So, you think you want to homeschool?
More often I would have expected other parents express a desire or curiosity in homeschooling their children. Often times the first few questions are things about curriculum or “how do you teach them?”. In my experience there are three different main (long term) options. “School in a box” curriculum, piecing multiple different subject specific curriculum together, and co-op style. I’m going to be honest, I have zero experience with co-op style homeschooling and there are many other people who can speak to the topic with more authority than myself.
School in a box (SIAB)
Pros
Think Calvert, Sonlight, The Good and The Beautiful (TGTB), Memoria Press… you order the year that your child is at and everything shows up. You open the box, and go! Lesson plans premade. Workbooks that all match and go together. With companies like Calvert there is support persons that can be contacted. Lots of honest pros to doing SIAB.
Cons
Two main things to keep in mind: Cost and individuality. With TGTB being pretty exceptional, most SIAB curriculum can be pretty pricey (ranging in the 500-1200k range depending on year level and curriculum company). There is also little flexibility as far as when a child doesn’t mesh well with a specific part of the curriculum. If your child is struggling with Math-U-See, then Sonlight doesn’t really have any other math option as far as I’m aware. You would have to piece together a separate program to fit the needs of your kid.
One Piece at a Time (to the tune of Johnny Cash)
Pros
The other option that I see a lot of people doing (myself included) is to piece together a curriculum by using multiple different resources and companies for different subjects. This really allows for specific customization to happen. A lot of popular curriculums can be found second hand on marketplace or Facebook groups specific to homeschooling. Some popular names you may be familiar with are Handwriting Without Tears, Math-U-See, Life of Fred, All About Reading/All About Spelling, IEW.
Cons
The hardest parts about this “method”: knowing where to start and time. There are literally hundreds of different curriculum companies for each subject. An incredible resource for curriculum investigation is Cathy Duffy Homeschool Curriculum Reviews. She does an incredible job, and her 103 top picks is GOLD. The time is what I feel like people underestimate, everyone gets so hung up on which book to pick and they forget that you’re going to have to sit down and lesson plan all of this (which you totally can! But this is where burnout can happen)
What do I use
8 year old
- Math-u-see (Beta level currently)
- Life of Fred (once a week for “fun” math currently on Edgewood)
- All About Spelling (Level 1)
- IEW People and Places in Our Community
- Beautiful Feet Books (Early American History: A Literature Approach for Primary Grades)
- Michael Clay Thompson Language Arts (level 1)
- Memoria Press Cursive (New American Cursive Level 2)
- Typing.com (typing)
- Rosetta Stone (Spanish)
- Reading he gets to pick what ever book he wants as long as it is at or above his reading level
3.5 year old
- All About Reading (Pre-reading)
- Duolingo ABC (reading supplement)
- We play lots of games for everything else! And he listens to whatever the 8 year old is reading