kind of learner your child is, and you probably already have an idea of how he or she learns. My favorite resource for this information, and more truly important homeschool information, is the Elijah Catalog Resource Guide. You cannot order books from this catalog, it is out of date in that regard, but the information in it is priceless, or in this case, $5.95.

Knowing your child’s learning style will be of great help to you as you choose curriculum.

If you have more than one child, and if it were a perfect world, you could use one curriculum with all those children all through the years. Sometimes it has worked out for me like that. One example is Learning Language Arts Through Literature. We used this curriculum with all the children until I found something that we liked even better, Rod and Staff.

It was the same way for history in our family. I used to work for hours to get a history curriculum built every semester that I felt was covering everything the children needed to know. Then I found Tapestry Of Grace. I think TOG would have worked nicely for my older children as well but I didn’t find out about it until about 4 years ago.

Because of differing learning styles you will most likely need to have different curriculum for each child or at least use what I call add-ons. Add-ons are hands on activities, extra reading and projects that will help all your learners get the most out of a curriculum. One great add-on that we use quite a bit is called Lap Booking. THIS is my fav Lapbooking site!

Next time I will discuss particular curriculum and our experiences with them in hopes that it will help you make good choices for your children this year!