Popular Homeschool Curriculum Reviews
Popular Homeschool Curriculum Reviews
Homeschool curriculum reviews make it clear that there are more quality programs for teaching your kids at home than ever before. This is good, because a growing number of parents today are choosing to teach their children at home. There are several reasons for this. Chief among the reasons are their dislike of what's being taught at the public schools, and disapproval of some of the bad conduct of students at those same schools. That is, they don't want their children exposed to alcohol, guns, drugs and pre-marital sex. Homeschooling gives the parents a lot more control.
Fortunately, there are many good curriculum / homeschool programs. The best curricula follow similar paths as formal schooling. Students go through pre-school, elementary school, junior high, and high school. The subjects are the same basic subjects such as English, math, social studies, science, and history. Often there is a Bible course as well (if it's a Christian family).
But which is the best program to use? There are many different opinions. Let's offer you some advice some of the better known names in the homeschooling field. Please consider these homeschool curriculum reviews.
A Beka Book. This is a Christian "box curriculum" that comes better than almost anything available in reproducing the look of secular textbooks. Actually designed more for school classrooms, it still works well for homeschools. Their science and social studies textbooks, by the way, are absolutely gorgeous There seems to be a lot of busy work with all of their material, such as you'd find in a public school.
Alpha Omega, also Christian, has a reputation for being quite easy. Some say it's too easy and not challenging enough. They don't introduce many key concepts until later than is typical in school curricula. Still, it's affordable and adequate for the job.
Bob Jones is on the other end of the scale-pricewise: somewhat expensive. It requires a very "hands-on" teacher, and you'll need to refer to the teacher's guide often to get through the program. Still, it does a great job of keeping the students' attention. This is probably the most blatantly Christian, so it's great for committed Christians, and not so much if you want something more secular.
Calvert is an adequate curriculum. It does well enough at covering basic concepts, but sometimes it gets redundant. As a result, sometimes very young children get bored. Still, for older students, it works.
K-12 is a bit pricey, but sometimes you can get it at no cost by going through your local school district. This is high-quality, challenging curriculum, and it's completely secular. It does, however, take away some flexibility, since you're required to do all things exactly as they prescribe.
There are other curriculum offerings available, and you can usually find them by doing a Google search on "homeschool curriculum." And of course, you can always develop some of your own materials. Hopefully, though, these short homeschool curriculum reviews will give you an idea of what will work best for you and what benefits they offer.
