secular homeschooling curriculum Archives - Page 2 of 2

Prepare Your Child for Grade Three

Do you feel like your child is prepared for grade three? During the summer, are you planning to help your child stay on track with their learning or have a free-for-all summer with no sign of curriculum? Do you want to ensure your child stays on track but not overwhelm them with too much ‘work’? Let us help you with all your questions on how to prepare your child for grade three.

Preparing your child for grade three while aiming to avoid summer learning loss.

The first thing you need to do when aiming to prepare your child for grade three while avoiding summer learning loss? Don’t stress so much! As parents, we often worry about ensuring our children are on track with their learning. That worry can become more and more of a concern when we think about pandemic learning loss.
How to avoid summer learning loss on top of pandemic learning loss is another concern facing parents, especially when they hear that most children lose 2.6 months of math skills, two months of reading skills and the equivalent of one month of overall learning each summer.
You can learn more about Summer Learning Loss here.
So, how can we help our children catch up on all the learning loss they’ve experienced, stay on track and not lose even more learning skills during the summer?
Reading, writing, math and learning, in general, are essential skills your child must continually practice to develop correctly, especially during the summer.

How to prepare your child for grade three? First, let’s simplify learning.

One thing you absolutely must avoid is overthinking their learning. We often assume that to prepare your child for grade three, you must have elaborate plans, and it has to be a huge, exhausting endeavour when the actual reality is that it can be a simple process.
One of the best ways to simplify their summer learning is to use the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 3 book! This book was created specifically to help children about to move onto grade three. Using the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 3 book, your child will stay refreshed and on track with their essential learning. This will also save you hundreds of dollars and time because you won’t be searching for a homeschool curriculum that will still be too much or too little when aiming to prepare your child for grade three.

Take a look inside the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 3 workbook!

Having an enjoyable summer without the stress of trying to complete extra tasks is essential! This is why our Summer Schoolio books have been designed to be simple. Without the overwhelm of having to complete a mountain of overwhelming tasks.
In the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 3 book, we have combined the best of our secular homeschooling curriculum concepts to bring you and your child a unique summer learning solution that will prepare your child for grade three. In a fantastic combination of homeschooling writing curriculum, homeschooling language arts curriculum and homeschooling math curriculum, we aim to help your child practice those essential skills to stay on track.

Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 3 overview:

The Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 3 workbook is loaded with materials that aren’t just educational; they’re fun too! This combination is an excellent resource to help prepare your child for grade three. Created for six weeks of learning, your child will have the opportunity to learn and refresh different learning concepts each week.

Week one includes:

The Summer Schoolio week includes three days of simple learning that won’t be overwhelming or take too long to complete.

Day one, Weekly Writing – Writing Fiction – and Math – Number Sense.
Day two has Weekly Writing and Math – Number Sense.
On day three, your child will work on Weekly Writing – Scrapbooking – and Math – Number Sense.

Week two includes:

The second week of Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 3 is similar to week one, just switching up learning concepts.

During week two, on day one, your child will have Weekly Writing – Autobiography – and Math – Number Sense.
On Day Two, they will have Weekly Writing and Number Sense.
On day three, they will have Weekly Writing – Scrapbook and Math – Number Sense.

Week three includes:

During the third week of the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 3 book, your child will be working on:

Day one, Weekly Writing – Reviewing a Book – and Math – Algebra.
Then on day two, your child will work on Weekly Writing and Math – Algebra.
Followed by day three, which is Weekly Writing – Scrapbook and Math – Algebra.

Week four includes:

When your child is working on week four:

Day one, Weekly Writing – Writing Non-Fiction – and Math – Geometry/Spatial Sense.
Then on day two, they will be working on Weekly Writing and Math – Geometry/Spatial Sense.
On day three, they will get to work on their scrapbook for Weekly Writing and the final day of Math – Geometry/Spatial Sense.

Week five includes:

Day one of week five is Weekly Writing – Poetry – and Math – Data.
Then on day two, they will work on Weekly Writing and Math – Data.
Day three is Scrapbooking for Weekly Writing and Data for Math.

Week six includes:

The first day of week six focuses on Weekly Writing – Summarizing – and Math – Financial Literacy.
The second day is all about Weekly Writing and Financial Literacy for Math.
Then on day three, your child can work on their scrapbook again for Weekly Writing and enjoy their final Financial Literacy assignment.

The schedule and assignments are repetitive but changing to help your child stay structured and interested. This technique helps your child master all the essential math and reading/writing concepts for grade three.

What does a typical week look like using the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 3 program?

The Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 3 book includes a sample schedule/calendar you can follow daily. It translates to:
Monday: Read a Book or Chapter.
Tuesday: Weekly Writing Day 1, Math Day 1, Read a Book or Chapter.
Wednesday: Weekly writing Day 2, Math Day 2, Read a Book or Chapter.
Thursday: Weekly Writing Day 3, Math Day 3, Read a Book or Chapter.
Friday: Read a Book or Chapter.
Keeping your child on track and up-to-date with their learning doesn’t need to be an overwhelming and stressful process. And you don’t need to take a massive chunk of time each time to accomplish it. The Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 3 book helps your child keep up with their learning needs, refresh and not become overwhelmed by too much information crammed into one day.

Prepare your child for grade three.

Pick up your copy of Summer Schoolio

Prepare Your Child for Grade Two

Is your child prepared for grade two? Should you allow your child to have the summer off to play and avoid books altogether? Or should you cram in as much extra curriculum work as possible to ensure they’re prepared and ready to excel in grade two? We can help you with all your questions and how to prepare your child for grade two.

With summer learning loss being a significant threat to your child’s learning development during the summer months, how can you keep your children from falling behind while helping them prepare for what’s ahead in grade two?

Preparing your child for grade two while aiming to avoid summer learning loss.

The first step to preparing your child for grade two while avoiding summer learning loss is to not stress about it. As parents, we often worry about ensuring our children are on track with their learning. That worry can become increasingly more vigorous with the concerns around pandemic learning loss.

Then there’s the concern about summer learning loss and how most children lose 2.6 months of math skills, two months of reading skills and the equivalent of one month of overall learning during the summer.

Learn more about Summer Learning Loss here.

How can we help our children catch up from the learning loss they’ve already experienced, stay on track and not lose more learning knowledge during the summer months?

Reading, writing, math and learning are essential skills your child must continually practice to develop correctly, especially during the summer.

Simplifying grade two prep to help prepare your child for grade two.

When you’re trying to prepare your child for grade two, don’t overthink it. So often, we assume that preparing our child for the next grade level needs to be a huge endeavour when the reality is that it can be a simple process when done correctly.

You can simplify their summer learning using the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 2 book! Created specifically for helping children going into grade two, your child will stay refreshed and on track with their learning, so they’re fully prepared for grade two. Saving you hundreds of dollars from looking for and paying way too much for a homeschool curriculum will likely not be what you need to prepare your child for grade two.

The Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 2 workbook was explicitly created for quick, daily summer learning to prepare your child for grade two.

Let’s look inside the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 2 workbook!

In the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 2 book, we have combined the best of our secular homeschooling curriculum concepts to bring you and your child a unique summer learning solution that will prepare your child for grade two. In a fantastic combination of homeschooling writing curriculum, homeschooling language arts curriculum and homeschooling math curriculum, we aim to help your child practice those essential skills to stay on track.

Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 2 overview:

The Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 2 workbook is packed with fun learning materials to prepare your child for grade two. Created for six weeks, your child will have the opportunity to learn and refresh different concepts each week.

Week one includes:

A summer Schoolio week includes three days of simple learning that won’t take long to complete.

Day one, Weekly Writing – Friendly Letters – and Math – Number Sense.
Day two, Weekly Writing and Math – Number Sense.
Day three, Weekly Writing – Scrapbook and Math – Number sense.

Week two includes:

The second week of Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 2 is similar to week one, just switching up learning concepts.

Day one, Weekly Writing – Writing Fiction – and Math – Number Sense.
Day two, includes Weekly Writing and Number Sense.
Day three, they will have Weekly Writing – Scrapbook and Math – Number Sense.

Week three includes:

During the third week of the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 2 book, your child will be working on Weekly Writing – Reviewing a Book – and Math – Algebra

Day one, Weekly Writing – Reviewing a Book – Math – Algebra.
Day two, your child will work on Weekly Writing and Math – Algebra.
Day three includes Weekly Writing – Scrapbook and Math – Algebra.

Week four includes:

When your child is working on week four they will complete:

On day one, they will do Weekly Writing – Writing Non-Fiction – and Math – Geometry/Spatial Sense.
On day two, they will be working on Weekly Writing and Math – Geometry/Spatial Sense.
On day three, they will get to work on their scrapbook for Weekly Writing and the final day of Math – Geometry/Spatial Sense.

Week five includes:

Day one of week five is Weekly Writing – Poetry and Math – Data.
Day two, they will work on Weekly Writing and Math – Data.
Day three is Scrapbooking for Weekly Writing and Data for Math.

Week six includes:

The first day of week six focuses on Weekly Writing – Summarizing along with Math – Financial Literacy.
The second day is all about Weekly Writing and Financial Literacy for Math.
On the third day, your child can work on their scrapbook for Weekly Writing and enjoy their final Financial Literacy assignment.

As you can see, the assignments and schedule are repetitive, only switching out concepts to keep your child’s learning structured and interesting. This will help your child master all the essential math and reading/writing concepts for grade two.

What does a typical week look like using the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 2 program?

Their workbook will include a sample schedule/calendar you can follow each day. It will look like this:

Monday: Read a Book or Chapter.

Tuesday: Weekly Writing Day 1, Math Day 1, Read a Book or Chapter.

Wednesday: Weekly Writing Day 2, Math Day 2, Read a Book or Chapter.

Thursday: Weekly Writing Day 3, Math Day 3, Read a Book or Chapter.

Friday: Read a Book or Chapter.

It’s incredible how simplified the process of keeping on track with their learning can be. It’s simple and not stressful! The best part is that their learning time can be accomplished in as little as one hour per day. This way, your child can keep up with their learning needs, refresh and not become overwhelmed by too much information crammed into one day.

Prepare your child for grade two.

Pick up your Summer Schoolio Book!

Prepare Your Child for Grade One

Your child is heading into grade one, a massive leap from Kindergarten. So how do you prepare your child to excel? Do you let them have the summer off to play and enjoy? Or should you cram in as many curricula as possible to ensure they know how to excel in grade one? Is there a user manual for getting your child ready for grade one? You likely have so many questions about how to prepare your child for grade one.

As parents, we want to help our children excel and do well in every aspect of their lives. To read, to write, to learn without any trouble, to play, to laugh. But how do we keep our children from falling behind and help them prepare for what’s ahead?

How do you prepare your child for grade one while avoiding summer learning loss?

First things first, don’t stress. After completing Junior and Senior Kindergarten, your child is likely right where they need to be in Grade one. The real issue is summer learning loss and keeping your child from losing all the knowledge they gained.

Unfortunately, most children will lose 2.6 months of math skills, two months of reading skills and the equivalent of one month of overall learning during the summer months.

Learn more about Summer Learning Loss here.

Reading, writing, math, and learning are all skills that your child must continually practice to develop correctly, especially during the summer months.

So now the real question is, how do you prepare your child for grade one?

Simplifying grade one prep.

We often think that preparing our child for the next grade level needs to be some extravagant endeavour when in all actuality, it is a simple process when done correctly.

Using the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 1 book, you can quickly help your child stay on track with their learning. Rather than looking for and paying way too much for a homeschool curriculum that likely won’t be precisely what you need to prepare for grade one over the summer, you can utilize this simple workbook. That was explicitly created for quick, daily summer learning to prepare your child for grade one.

What’s in the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 1 workbook, and how can it help your child?

We understand that everyone wants to have an enjoyable break during the summer months. This is why our Summer Schoolio books have been designed to be straightforward. Without the overwhelm of having to complete a mountain of tasks.

We combine the best of our secular homeschooling curriculum concepts to bring you a unique summer learning solution to prepare your child for grade one. Combining homeschooling writing curriculum with homeschooling Language Arts curriculum and homeschooling Math curriculum to help your child practice those essential skills.

Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 1 overview:

The Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 1 workbook is filled with fun learning materials to prepare your child for grade one. Created for six weeks, your child will have the opportunity to learn and refresh different concepts each week.

Week one includes:

Three days of simple learning that won’t take long to complete.

Day one, Weekly Writing – Writing an Autobiography and Math – Number Sense.
Day two, Weekly Writing and Math Number Sense.
Day three, Scrapbook and Math Number Sense.

The goal of week one is to solidify the knowledge they gained in Kindergarten about writing and Number Sense. Set in three days, it’s essential to acknowledge that your child can either do both Math and Writing for three days or break those up into five days. This is entirely customizable around your life and your schedule.

Week two includes:

The second week of Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 1 is similar to week one. Keep it familiar and straightforward. During week two, your child will have:

Day 1, Weekly Writing – Writing Fiction – Math Number Sense.
Day 2, Weekly Writing – Math Number Sense.
Day 3, Weekly Writing – Scrapbook and Math Number Sense.

Staying with the three days a week theme, your child will be working on mastering Number Sense and writing during week two.

Week three includes:

During the third week of the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 1 book, your child will be working on:

Day 1, Weekly Writing – Writing Comic Strips – and Math – Algebra.
Day 2, Weekly Writing and Math Algebra.
Day 3, Weekly Writing – Scrapbook – and Math – Algebra.

Brushing up on those Algebra skills, your child will be an absolute pro by the end of week three.

Week four includes:

When your child moves onto the fourth week, they will be working on Geometry/Spatial sense and writing Non-Fiction.

Day 1, Weekly Writing – Writing Comic Strips and Math – Geometry/Spatial Sense.
Day 2, Weekly Writing and Math – Geometry/Spatial Sense.
Day 3, Weekly Writing – Scrapbook, and Math – Geometry/Spatial Sense.

Week five includes:

Just like the weeks before, week five will focus on another mathematical concept along with writing/reading practice.

Day 1, Weekly Writing – Poetry and Math – Data.
Day 2, Weekly Writing and Math – Data.
Day 3, Weekly Writing – Scrapbook and Math – Data.

Week six includes:

The final week in the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 1 book follows the same schedule.

Day 1, Weekly Writing – Recipes and Math – Financial Literacy.
Day 2, is Weekly Writing and Math Financial Literacy.
Day 3, Weekly Writing – Scrapbook and Math Financial Literacy.

Helping your child master their financial literacy skills before jumping into grade one.

What would a typical week look like using the Summer Schoolio: Ready for Grade 1 program?

The book will include a sample schedule/calendar you can follow each day. It translates to:

Monday: Read a Book or Chapter.

Tuesday: Weekly Writing Day 1, Math Day 1, and Read a Book or Chapter.

Wednesday: Weekly Writing Day 2, Math Day 2, and Read a Book or Chapter.

Thursday: Weekly Writing Day 3, Math Day 3, and Read a Book or Chapter.

Friday: Read a Book or Chapter.

Are you amazed at how simple that is to follow? And the best part is that it can be accomplished in less than an hour daily. This way, your child can keep up with their learning needs, refresh, and not become overwhelmed by too much information crammed into one day.

Prepare your child for grade one by starting today with The Summer Schoolio: Get Ready for Grade 1 Book!

Click here For Schoolio: Get Ready for Grade 1

How to Use a Digital Curriculum

Are you curious why we are so passionate about our digital curriculum? Lately, we’ve been receiving multiple questions about what a digital curriculum is? How can you use a digital curriculum? And what are the best ways to be successful using a digital curriculum? This is why this blog is all about how to use a digital curriculum and why we’re so passionate about it.

Why do we promote and sell a digital curriculum?

Convenience is always the ideal. This is why the idea of having only physical workbooks in hand is the ideal and preferred method for most families. This is why we are passionate about finding an alternative that will make the family and the environment happy. It should be alarming that roughly 15 billion trees are cut down annually. Researchers estimate that since the onset of human civilization, the global number of trees has dropped by approximately 46%. Find more details here.

Those are some staggering and alarming statistics.

Especially because trees are such an essential part of life here on planet earth, trees and shrubs improve soil and water conservation while storing carbon. They also help moderate local climates by providing shade. Trees act to regulate temperature extremes and provide homes for much of the world’s wildlife.

Trees are so important and needed. Yet, they are the first to be cut down when we need lumber to build more houses, furniture, and paper for books. This is why we are committed to helping heal the environment. And while we are just a small, start-up company. We are determined to make a difference in the world around us.

Digital curriculum means: Fewer trees being cut down to provide for single-use books.

That’s important to us. We understand that some families wish to have a physical product in their hands. That ‘pen to paper’ feel is hard to replace. The pen-to-paper ‘feel’ is something that most people greatly value, and we agree. It is essential to be able to use a pencil to learn better writing skills, especially in the beginning years. We aren’t saying you need to throw out ‘paper’ altogether, as our digital curriculum comes with many options.

Partial Printing:

When you purchase our digital curriculum, you can only choose to print out the worksheets your child needs to practice with. The ‘reading’ and ‘lesson’ parts of each lesson can be used by simply opening the digital curriculum on your iPad. Read and learn together, then have the worksheets printed out – and let them get to work.

This is a sure way to guarantee that less paper is being used while ensuring that your child is still getting that pen-to-paper feel.

Fully Digital:

Alternatively, some families successfully download their digital e-books from their dashboard and use their digital curriculum with a tablet or iPad. They then have their child use a Stylus pen or Apple Pen to fill in the answers. Once they have completed the page, they save it. When you choose this option, you are using essentially no paper, which is a massive gift to the environment or your organization.

Your Digital Curriculum is Still Useful, Even if You Had The Workbooks Printed.

Those files aren’t just a waste. You can use the digital files to plan your lessons, look ahead, save for later, and help you stay organized and on track. Having your digital curriculum is also an excellent backup. What if you spill a drink on your paper workbooks? Those digital files are a simple replacement. You don’t have to purchase a whole new book. You can easily print off the pages that were compromised by juice.

Digital Curriculum Helps Parents and Teachers Jump Right In.

Our digital curriculum is also beneficial because you have access to it as soon as it’s purchased. That means you don’t have to wait for the curriculum to arrive to begin planning. As soon as it’s downloaded off your dashboard, you will have the ability to get familiar with everything needed to have a successful homeschool year.

Digital Curriculum is more affordable.

The curriculum will always be a little expensive because a lot of work and information goes into your curriculum. However, when it comes to a digital curriculum that isn’t printed – those costs become much less. We are committed to making quality home education available for families across Canada and The United States of America.

How are we giving back with our digital curriculum and workbooks?

We know that not everyone will want to have a digital curriculum. This is why we have offered a printing and shipping option through our third-party printer. All that paper takes away from our goal to help save the trees. So that is why we teamed up with One Tree Planted. Because we care deeply about the planet and give back to nature. We are investing 1% of monthly revenue to One Tree Planted. By doing so, we are planting trees across Canada and the world. Giving back where we can to help our environment.

Start small if you aren’t sure how you would feel about going ‘digital’ with your curriculum.

Grab a fun science unit like ‘Weather’ for grades 4-6. Click here to check out ‘Weather.’

This unique science unit is just 39 pages and covers fun lessons like What Causes Weather, The Sun, The Wind, All About Precipitation, Hurricanes and Tornadoes, Human Impacts on Climate and Meteorology. With this compact Special Interest Unit, your child can learn about the weather digitally.

Another excellent science resource is: ‘Optics,’ which gives you another chance to try it out digitally. Optics is geared towards Grade 7-8. This Special Interest Unit is only 38 pages and teaches your student about Light and Vision, Transmission and Absorption, Reflection, Lenses, The Human Eye and more. Click here to learn more about ‘Optics.’

These Special Interest Units are filled with great content. Choosing to use these units Digital vs. getting printing done will allow your family to try out a fully digital curriculum on a smaller platform.

If you need more tips on using our digital curriculum, our team is always here to help.

Tablets and stylus pens can be purchased at any electronic store. Our favourites for digital curriculum use are the iPad and apple pen combo to fill out the curriculum quickly.

Remember, whatever way you choose to use your digital curriculum, we stand behind you and are here to help you be successful.

Choosing a Homeschool Curriculum

Blog by Schoolio Co-Founder, Lindsey Casselman.

As a homeschool mentor, one of the most common questions people ask me is about choosing a homeschool curriculum. If the pandemic has shown me one thing, it’s that people have a significant misunderstanding of what curriculum is used in public schools and where it comes from.

Let’s clear that up first:

In Canadian public schools, there is no pre-fabricated, standard curriculum that the government provides and teachers use. What the government has, and you can access online via each province’s website, are what is usually called “Learning Outcomes” or “Curriculum Expectations”. These are, exactly as the name states, the outcomes of the curriculum that is taught. The government lists the concepts they expect students to know by the end of their grade year. The level of support for teaching these concepts varies by province. But the commonality is that every teacher creates or sources their own curriculum content to use in order to teach your child. And help your child reach those outcomes. There are no lessons or units that the government provides to teachers, this is part of their job.

So, the answer to everyone’s first question is no.

No, you cannot get access to the government curriculum, because there is no such thing. You can get access to the government’s expectations of learning outcomes and use them as a list to help aid you in deciding what to teach your own child. That is if it’s important to you to follow those expectations.

This leads us to how to choose a homeschool curriculum out of the many, many options out there. Obviously, having a lot of choices is always great, but it can feel so overwhelming when you’re brand new to the homeschool world.

Whenever I mentor someone on choosing a homeschool curriculum, I start with these four questions to help us narrow it down:

1. What type of homeschool curriculum do you want? Are you wanting secular (no religious affiliation), or faith-based? If you want secular material your choices will narrow down considerably. Some people want faith-based learning, some don’t really care and will use faith-based material and just “leave out the religious bits”, and others want truly secular programming. The choice is completely yours!

2. Do you want Canadian, US, or another country-based material? Most parents want material from their home country, especially for the history and geography units, but you can certainly source material from other places as well. I know one homeschool family that only uses old USSR educational learning material. I know many Canadian parents who use US material (as this is the overwhelming majority of products available). There’s no right or wrong answer.

The only thing to be aware of is that if you’re a Canadian and you use US material.

You will need to swap out the math parts that use units of measurement and money. Also, you will have to source some Canadian social studies if you want them included in your learning journey. None of that is too difficult, but it’s worth bearing in mind. Especially if you’re paying a hefty price tag for a math curriculum, for example, you will still need to source and purchase or create replacements for some components of the program.

3. Are you wanting to follow any specific learning outcomes or expectations? Similar to #2, this is about the style and expectations you want to adhere to when choosing a homeschool curriculum. Some parents want to follow their home province/state’s learning outcomes. Regardless of where they live, some people want to follow the guidelines of certain countries. I know Canadians who follow American Common Core guidelines. And families in Dubai who want a Canadian education for their children. There’s no right or wrong, better or worse, it’s whatever you want for your family. You’re also not obligated in most areas to follow any standards. Work on familiarizing yourself with your local provincial/state homeschooling laws to be absolutely certain.

4. Do you want to get all your subjects from one company? (This is called an all-in-one curriculum) or are you fine with (or prefer) to source different subjects from different companies when choosing a homeschool curriculum? There are pros and cons to both of these options and as with everything in home learning, the choice is yours!

The pros to an all-in-one homeschool curriculum are:

Ease of sourcing and use. If you like a company’s product and can get every subject from them, your curriculum hunt just got immensely easier.
Similarity across subjects. An all-in-one curriculum is going to mean you have all your content together in one place, it’s all the same “voice”, and it’s all the same instructional style. Every subject follows the same structure. This can be helpful for kids with unique learning needs if the instructional style suits them. And for any child who thrives with sameness and routine.
Easy planning. Some all-in-one programs will come with a schedule, or scheduling recommendations, and will often have all subjects laid out to be used in the same time frame. Letting you start and end your year at the same time across subjects.

Not always, but generally speaking in my experience, it has always been more affordable to buy an all-in-one curriculum than to buy subjects separately.

The pros to sourcing material from a variety of providers when choosing a homeschool curriculum:

When a company specializes in one subject area, they are more likely to employ experts in that sole area. For typical learners, this isn’t really necessary (for example, a fourth-grade public school teacher is at best an expert in one subject area, but not all). So, having top-of-line expert attention in every subject matter may be overkill for the price you will pay for it. But again that’s entirely up to you. If money isn’t an object and you want the best of the best in every subject, you can 100% achieve this through sourcing each subject area from that subject area’s leading experts.
Unique needs learners. There are curriculums out there developed specially for various unique learning needs. You can source a language arts program for dyslexic/dysgraphic children. There are different homeschool curriculum companies that offer math programs for gifted learners. And, you can source a writing program for reluctant writers, the list goes on. By choosing subject-by-subject, you can tailor each subject’s instructional strategy to your unique learner’s needs in each area. This is great for kids who excel in one or more areas while simultaneously struggling in other areas.

Are your children special needs?

This goes along with the last point, in that if your child has any special learning needs, you may be able to find a curriculum designed to meet those needs. If there isn’t a specific curriculum to meet your needs, (for example, there are curriculums for giftedness and dyslexia, but there are not, to my knowledge, curriculums specifically designed for ADHD children). Then your next best option is to consider your child’s needs before you start looking at the curriculum. Do you need something with an audio option for lessons? Do you need screen-free? Do you need a lot of hands-on and movement-based learning vs. seat work? These are all things to consider when you start your hunt for choosing a homeschool curriculum.

Choosing Homeschool Curriculum can be overwhelming.

Maybe you’re feeling more overwhelmed than ever before. I recommend actually sitting with these four questions and making a few notes on paper about each one. Do you have hard and fast requirements in any, all, or none of the above four? What are they? Does this feel daunting? It might, but it will really help you focus your direction when researching the homeschool curriculum.

Once you have a solid direction and wish list, you can start to research. You’ll be able to quickly weed certain programs out when they don’t meet an expectation you set out in your search. This will help you spend more time on the programs that do fit your student’s needs.

Recommendations and Reviews for Choosing Homeschool Curriculum:

Recommendations from people are great and can help you become aware of companies you may not have known existed. Remember though, that for any curriculum out there, you will find folks who LOVED it and folks who HATED it. The reason for this is because the curriculum, and what works for each family, are unique to the family and their needs. It’s going to be very personal for each person, and you’ll often find that people are very passionate about their love for the program they have found works best for them.

Just remember that there is no right or wrong, there is no “best” curriculum. Because families and learners are diverse, so is the homeschool curriculum. Try to find companies that have samples and reviews that actually show you the program materials, either in photo or video. You can take the reviews with a grain of salt while intensely inspecting the sample materials being shown to see if you think the program will work for you and your learner(s).

Is cost an issue when choosing a homeschool curriculum?

If cost is an issue, I recommend not even looking at programs that are out of your budget. Check the price first, if you can’t afford it, don’t torture yourself by falling in love. It’ll just make you inclined to be unhappy with whatever you end up “settling” for. I promise you, you can absolutely 100% provide an amazing education to your child without spending a lot of money or getting that really expensive curriculum package. All your child needs is your love and patience, and you will learn together regardless of your materials! So, please don’t sweat it if you’re on a tight budget for materials!

That about wraps it up.

Hopefully, you’ll find a program that really clicks for you and your child. Keep in mind that you are not married to whatever you choose the first time around. You can always try something new next year, or resell what you have in one of the many homeschools buy/sell groups (search for one local to you). Then switch gears mid-year. Some curriculum companies let you purchase mini units, so you can try out the content. This gives you a really good feel for the program before committing financially to the whole year.

And, if finances are an issue, being able to purchase a few units at a time throughout the year, rather than everything up front may be an important feature when choosing for you. Just remember that what you pick today may not work and that’s ok. There’s no failure in throwing in the towel on something that you tried and didn’t work. What works brilliantly this year, or for two years, or for five, might stop working one year as your children change and grow. Your teaching style, homeschool philosophy, or family structure also changes and grows. Aim for flexibility, patience, and maintaining an open mind.

Enjoy the process and have a great year!

Learn more about Schoolio’s Homeschool Curriculum.

Click Here to Learn More About Schoolio’s All-in-One Homeschool Curriculum