How I Choose Curriculum....

Earlier in the week, I shared Our Homeschool Journey.  Today, I want to share how I choose curriculum.  I mentioned previously, that I studied the local parochial school's books.  I also studied their scope & sequence as well as that of our local public school.  You see, I thought I was only in this for the short term.  I anticipated homeschooling Angel through middle school and then sending her back to public high school so I was very concerned with teaching her "the right scope & sequence".

I was initially given some older edition A Beka textbooks.  They looked consistent with my idea of education at that time, so we went with A Beka math, language arts, and health/science.  I created unit studies for history aligning with what our area schools were studying, which happened to be ancient history in 6th grade.  We spent several days a week at the public library, since we didn't have a home computer or internet access at that time.  Fortunately, it only took a short amount of time to see, it was a very inefficient system. 

As I started networking with other homeschoolers and researching various homeschool methods, I began to realize creating school at home was not really homeschooling.  I vowed to switch up some things for 7th grade.  It was an election year, so we studied American Government using a variety of materials.  I switched to Apologia Science and Bob Jones Language Arts.  Our approach was fairly traditional, but felt a little less restrictive.

However, after a year of BJU K5 Beginnings with RileyAnn, I knew it was still not working.  It drove me nuts that A Beka and Bob Jones were so classroom oriented.  I was tweaking like crazy to make it work for our one room, one student per grade, schoolhouse.  There were also many unnecessary bells and whistles which cost a lot of money for those traditional programs. 

At that point, I learned about Sonlight.  Angel had an insatiable desire to read real books and two years into homeschooling, I was beginning to gain a bit more confidence.  I felt it was time to take a new approach.  In 8th grade, Angel completed Sonlight American History In Depth, Core 100 and I used Introduction to World Cultures with RileyAnn.  The girls loved it!...and so did I.  They became excited about school and learned so much.

However, my paradigm shift really didn't come until the summer before Angel started high school.  We decided we actually liked homeschooling and that it would be in her best interest to continue. Once we determined she was not going back to public school, I felt like this huge weight had been lifted and I was free.  Free to choose my own scope & sequence based upon what God was calling us to do.  It was very liberating! 

This was the point I began studying Charlotte Mason's methods.  I was sparked by the idea of using living books as the primary means of learning.  I saw it in action while using Sonlight and I wanted more.  Enter a third student with learning differences and the deal was sealed.  A Charlotte Mason education was best suited for our family with multiple learning types, including auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. 

Fast forward to now, with a homeschool graduate and as I finish up my 8th year of homeschooling, I choose curriculum differently than when I first started.   I have come to realize that it isn't so much about which program you choose, but how you use that program.   I want to teach each child as a born person, not a scope & sequence.

I take a Christ centered approach, usually starting with a time period in history.  Then building around that with living books.  I believe history is "HIS Story" and therefore teach it chronologically from creation to modern, using God's Word as our spine.

From there, I take a look at each child's strengths and weaknesses, then I pull from many different publishers and homeschool suppliers.  I am no longer bound to one program for all subjects. I love having the flexibility to create and customize each of our children's education!

It is my intent to offer a broad and liberal education to our children, spreading a feast before them as we go.  Once the books and resources are chosen, I utilize Charlotte Mason's methods of short lessons to promote the habit of attention, copywork and narration as the means to thought and composition, and living books to promote truth, beauty, and goodness.  Every year I'm reaping more and more of the fruit of our labor and it tastes good!