Homeschool Curriculum Reviews
When we started the 2020-21 school year, we did so with desks, laptops, headphones, and best intentions to have a great year. Three weeks in, through no fault of the teachers and administrators of our school, we decided to pull out and homeschool. My husband and I were both working from home, and I had the capacity to teach and spare our kids hours on Zoom calls. We’ve homeschooled two other years, so I was not a stranger to the process. But, rather than having months to prepare and research curriculum, I had a few days to order what we would need.
Leading into the years in which we have homeschooled, I have loved reading other homeschoolers’ reviews of curriculum options. There is such a wide range of material available, and it’s at times overwhelming to try to figure out what your homeschool strategy or style is and which curriculum options will work best for your family. I can’t possibly unpack all the options, but I wanted to share what we’ve done this year, what has (and hasn’t) worked well, and a few things I’ve discovered over the years.
First, as far as curriculum styles, I fall somewhere between the Charlotte Mason and classical education models. We do a lot of reading aloud, story-based learning. In the past, I have cobbled together an array of curriculum to fit our needs. But, since this was a last-minute decision this year, I went for ease and purchased a lot of our curriculum from The Good and the Beautiful. There are multiple blogs and videos dealing with homeschoolers’ thoughts on using these resources because they are written and produced by adherents to the Mormon faith. A simple Google search will pull up those reviews, which I think can be helpful. For our purposes here, I’ll just say that we have not had any major issues with the curriculum from a faith standpoint, but it has been a good opportunity to talk to my 13 and 10-year-old about the differences in our belief systems.
Below is an overview of what we have used and how it has worked out.
Morning Time
We regularly start our mornings by listening to this brief podcast giving kid-friendly overviews of current events in the US and around the world. This has sparked curiosity, concern, and great conversation. It also helps us know how to pray for the world.
Read-alouds
We have read a variety of books in the morning, including a few that fit within the historical time period we’re learning in Social Studies. I want to mention three books in a series that I have found particularly helpful. These books by Chris Morphew and published by The Good Book Company (unrelated to The Good and the Beautiful) are meant for middle-grade students. The author works with students in Australia, and his writing style connected well with my kids. We all learned things and had great discussions around the content.
Social Studies
We used a combination of The Good and the Beautiful History, Volume 2, and The Story of the World, Volume 2. Below are my thoughts on each:
The Good and the Beautiful History, Volume 2 - I have not been overly impressed with this history curriculum. The timeline included is helpful, and I appreciate the emphasis on teaching kids to take good notes. But the year is divided into four units that skip around from ancient to modern history, which makes continuity and connections difficult. The curriculum includes recordings of dramatic sketches that may work well for some families, but we only listened to a couple before we all agreed that they were just too cheesy. The curriculum also has an obvious slant that I found slightly problematic at times. (For example, it spent 3 lessons on Christopher Columbus.)
The Story of the World Volume 2 - We did SOTW Vol. 1 a few years ago and really enjoyed it. The book is easy to read and entertaining, and the optional activity book gives depth to the lessons. I would print out the maps for each lesson and one coloring or activity sheet the kids could work on as I read aloud. The mapwork helped the kids make connections and learn some geography. SOTW does a good job featuring lessons on non-Western cultures as well. We supplemented with a variety of library books from the book lists included in the activity guide.
Science
We have done 3 units from The Good and the Beautiful and plan to wrap up with Chemistry. All of the science units have been enjoyable. There is very little prep for me, the guides are colorful and attractive, and the experiments are easy to conduct. For our current Botany unit, I am also reading aloud from Turning of Days: Lessons from Nature, Season, and Spirit by Hannah Anderson. I highly recommend it...it’s not a homeschool book, but simply a collection of reflections on Scripture and nature.
7th grade
Language Arts
My 7th grader has worked through The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts and Literature Level 7. I really like this curriculum. It includes dictation, geography, poetry memorization, sentence diagramming, literature, essay writing, and research. It’s largely hands-off for me, which has been a necessity this year.
She will not finish the book, however, because we took a break for her to do a writing course with Jonathan Rogers. He does courses for students and adults, so my daughter joined the 6-week “Writing with Caspian” course. The course included one lecture each week, an online writing assignment, and a moderator forum for sharing and critiquing work. She enjoyed the course and the assignments, and it was a fun opportunity to focus on creative writing, which is one of her joys.
Math
I considered a few options like Teaching Textbooks, which we have used previously, but we landed on CTC Math, an online option out of Australia. The format is simple, the teaching is clear, and the website handles most of the grading. She has done Algebra 1 and largely understands it, but I think there are a few gaps that another curriculum might fill in. Each lesson has online questions but also includes an option worksheet. We have not done many of the worksheets, but I think doing so might further solidify difficult concepts.
4th Grade
Language Arts
My 4th grader has done The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts and Literature Level 3. He could have done Level 4, but they were reworking it and coming out with a new edition, so it was unavailable for order. For that reason, many of the lessons are a bit simple, but there have been some new concepts like sentence diagramming. The book takes a helpful, gradual approach to essay writing, which is helpful for those who are easily overwhelmed with writing. It also includes poetry reading and memorization, art appreciation, geography, spelling, reading difficult words, and a literature reader. That would be my son’s main complaint—he’s not a big fan of the stories in the reader, which were written specifically for this curriculum. They focus on character development, but take a bit of a Little House on the Prairie-style approach, which is not always fun for a 10-year-old boy.
Math
My son preferred a workbook to an online curriculum, so we went with Math Lessons for a Living Education Level 5. This is a Christian curriculum that includes weekly stories that sometimes connect to math, but often are just stories about a family. To be honest, we skip them. We’re getting our reading in other areas, and they do not hold my son’s attention. Some kids may enjoy them, however. As far as the math goes, it’s fairly simple and easy to use, although I do have to do much of the teaching. Independent learners may be fine on their own, but some of the concepts are a bit above grade level and have required me to be more hands on.
Extras
Both kids have also used The Good and the Beautiful for Typing and Handwriting, and both have been helpful. We’ve done Duolingo for Spanish as well, although I wish we would have done a more robust language curriculum.