Homeschool curriculum?

We use several, but Christian Liberty Press is our foundation.

We use Sonlight, Usborne, and Bethlehem readers, Saxon math, Key books for additional math practice in concepts that need it, Write Shop for writing, Wordly Wise 3000 for vocabulary/reading comprehension/spelling, Memoria Press for Latin, Apologia, and CLP for science, and Bible.

At the high school level we also include some books from Positive Action for Christ.

For the ones that prefer to do the piano on their own, although they do enjoy their lessons, I have Piano for Life on the book shelf; this is a self taught video/DVD series that is really good.

The results have been great, everyone learns at their own pace, and with the materials that best fit their learning style.

We do not like the thought of a boxed, or very prescriptive curriculums; especially those that are designed for school settings because the curriculum should be tailored to the children, not the other way around.

Home schooling is about individualized education, and that is what the decisions on what to use are based; as the children grow, and their needs change, so do the materials.

Hi ! I used Abeka when I was homeschooled. For my last year of high school we kinda mixed up the curriculum a bit. Depending on how the child learns there are some really good things out there. Lifepacs are awesome..tests are actually VERY easy. The Abeka video program is really good for hard to learn subjects (i.e Algebra and such…thank God for the videos lol) Also, Christian Liberty Press is really good. I would put it up there next to Abeka. It’s cheaper than Abeka and a bit easier (or at least I found it so). Hope that helped 🙂

Sorry, have never tried Abeka here. I’ve been using Sonlight. I don’t like their LA so we’ve been using Spelling Power and Easy Grammar. Starting in Core 5(Sonlight), it seems all SOOOO religious. (We’re more spiritual than religious around here). So this year, I’m not going to use a curriculum at all. I use Math U See. I’ve tried many different maths, but none of them have worked for us. We love MUS. Other than that, I’m working on putting together a plan on doing a bunch of unit studies. I’ve bought a book about what your child should know at what age and I’m just gonna go from there. I have some ideas of what I want to do. Luckily I still have a while before I have to implement them.

My son doesn’t do well with the workbook approach, so I don’t use Abeka. I think it’s well done though, but a little heavy on the busy work.

We’re pretty eclectic…he’s into everything, it seems like, and he likes to go at his own pace – which is just below the speed of light, lol 🙂 Here’s what we use:

Bible – the Bible…

Language Arts – Learning Language Arts Through Literature. The integrated approach is really good.

Writing – IEW

Spelling – www.spellingtime.com

Science – Apologia and unit studies

History – All American History, lapbooks, and notebooks

Geography – Hands of a Child continent studies, Rand McNally, Geography Matters

Math – Math U See, whill be switching to VideoText when we get to Algebra next spring

Spanish – The Easy Spanish

Greek – Elementary Greek

Reading – the library 🙂

We do several unit studies online through Hands of a Child, my son really enjoys that.

So I guess we use a bit of everything. It keeps him happy and challenged though!

For Kindergarten I used Hooked on Phonics for reading and pulled things together from books I got at teacher supply. Most of that year was figuring out where my son was, how he learned, etc…

For first we used Abeka. For my son it was too many worksheets. He is ahead in everything except handwriting, so he burned out pretty quick. Also he was at the end of 1st level wise and I felt like I didn’t use most of what I was sold. The display coordinator was ZERO help in determining what I needed and how to break up a set and still get all I needed, so I bought the first grade complete package and walked out over $500 poorer.

For 2nd grade we skipped to 3rd grade and used AOP Switched on Schoolhouse. Overall it is a strong curriculum, but the things I did not like about it was the spelling curriculum and the idea that I was left out of so much of the process.

For this year we are going to use a more classical approach. I am using Story of the World book and activity book for history and as a guide for which literature to read. Since I want to review some grammar I think may have fallen through the cracks we are going to move quickly through Language Lessons for a Well Trained Mind, for science I bought God’s Design from Answers in Genesis, and for math right now I am pulling worksheets together to review from last year, see what he has mastered, what he needs a little help with and where he is totally lost. I have not decided on spelling yet. He will also begin piano this year, just with me at first and then as he improves move to lessons. We tried lessons from the start with guitar and it was such a waste of $ because after $200 I finally got the teacher to tell me his finger muscles needed to mature to be able to master the basics, so we will try piano on our own first.

Thanks for the question.

When I first started homeschooling I used Abeka and Bob Jones. My son is in the 10th grade and I use only Abeka DVDs.

My mom has used Abeka with my brother, sister and I through middle school for all of our subjects except for math – we have always used Saxon. Then in High School she tried using different Chemistry and Grammer curriculums, none of which worked as well. We also use Rosetta Stone for French (it is excellent!!!).

I use Christian Liberty Academy, which uses a lot of A Beka books in its curriculum. I love the CLASS program because they send you pretty much everything you need, including books on how to set up a homeschool and how to teach, and they do all the grading. The children are also enrolled on their school roster, so they are included in the graduation ceremony at the end of high school if they choose to attend.

This will be our first year homeschooling, so I can’t say anything about results yet, but we chose Landmark’s Freedom Baptist Curriculum. It is based out of a Baptist Church in FL. I eventually want to work with unit studies and be more creative with our lesson plans, but this year, I thought it would be better to go as simple as possible. Then as we all adjust to homeschooling, we can venture out more. I really like the Tapestry of Grace Curriculum too, but it seemed too complicated to try our first year.

I wouldn’t use school in a box until the skills of the kid exceed mine.

I would use some texts and work books.

I like the concepts of sentence diagraming and would work with that a lot.

I like real word elements.

There is absolutely NO reason why at 10 or 11 year old can’t do the family income taxes. It’s just math.

I’d do a lot of geography. States, capitals, major cities.

Then foreign nations, capitals and major cities.

Then rivers, seas, oceans, lakes.

Museums, art galleries.