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How to choose the best homeschool curriculum for your family and their needs.
Homeschooling is simply teaching your children at home but there are a thousand ways to get this done.
You may have a variety of different needs based on your location, your personality, how your children learn and your budget.
There shouldn’t be any shame in what style you choose to homeschool or what curriculum you use.
Often moms can feel pressure from other homeschool families to “do what they’re doing” and conform.
Here are some things to consider when choosing your homeschool curriculum.
How to choose the best homeschool curriculum for your family.
What is your homeschool style?
Curriculums range from textbooks and workbooks to unit studies and hands-on projects.
You will need to take into consideration your needs and how your children love to learn.
I personally can’t handle a project for every single subject. We usually pick a subject like science or history for hands-on learning.
I’m not a huge crafty/experient mom so it’s important for me to account for this before I pick a curriculum.
Other curriculums are very reading heavy and can be hard for struggling learners.
What is your homeschool budget?
I recommend setting aside a budget for your homeschool. Many families use a portion of their tax return to purchase what they need for the year.
That being said, you can homeschool on the cheap or spend thousands per year.
Sites like Easy Peasy Homeschool provide completely free education that is very rigorous and all you need is internet access.
Other curriculum companies like Sonlight provide extensive book packages for the year but can run up to $1000 depending on what package you purchase.
For our family, I normally spend about $1000 per year to homeschool all 4 kids.
This amount varies depending on what I can find used or books I can reuse on my bookshelf.
I could absolutely homeschool way cheaper but I choose not to because I am a curriculum addict.
You need to decide what an appropriate budget for your family is and that needs to include extracurricular items like piano lessons, art lessons, sports, field trips, and school supplies.
What is your homeschool teaching style?
What curriculum you use will greatly depend on how you like to teach and the amount of parent-directed time you want to do.
Some curriculums like Christian Light Education are written to your child and can be done mostly individually with you checking the work at the end of school time.
Other curriculums like My Father’s World are parent-led and you will need to guide and teach out of the teachers manual for the majority of the lesson.
I like to visualize how the school time will run and see how much time I have to actively sit down with my children and work with them.
Can you just supervise them and answer questions while working on the computer or do you want to be teaching the whole time?
For younger children, you will be heavily involved no matter what curriculum you choose as they learn to write and read.
Another thing to consider is how scripted you want the lessons to be. Personally I don’t want the teachers manual to tell me exactly what to say word for word.
Many new homeschool parents appreciate having exactly what to say included though.
Before purchasing a homeschool curriculum
Before purchasing a curriculum, try to see a sample lesson and visualize what it would be like in your household.
Are you teaching the whole time?
Can the kids work independently?
Does it come with everything you need or do you have to source library books?
It can be helpful to ask other homeschool parents or ask in a Facebook group what they think of a curriculum.
You don’t want a huge surprise after you purchase an entire year’s worth of something.
Try to attend a homeschool convention
It can be helpful to look at curriculum choices in person to get a feel for what you are buying.
Try to attend a convention if you are able or at least a used homeschool book sale so you can get the curriculum in your hands.
Before purchasing anything I always find an online sample or email and ask for a sample to see what the lesson would look like.
If every other page is a project or craft, it’s not going to work for my family.
Usually, you can give a sample to your kids to see how they react as well.
Remember, you will be using this curriculum the entire year (except for if you hate it and decide to buy something else).
You have total freedom to chuck any curriculum out the window (or sell it) and try something else that will work better for your family.
Sometimes we go through seasons where a certain book doesn’t work for us but I find if I pull it out later, it is the right time.
Good Curriculum for Beginner Homeschoolers
I have a list of the best Unit Studies for you to review.
What are my other top curriculum picks?
Christian Light Education for workbook-style/ independent learning.
Abeka Books for the most “school like material”.
BJU Press is also similar to traditional schools with great Christian content.
Christian Liberty Press uses a variety of publishers and has some workbooks of their own. Some homeschools just order their lesson plans because they are simple and inexpensive.
Gather ‘Round which is a new unit study curriculum by HomeschoolOn which I love and have a full review in the link above.
Easy Peasy Homeschool is an online curriculum that is free for anyone to use for any grade. The content is very rigorous in my opinion and a great option for those on a budget.
Power Homeschool is an online video curriculum covering all grades but perfect for older grades needing video for those harder math and science lessons. They cover every subject as well as electives.
The Good and the Beautiful is known for their language arts but does have great history and science as well. Language arts grades 1-5 are currently free to download and use but can be purchased as well.
Master Books provides a variety of homeschool curriculum and I have written reviews on their Language Arts for a Living Education and Math Lessons for a Living Education.
These are just a few of the wonderful curriculums available to homeschoolers.
How to choose the best homeschool curriculum for your family depends on your style, budget, and personality.
