A Homeschool Journey, Part 5: Choosing Curriculum

We had made the decision. After years of reading about homeschooling, and having met a few people who were actually doing it, we knew that we would be teaching our kids at home. We had been reading to the children since they were born and provided lots of learning experiences in their early years. In my previous post in this series, A Homeschool Journey, Part 4: Early Education, I described some of the things we did. School attendance was not compulsory until age six, and children were required to be five years old before entering kindergarten. But our precocious four-year-old had known her letters since she was two and was eager to learn to read so that she could (in her words) read her Bible. She was ready for school. And so we came to The Question: What curriculum would we use?

We had seen a few advertisements in Christian magazines for some of the most commonly used curricula at the time: A Beka Book, Bob Jones University Press, Alpha Omega, and Accelerated Christian Education. The first two had lots of colorful materials that looked much like what most school children use. The other two were designed for children to use at their own pace, but they were less colorful and, in fact, looked rather dull. All of them were used in Christian schools.

We also consulted a few books that were invaluable in our decision: The Christian Home Educators' Curriculum Manual: Elementary Grades by Cathy Duffy, Mary Pride's Big Book of Home Learning Volume 1: Getting Started, and Teaching Children: A Curriculum Guide to What Children Need to Know at Each Level Through Sixth Grade by Diane Lopez. I carefully read and considered what each author had to say. Mary Pride's book was packed with information about homeschooling and included descriptions of the available curricula. Cathy Duffy's book was very thorough in its descriptions, but we noticed that she personally did not recommend the Bob Jones or A Beka Book materials. Although they were colorful and enticing, these materials were developed for classroom teaching, she said, and were not geared toward home education.

After a great deal of thought and prayer, I was still not sure what to do. Somehow, my husband managed to find a phone number for Cathy Duffy and gave her a call. He spoke with her for quite some time and came away with her recommendation: a spiral-bound manual by Ann Ward called Learning at Home Preschool & Kindergarten: A Christian Parents' Guide with Day-By-Day Lesson Plans Using the Library as a Resource. Unlike some of the other curricula we had looked at, this was inexpensive and was geared specifically toward homeschoolers, with young children in mind. We decided to take her advice. It was the best decision we ever made in beginning this new adventure!

Be sure to come back for Part 6 of my homeschooling series!