When it comes to starting a new school year, it’s often overwhelming looking at all of the homeschool curriculum options. Will you used a boxed curricula? Will you piece together your own curriculum? Will you use an online program or a text book? Hands-on? Notebooking? Lapbooks? Do the choices ever end? Where do you even begin?

Over the past thirteen years, I have tried so many different curriculum options. We’ve done a boxed curriculum, and we’ve used textbooks. We’ve done an online program or two. We’ve done hands-on, notebooking, and lapbooking. Different seasons in our homeschooling journey have called for different styles of curriculum to fit our different stages of life. 

 7 Tips for Choosing Your Homeschool Curriculum

When we started homeschooling thirteen years ago, I borrowed most of my curriculum from my aunt who had a daughter a year ahead of Logan. It worked for the time being. We didn’t have a ton of money to buy curriculum that year. It was all textbook-based, but it got the job done. I spent the year researching curriculum for the next year. The problem with spending so much time researching is that I always found something that “might” work better than what I was currently using. I wasted so much money purchasing things that either didn’t work for us or worked just as well as what we were already using. Yes, there were times I discovered a new treasure, but that was the exception not the general outcome. Through my own experiences, I have discovered a few things to make choosing homeschool curriculum a little easier.

1. Look at your life circumstances.

Is homeschooling a long-term endeavor? Or, is it a year-by-year decision? If it’s a year-to-year decision, you may want to look at your school district’s standards to ease the transition into or back into public school. If your goal is to homeschool long-term, you don’t need to worry about the district’s standards {unless you are required to do so by your state’s homeschool laws}. What are the ages and stages of your homeschool? If you have five children under the age of eight, your homeschool curriculum choices may look different that someone who only has kids in the 6-8 year old range. Will you combine your kids for certain subjects or is everyone working at their own grade-level? How many children will ultimately cycle through your curriculum? For me, I was less willing to invest in a high-dollar boxed curriculum for one child than I was if I planned to use it with all three kids. Using certain programs with all three of my kids also made me more likely to purchase it new instead of used in the hopes that it would hold up better than a worn-out used copy. If I’m only using a program with one child {my youngest}, I’m more likely to find the cheapest option even if I have to add a little packing tape to the spine of a book.

2. What is your worldview?

Is it important to you to find curriculum that has a certain religious foundation? Or, is it important to you that it NOT have a religious base? You need to consider this when searching for curriculum.

[bctt tweet=”I have discovered a few things to make choosing #homeschool curriculum a little easier. #ihsnet”]

3. What are your children’s learning styles?

Do you have a child who learns best doing hands-on activities? If so, you may want to steer clear of workbooks? My youngest loved workbooks and I had a basketful of them from the Dollar Tree or Target’s Dollar Spot when she was younger. We also did lots of lapbooks when she was younger. I love curriculum that is literature-based, but that may not work for your learner. It’s important to look at how your child learns best so you can find a curriculum that will allow him/her to thrive.

4. What is your teaching style?

I’ve bought things in the past that I just could not teach. For instance, after researching Tapestry of Grace for a very long time and trying some sample lessons with my kids, I ordered a whole set one year. It was a disaster! I could not wrap my head around how to teach it, because it wasn’t my style. {My kids didn’t love it either so we scrapped it and went with something else.} There are programs that work well for my kids that I don’t love to teach, but I can usually make it work and adapt it to my learning style.

5. What are your goals?

Do you want to follow a 3- or 4-year history cycle? Or, do you want to follow your child’s interests? Do you think it’s important to teach sentence diagramming? Or do you think diagramming is from the Devil? Do you want a math program with a mastery approach or a spiral approach? Or, do you want to use living books? Do you want literature-based curricula? Do you have a science sequence in mind? It’s important to look ahead when choosing curriculum. I made a lot of curriculum choices this year {for my 6th grader} with high school in mind. Where do I want her to be at the end of middle school in math, science, Latin, and history so that she can get all her credits for high school?

[bctt tweet=”Here are 7 tips to help you choose the right #homeschool curriculum for your family. #hsconnect”]

6. Is there a homeschool method you wish to align with?

Do you want a Charlotte Mason-style homeschool? Or are you more Classical? Will you be delight-directed or more school-at-home? It’s important to define what works best for your family, and then find curriculum that aligns with your style. I am an eclectic homeschooler that leans toward a more classical style. We do use textbooks for a few subjects. We diagram sentences and follow a four-year history cycle {mostly}. We love notebooking, and we do lots of reading in as many subjects as we can tie in a great book. I find what works for my kids and use it without worrying about whether or not it aligns with a certain method. One method doesn’t fit everyone in my family all at the same time.

7. Now it’s time to choose.

Now that you’ve gone through all of the steps above, it’s time to make your choices. Remember that what you choose today does not lock you in forever. Use it this year. If it doesn’t work as written, can you tweak it and adapt it to make it fit your family? I will admit that I tweak a lot! There are several curricula I love, but I still tweak it to fit our homeschool. Very rarely do I use a program exactly as it is written. I don’t do the mental math problems in our math program. I don’t assign the writing assignments from our grammar books. I supplement history and science with literature, videos, and notebooking pages.

Remember:

You are not a slave to the publisher. Make your curriculum choices work for you! If you can’t, don’t be afraid to ditch it. There has only been one time that I absolutely could not make it work, and I had to ditch it and find something else. Usually, I can figure out some way to make it work at least until the end of the school year. Then, I choose something else for the next year.