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.