Choosing Your Homeschool CurriculumTo help you choose your homeschool curriculum and be on your adventure, let’s first review what we have discovered about ourselves and our families. We have an idea of how our student learns, what kind of homeschool we see for our family, and now we want to take a look at the curriculum that is available. There are soo many good programs there isn’t any reason you should feel “stuck” with one or another if it just isn’t working for you or your family. I have chosen to group them according to the homeschooling approaches we covered previously. School-at-home HomeschoolingABEKA is an excellent example of a school-at-home approach homeschool curriculum. The lessons are laid out for you, the student has a “teacher” that presents the information and core subjects are covered. This is an excellent choice for those who want their student(s) to have the home setting but a classroom feel. Also good for those who are less organized and/or don’t have much time to spend putting a program together. ABEKA is very strong in their math and reading/phonics approach.Classical HomeschoolingThe classical homeschooling approach, looks at the education of ancient Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, and models a modern liberal arts education after these.Students read from the collection of literature known as "great books" to spark their minds and show them how other people thought. One popular way to approach these writers is to read an author’s works as you study the time period in which they lived; thus, students studying ancient Rome read Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, etc. The Sonlight homeschool curriculum is very much of this homeschooling approach. Click here for reviews on other homeschool curriculum reviews. Eclectic ApproachAnother approach to the classical homeschooling is to pick and choose textbooks from various publishers in the different subject areas and then structure them as a classroom teacher would do. This can be very time consuming and often costs more in the long run.Unschooling ApproachYour student will be the one who chooses the homeschool curriculum you use. In fact, it may not be a "curriculum" at all but a gathering of resources. You offer guidance and direction in suggesting what topic they might be interested in and then provide resources for them to choose from. Your ultimate goal is for the student to “need” to learn to read/write and thus ask for resources to help them do so. You also surround or engulf them in a learning environment that stimulates their urge to learn new things.Literature Based Homeschooling ApproachThis one is my mode of preference! I consider it to be the best of both worlds. Combining a classical structure to our “school” but with a more relaxed atmosphere where we are all learning together. I guess you could also consider it a form of eclectic!The entire program is centered around a subject (usually history or science). The other subjects like reading, math, geography and language are constructed from the history/science you study. Again, the Sonlight program shows up! The Sonlight program is what we have found to work the best for our family. We have three different grades/levels to work with so to make things a little easier to “unschool” with all three and still accomplish what they need to learn, I chose a Sonlight program that we could study as a family. Then I supplement with Math from ABEKA (Sonlight recommends others as well), handwriting from my choice (happens to be the Italic Handwriting), art and music from other sources. Wow! What a difference it makes to study the Greek period with books that tell about someone living during that period! Then science comes alive through the lives of greek scientists, language makes more sense with the greek origins, and math doesn’t seem so abstract when you read about those who came up with our system of calculating. Boy! I’m ready to get on to the next subject and period in history!
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