How to Find The Best Homeschool Curriculum for Your Family #homeschooling #homeeducation #homeschoolcurriculum

Have you decided to homeschool your kids and now you wonder HOW to teach them?

Or have you been homeschooling a while and now you are looking for a new curriculum?

Perhaps the curriculum you chose just isn't working and you want to know how to choose the best homeschool curriculum for your family.

Well, you're in the right place! Read on...



Does 'The Best' Homeschool Curriculum Even Exist?

Being a parent is a huge and very important job!

You are the one they look to for love, help, care and concern.

You fix boo-boo’s, read stories and chase away scary closet monsters at night.

You play games, tell stories, and if you are like a lot of parents, you prepare and then send your children to school.

But wait! You have made the awesome, wonderful, and sometimes scary decision to homeschool...

So that means YOU’RE THE TEACHER TOO! But what do you teach?



As homeschool parents we are always in the market for THE BEST homeschool curriculum.

Unfortunately, 'the best' curriculum doesn't actually exist!

All we can hope for is to find the best homeschool curriculum for our family where we are right now.

And that might change in 6 months or 6 years time, it might not be a single curriculum provider for all subjects, and you might very well have to customize your homeschool curriculum anyway!

But THAT'S OK!! We're here to help make the best choices for your homeschool family.




What is homeschool curriculum?

A homeschool curriculum is organized classes or subjects prepared for you by an outside company. 

You may create some of your own homeschool resources or buy from different companies, it all depends on your homeschool philosophy.

But a curriculum generally includes teacher’s manuals, reference book suggestions, workbooks or other materials, quizzes, tests, and study material for you and your child.

You CAN homeschool without using curriculum, but due to the extreme amount of work, time and effort, and preparations that it could take, many homeschool parents do choose to use curriculum.



How to Find The Best Homeschool Curriculum for Your Family

Whether you are new to homeschooling or have been doing it for years, many parents are always looking for the best homeschool curriculum.

It becomes a bit of a holy grail of homeschooling to be honest!



During your journey, you will find curriculum you love, curriculum you hate, and curriculum that is just OK.

If you're anything like us you will have different favourites for different subjects, and even for different stages of your child's homeschooling years.

We currently use Sonlight for history and English language arts, but a mix and match for everything else.



The idea is to know what you are looking for in a curriculum and how that suits your family and your homeschool philosophy.

This way you can better judge from the outset if it is right for you and your family.

Here are 5 important steps to finding the best homeschool curriculum for you.


1. Know what you like and what you don’t (and what your kids like and don’t)

This step is the most important step to finding the best homeschool curriculum.

You need to know what motivates you, what motivates your kids and what doesn’t.

For example, my daughters love science but they HATE jumping around from topic to topic, they like to get stuck in to one area for a while.



Once I figured this out, I could look for the best homeschool curriculum for them for science, which turned out to be unit studies.

We use our own unit studies for science then add some other activities on top.

This suits us best and means the girls can get stuck in to a science topic for longer.



2. What subjects do you want to teach?

This sounds easy, but wait until you get your first homeschool curriculum catalogue!

If you are anything like I was/am, you will get lost in all the wonderful things you can buy to help you teach your children.

There’s French, Chinese, Japanese, Latin, maths, science, reading, handwriting, calligraphy, printing, phonics, history, history of the Bible, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, civil war, pilgrims, history of the wars, dictionary skills, public speaking, spelling, vocabulary, and the list goes on and on and on!!!!!

And who wouldn’t want to teach their kids all of those things? I know I would!



So then you need to narrow it down and figure out what subjects you want to teach right now.

This will help you find the best homeschool curriculum for your family today.


3. Do you want curriculum with a Christian perspective or a secular perspective?

Just about every subject that you can teach your child can be taught from either a Christian or a secular perspective.

There are some great Christ-centered companies! We especially LOVE Sonlight.

It is important to decide what you are looking for beforehand, especially on important issues such as evolution vs creationism.

If you want only Christian curriculum, you can narrow your search and skip all the companies who do not present their curriculum in this manner.

And if you want more of a worldly or secular view, you can do the same.

This is a very important step to finding the best homeschool curriculum for your particular family.



4. Look for a good return policy!

As a rule, I do not buy it unless I can return it.

Keep in mind that most of the time you do not have these books in your hand when you choose them. 

You are essentially reading a “sales pitch” for each and every piece of curriculum being offered in that catalogue.

And they all sound great.



But I can tell you from personal experience, they are not all great!

Maybe it looks good online or int he catalogue but when it arrives it's all black and white worksheets or workbooks which your kid HATES! Return time.

So look for a company that will let you return items if they are not what you had in mind.

Curriculum is not cheap, and it is REALLY not cheap if you buy something you don’t like, and you cannot return it.

There are companies that will let you return materials within a certain period of time, so check that too.



5. Pray about it!

Ask the Lord for direction and guidance.

This is a very important thing you are doing for your children so pray or, if you're not religious, take plenty of time to think about what you are choosing.



Pray or think carefully about each and every subject. Make notes and compare different ideas.

Read the best homeschooling books, talk to other homeschooling parents, read reviews online, join Facebook groups for different curriculum to get more of a flavour for what they're about.

Taking your time is no bad thing and will bring you to the best decision for your family.


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