Curriculum’s I Currently Use

The last post I did was all about the curriculums I’ve used over the past few years. At the beginning of this year I decided we needed a change. After years of doing only online and some supplemental workbooks, I wanted to see what else was out there, get him off the computer and try some book based curriculum’s. I ended up using an eclectic style to homeschooling, mixing and matching a variety of different curriculum’s to fit my son’s individual needs.

I went with Christian Light Education for language arts, after hearing so many great things about it. They are an older company that’s been around for over fifty years, with very little online presence, save for their online store. And at first glance, it’s easy to see why some people would over look it. It looks outdated and well, a little boring. But inside you will find a solid curriculum! It’s not my son’s favorite, but he’s done so well with it in just the short amount of time we’ve used it and I can see he’s progressed quite a bit already. You get ten workbooks called light unit’s, which have three weeks worth of lesson’s in them. They also have two quizzes and one unit test in each light unit. You also get a teacher’s guide that you can read from as a script, though I find it’s not needed too often for that. I mainly use it for the answer key, and to see what we need to go over in that days lesson. At the beginning of the lesson a new concept is introduced, and each new concept builds off the last. It also reviews past concepts so it stays fresh in their minds. I can’t praise this curriculum enough, I’m so impressed with it. I may switch most if not all subjects over to this one at some point. Plus there is very little to no prep work, it’s just open and go mainly, at least for the older grades. As the name would imply, this is a heavily non secular based curriculum, so if secular is what you’re looking for I would skip this one. The prices vary but I don’t think they are as outrageous as some. For language arts it costs about $51 for the light units and $18.75 for the teacher’s guide, which is all you need for the lesson’s usually. If you wanted to get all subjects or most the price ranges from $300 to almost $500. Again, that’s for all subjects for the whole school year though.

For math I tried several out but ultimately we settled on Math Mammoth. My son really had the final say with this one. And I was so surprised. Mainly because of it’s simplicity. I didn’t expect him to like this one as much as he did. But maybe the simplicity is what he needed. It’s very to the point, giving the instructions followed by a couple of examples. Then the worksheet is just practicing the topic for a few pages. The way it’s set up and the pacing seems to be enough for him to understand the topic as it builds off the last concepts. He’s been doing really well with it so far. It’s also very reasonably priced. It’s less than $50 for a whole year’s worth of lesson’s! You even have the option of buying the lesson’s in two parts if you don’t want to buy the whole set right away. There are also links at the front of the books or on the website that take you to different games or activities to help reinforce the topic’s if need be. On the website you can find video lesson’s available as well. Most of the lesson’s can be instantly downloaded as a PDF file that you can print. There is an option for purchasing a physical copy if you wish, and the price difference from PDF to book is very little, by a dollar or two. This is a secular based curriculum as well.

The Good and the Beautiful

*Please note I’m only reviewing the read-together books of the language arts curriculum*

The next one is a pretty popular curriculum, The Good and The Beautiful. When you research homeschool curriculum’s, this one more than likely was one of the first to pop up. When we first started our new schedule for the year, I had to wait a week for Christian Light to come in the mail, so I decided to use this one in the meantime, since they offer it free as a download. We only ended up doing a few lesson’s. While it really is a beautiful curriculum, I wasn’t really a fan of it overall. But once Christian Light came in, I did decide to keep one part of The Good and Beautiful, the read-together book set. We found the stories to be interesting enough that he looked forward to reading a chapter a day. Which was such a win for us. Getting him to read willingly has always been a challenge. And here we are months later reading through the third book now. I like how they set up the pages as well. It has a section that student’s read, and a section for the parent or teacher to read. Going back and forth like that seemed to ease the pressure off of him where he was able to start enjoying the story and didn’t get overwhelmed by a lot of reading at once. His reading accuracy and pace have improved as well. He loved the first story, Timothy of the Tenth Floor so much that he wanted to get the rest of the series! Badger Hills Farm series has six chapter books that he has been excited to read, even on his own! Again, such a victory for us! This curriculum does have references to religious beliefs, so keep in mind this one is not secular.

For science I went with REAL Science Odyssey: Biology. It can be found on the Pandia Press website. They offer a try before you buy option and we were able to try out the first four chapters. My son loves this one, while my only complaint is having to make sure I have all the supplies we need for that days lab. It’s very hands on, with each chapter having about two to three labs each. While I say I complain about needing the supplies, the supplies are usually stuff you probably already have around the house, or easily able to get at the store. And for some reason, I always wait until the last minute to look at the lesson to see what we will need. But that’s on me. It uses a scientific approach to help the child “think like a scientist.” Basically a learn by doing approach. We follow the suggested schedule and do two labs a week. There are also a lot of labs that build over time, like the model of me, where they have a cut-out of themselves and add organs and labels. Or the tardigrade poster, labeling a little bit at a time over the course of the labs. This one is a bit pricier, with a digital download at $52.99, and the physical book being at $87.99. This is also a secular based curriculum.

The Story of the World is a history book that reads almost like a story. You can find all four volumes on many websites, such as Amazon and Christian Book. I ordered mine from Well Trained Mind’s website as PDF’s to print out. When we finished the Tuttle Twins American History books, I wanted something that had a similar concept as theirs. The Tuttle Twins felt more like reading a story than reading a history book and The Story of the World follows a similar approach. So far we both love it, it keeps his interest as well as mine. We are currently working through the first volume and learning about ancient times. They also have a separate activity book and test book if you want to add more while reading through it, as well as an audio book if you want to go that route. I’m seriously considering the audio book because trying to pronounce some of these names can be rough! Even with the pronunciation guide to help you. It does lean more toward religious teachings so I wouldn’t consider it entirely secular, but it does seem like it would be easy to skip over those sections if you needed to. A good substitute that is secular may be History Quest: Early Times. I’ve heard they are very similar and they too offer an audio version and study guide to add more activities. The Story of the World’s prices range depending on where you buy it, but I’ve seen it as low as $10 and as high as $80, though that last price offered all four volumes together.

Pride Reading Program And Share Your Story At Home

These two programs I just added recently so I can’t give too much information on them yet, but I will give you my initial thoughts. Later I plan on doing a more in-depth review after we have finished, or have gone at least half way through them.

• Pride Reading Program: I got this program because of it’s emphasis on working with kids with learning differences. This program uses the Orton-Gillingham method, which is a structured literacy approach to help kids with reading and spelling difficulties due to dyslexia, auditory processing, speech deficits, and other learning differences. But it will work for all children as well. I suspect my son may have dyslexia and I know he has ADHD, so he has struggled with reading and especially spelling. This program is mainly to help his spelling issues and is taking the place of our spelling lessons. Nothing I’ve used in the past has been effective but this one seems promising and a method I haven’t tried yet. They do give you lesson’s before you start the program to teach you how to teach it. The teacher’s guide gives you a script to use as well. My son doesn’t like it very much but I think it’s because it feels babyish at the moment, so just a warning if using with older kids, they may not love it at first. It’s starting us on basic three letter words he already knows. And the teacher’s guide is online and set up where you can’t really skip ahead easily. But that’s fine, as we are building up and learning the way it’s taught anyway. Looking ahead at the lesson’s to come, it seems like it will get more challenging as it goes. We’ve only been using it for two weeks now but I will give a full review when we get through at least most of it. It seems promising so far so I am hopeful it will help. It’s a little on the pricey side, at $144. But the good news is if you continue to the next book, you only have to buy the book and teachers guide. The other stuff it comes with is used through out the program.
• Share Your Story at Home: This is a writing program that has been used in classrooms and is now available to homeschoolers. It is a creative writing program that takes the child through the process of writing their own story. So far my son really enjoys it. He’s decided that his story will be about an alien that crash lands in L.A (a place he’s never been to) and how two conspiracy theorists and a scientist named Dr. Eggetation (no idea how he comes up with this stuff, haha!) befriend and save the alien (and his alien babies) from the FBI! I love his creativity and imagination and this has been so much fun for both of us. When he finishes, he’ll be able to put his story in a blank hard cover book they provide. A full review is to come after we have finished. The price is $60 normally, but sales bring it down to $42.