If you’ve arrived here, you’re likely in the early stages of researching homeschooling curriculum—and the search can get overwhelming pretty quickly.   Why are there so many options?   Do we really need 217 different math options?  If I pick the wrong one, will I fail my children?     I hope I can cut through some of the information overload and give you some peace of mind with your choice.

1. 1. Traditional Curriculum.  This method is one that might be the most familiar for Mom and Dad because it’s the most similar to a school setting..  Traditional method curriculum textbooks are written by teachers, for teachers, and assume you’re going to do a 9 month school year and want to cover material in a traditional manner, with each year building on the year before.   For example, in Math, you’re going to start with addition for a month or so, then subtraction, then multiplication, etc….with each year following that same format, just teaching progressively more difficult material.Within this Traditional Method, there are two camps, if you will.
      1. Mom Directed.  These assume that Mom is ‘the teacher’ and knows what she’s doing.  That can be a good thing, because they also don’t leave parents worrying that they’ve found the right mix, picked the right learning style, will be teaching the right concepts, etc.  Just do what the teacher’s guide says, and if your kids don’t turn out, it’s not your fault.   I’m kidding.   🙂
      2. Student directed.  They also assume a traditional, progressive teaching of concepts and contain everything you need, but instead of assuming that Mom knows everything and is there to explain new concepts, the material is all presented directly to the student at their grade level.  This offers both the reassurance that the student is learning the information they should be,  without the impetus of conveying it to the student being put on Mom.  It encourages critical thinking to have the student doing the reading, etc.
   2. The Classical Method.  The Latin people.  They follow Dorothy Sayers call back to the Trivium model, which takes advantage of a kid’s natural ability to memorize between the ages of 5-8, their natural desire to understand and question things from 8-12, and their desire to be grown up with the Rhetoric phase from 12-18.   These three phases of the Trivium produce students who are exceptional readers, widely read in the classics, and who make you pretty much embarrassed of your own education….but on the other hand, not every family has time for extensive reading, not every Mom or Dad thinks that the only way to learn English Grammar is by speaking Latin, and not every student likes to read.  Visual learners, etc can really struggle in a curriculum that’s expecting heavy reading for hours a day.Also, if you just pulled your kid out of public school at 9th grade, it’s very difficult to go from a teacher directed education where the teacher tells you what’s important to a student directed approach where the onus of the work is on the student reading to himself.
   3. The Unit Study.   This method is a favorite of big families, or even small families with a close spread of age ranges.  Instead of teaching your 9th grader American History and your 5th grader Ancient History and your 3rd grader Civil War history, a Unit Study allows you to teach all of your kids about the same topics at the same time.  So when you’re teaching a unit on the Civil War, your 9th grader is reading a biography of General Lee, writing a book report on that biography, and watching a documentary online. Meanwhile, your 5th grader is reading a 5th grade level book on Lee and Jackson, and writing a one page paper on it, and watching the same documentary.   The 3rd grader is learning how to write paragraphs, so they write several paragraphs on Lee and Jackson, read a book from the library on the Civil War, and perhaps watch the same documentary.   It’s usually a very cost effective way to homeschool a large family, especially if you live near a library and are willing to use YouTube or Netflix for documentaries.The only drawback is the amount of time it takes Mom to plan which resources to find to teach each subject to each child, and to keep ahead of the kids’ voracious appetites for new material.Conversely, unit studies that include everything you need to teach a child for a year can be a bit costly, since they often include 30 or 40 books per child, per year.
   4. Unschooling.  You’ve all heard of it, and likely you all know a family that makes it look amazing–their days are filled with trips to museums, pottery classes, library trips, a family vacation to Colonial Williamsburg where the kids are all in period costumes, and etc.  That family is unschooling…no textbooks, no schedule, they study what they’re interested in for as long as they’re interested. It’s like the concept of Free Play for children, but applied to education.   Children who are learning about a topic they’re interested in are more likely to retain and enjoy it, and Unschoolers have earned their place in homeschooling.   That said, for a busy Mama, that much freedom can be a bit of a bad thing, so if you’re not the type to wake up one morning and decide to hop in the van to head for a traveling art exhibit, you might want to look for something a bit more structured.  Either way, more power to you.
   5. Charlotte Mason:  Charlotte Mason isn’t a company, or a textbook, but rather an educational method named after an extraordinary British woman named Charlotte Mason.  She was an educational pioneer whose philosophy of education rejected the “one size fits all” method of the Prussian education model (which America currently uses) and instead emphasized the unique abilities and talents and interests of each child.  A more relaxed schedule with very short lessons for littles, and attention paid to using “living books” instead of textbooks, her method appeals to the heart of homeschooling.
   6. The Eclectic Method.  Oh boy, here we go.  This is where you select each subject for each child a la carte, choosing from several different companies each year, and mixing it up each year based on your child’s current learning style, your available time or budget, etc.   I myself was homeschooled with an eclectic method, and enjoyed many aspects of it.  If I were to guess, I’d say that more than 75% of homeschoolers do this regularly.    On the one hand, you’re getting the best of each company, the best for each subject area, so this method has major appeal.  On the other hand, for a new homeschooler, since that’s what this article is about, I’m going to be honest with you: if you’re new to this, I do not recommend the Eclectic method for the following reasons:
      1. The amount of research, suggestions, etc can be overwhelming without narrowing the field a little.
      2. When you’re working with five or more subjects from five or more companies, you’re then working with five teaching styles for Mom and five different ways the student has to learn to assimilate information.   It can be overwhelming. 
      3. If something isn’t working, and your homeschool day is frustrating and there are tears and fighting the student to keep them working, it’s often impossible to pinpoint the problem because you can be on your student for being behind in Math, but in reality, it was because the Grammar you chose is not his learning style and it’s taking him half the day leaving him no time for Math–so buying a different Math midyear won’t help, but how could you know!

That said, which method is best?  There isn’t a best method, any more than there is a “best car.”  It depends on the goals that you and your family have for your education.  Do you want to spend a third of your day outside playing with very little formal work?  Consider unschooling.  Do you have a lot on your plate and very little time for Mom to be gathering information and printing random worksheets found online and planning out what you’re going to learn in the next six weeks?  Consider a traditional method.  Do you have lots of kids close in age and feel like you’re just running in circles teaching the same thing over and over anyway?   Consider a unit study.   There are pros and cons to each of these methods, and each method has served tens of thousands of families well.  Perhaps you can sit down with your husband and make a prioritized list of what is most important to you in your homeschool.  Something like this:

1. Christian worldview.
2. Easy to use.
3. Minimal Mom time
4.  Lots of free play type of learning, little structure.
5. Fits in the budget  (Find a number, here, too, by the way.)

If you find a curriculum that ticks of points one, two and three but misses point four, put that on the short list to consider more fully.  For more on how—and how not–to choose the right fit for your family, click here!