comparing homeschooling curriculums - what do you use?

[afarah]

I have a question though.  If you were to home-school your kids, how do you get the necessary certification at the end of the day?  Will your kids be accepted to college or university?

[Nikolett]

I don't know where you are from, as it differs from country to country. There are different high school equivalency exams you can take to go on to college or uni. If you enroll in some programs, they grade your child's work and issue a diploma at the end of it all (do check if it's recognized in your country before enrolling). Sometimes it's enough to enroll for the last year or two of high school. In some countries (as here) home schooling per se is not heard of, the only option is finding an umbrella school that would test your child (yearly or more often). Then you would receive their progress report just as if they were attending and need to incorporate local curriculum. 
This is just a brief, you need to do your own research according to where you live. 

[momtomany]

Math:  we start with Abeka (very thorough, strong foundation, nicely coloured workbooks) and then, when they are at about grade 3 or 4, we switch to Saxon textbooks (because we have them all except the Calculus, and that's more cost effective... I prefer Abeka, but Saxon is a close 2nd)

Language Arts:  for Phonics, I've used Abeka the most... I love the way their readers progress and the stories often emphasize good values (wow, those Americans sure are patriotic, eh?!)  Because we've never used anything except the readers (which gets them to a good reading level quite early) some of my kids needed a little extra phonics work and we've used MCP Plaid Phonics several times... just the first 3 or 4 books.  Grammar has always been with Abeka, but I don't always start that until the 3rd or 4th grade.  Spelling we've rarely done formally... I really think that if they are reading lots, then they are learning to spell.  Sometimes we've used the placement tests in the Spelling Power book and I always find they are at or above grade.  When we have done spelling, I've used Spelling Workout.  We have not been very strong with a writing program.  I hope this will be okay, but I never liked writing in school and then when I got to college and had to do some writing, I aced the course just because I was able to articulate my ideas in an intelligent way and I had good grammar and spelling... so my conclusion was that good writing will come with maturity when you have well formed ideas to express and the confidence to say what is on your mind.  Perhaps having your children write in a journal or to penpals on a regular basis should be sufficient.  Handwriting, Abeka again.  Literature, we've read some really great classic novels for bedtime stories (Uncle Tom's Cabin, Little Women...) but we've never 'studied' literature yet, although I think it would be a good idea to get in some literature study for highschool as preparation for university/college.

History:  when they are younger we read a lot of historical fiction for bedtime stories... Dear Canada series, My America series, Magic Treehouse series, Trailblazers series, Daughters of the Faith series, and books by Barbara Greenwood (like Pioneer Story).  When they hit upper elementary or highschool, then I've started using Abeka History/Geography and we like it a lot.

Science:  For the younger people we just get books and DVDs from the library... they love Bill Nye the Science Guy, and we've watched many of the DK Eyewitness DVDs, and we've seen some Moody Science Classics DVDs.  Also we have several books like "In the Days of Noah", "Dinosaurs by Design", "Life in the Great Ice Age", etc. which support the Biblical account of Creation.  When they are good independent readers (Grade 4 or so) then they read through the Apologia Young Explorer books (creation-based), and before highschool they start the "Exploring Creation with..." series from Apologia... a very thorough science curriculum that can take them right up to university level science with disecting, microscope work, experiments, and even specializing in areas of interest like marine biology for example.

French:  Rosetta Stone

Music/Art:  Not really structured except they have taken piano, violin, and/or guitar lessons at times.

Phys.Ed.:  Walking, biking, swimming lessons.

Bible:  we've never done much formally, but for bedtime stories we've read all the books by Patricia St. John... we all love them.

[mother of faith]

For my state I use http://www.home-school-inc.com/, my state does not recquire testing, now some states or countries do require testing like the CATS, and so on. Since we don't have to have any required testing I use this free homeschooling planner, and recorder. It allows you to send report cards, evaluations, etc. It is great to use and easy to use as well. You can add as many students as you want and they can have their own log in page and everything. They can see their work, print it, scan it in, and return it to you for grading. It is awesome.

There are tests that you can get for your child to take at the end of the year through your local school system. There are designated schools that the child attends with other homeschoolers. We have one here but the children have to be in grade 5 (I think) for the testing period. I think my friends went for 1 week everyday for 4 hours then that was it for the entire year. There are certain grades that my state performs these tests.

[karianne]

My daughter is only 3yo but at about the Kindergarten level so I've started using Core Knowledge curriculum by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. with her.  I like the CK curriculum because it is so well planned out for grades K-8 and has high standards.  The great thing is that it is flexible and many other types of curriculum can be used alongside it.  I am the type of person that likes having clear standards and goals with the flexibility to teach them as I see fit.   http://coreknowledge.org/CK/about/index.htm

[Tanikit]

We are planning on starting a curriculum next year (my daughter will be slightly over 2 years old) but want something hands on - the trouble is she is advanced in some areas and yet very normal in others - she cannot put her own clothes on for example, but the books she is reading/having read to her are more like books you would read to 3 and 4 year olds. She is nowhere near writing yet so cannot really do proper worksheets and needs to practice colouring and scribbling still and yet she understands a huge amount of concepts. I may be better off making my own curriculum, but need some ideas from other curricula and things that must be covered. It seems to be a lot of research to decide and choose - how did you all go about making the decisions? I need to check our library too as many of the books I want may not be there and while my daughter already has a good home library, it could land up very expensive to buy new books.

I think we will play around with various options next year to find out what works for us - its not essential at 2 years to do a full curriculum so at least I have some time to find out how it might work for us if we decide to homeschool all the way through.

[momtomany]

Sometimes when my kids were younger and we were using homeschooling workbooks, they were not yet ready to do all that writing yet even though they could easily answer the questions.  I gave them as much writing practice as I felt was appropriate for them, but for the rest of their workpages, they gave me the answers and I did the writing down for them.  I did not want to hold them back from learning simply because they weren't ready for that much independent written work.  That is one of the benefits of homeschooling... you can tailor the use of curriculum to your individual child's needs... giving them just the right amount of challenge, but not too much.  You will not be able to buy an all-inclusive curriculum package for her and expect to make that work.  If you want to start using curriculum materials, you'll have to buy her a very-beginning handwriting (or download free handwriting sheets from the internet), get her lots of books to read from the library at her level, find a math workbook that is her level, for the other subjects perhaps do it more informally (history & science... get non-fiction books from the library, art... idea books and art appreciation books in the non-fiction children's section, etc.  She is so young still.  Above all you want her learning to be enjoyable.  Doman says above all "don't bore the child".  With 'school-type' curriculum packages, sometimes they are a bit bored with some of what's being taught, but if they are older then they can at least understand that they just have to learn it anyways and if they just get it done then they can go do something they like to do.  I don't think you'll be able to do that so easily with a preschooler... I think you're just going to have to be looking around (like at the library or on the internet) for stuff she'll find interesting to learn.

One of the advantages of following a bought curriculum program is that you don't have to try to think of what to teach about and you can feel confident that all the different subject areas are being taught thoroughly... covering all aspects of it.  You can also do this by getting a book (bought or at the library) that has a list of what to teach in each grade.... like the Core Knowledge "What Your ___th Grader Needs to Know" series.  There are many such books available.  Perhaps your library has a selection of them, or ask a homeschooler for a catalogue from a company that sells lots of homeschooling books (or look on the internet for an online catalogue)... usually near the beginning of the catalogue you can find a few books like this.  After you have a few titles, then you can ask your library to get the ones they don't carry by buying them or through interlibrary loan.  Anyways, get a book like this that you like and just use it as a checklist... that way you can use a variety of books and methods to teach all the different areas, but still have the comfort that you are giving a thorough education to cover everything.  We live in a country that has no obligations to do testing or keep records or anything, but in some places you do have to... so maybe when your child finally is school-aged then you can't just simply follow this eclectic informal 'curriculum' method, but it works nicely for a lot of people.

'Hope this helps.

[karianne]

I was going to suggest the same thing momtomany! 

Tanikit- The "What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know" (a.k.a.-WYKNTK) would be a good place to start, and where I started with my daughter.  For me, it gives me an idea of what we should be doing and talking about.  I go into more depth on some things if my daughter is interested and can handle the knowledge.  The great thing about these type of books is that you can tailor it to fit your daughter's needs.  It gives you an idea of what she should be doing in Kindergarten...where to start so to speak. (CK also has a preschool curriculum, so you may want to look at both levels and see which best fits your daughter's current level.)  These books are guidelines, so you can easily make things a bit simpler for your daughter if you need to, or more complex. 

You can take plenty of time to let your daughter scribble, color, and build up to handwriting.  Like momtomany said, you can allow her to answer many things verbally until she is able to start writing for herself.  At this age I don't sit down and  "homeschool" my daughter every day for however many hours.  My daughter is only 3.5 years old, so anything we do at this point is just bonus.  I started because my daughter has the interest and curiosity to learn, and I didn't want to let that to go to waste!

The local library may have some of the "WY_GNTK" books by Core Knowledge.  I ended up purchasing the Kindergarten book at the bookstore ($15 I believe) since I refer to it frequently.  I also wanted to test out the CK curriculum and see if it was something I wanted to continue to use down the road.  If not, $15 wasn't a big investment!  By the way, I love the CK curriculum.

[purplefungi]

I have been doing Montissori activities with my toddler, however I have recently had the urge to start more preschool/kindergarten projects. My son is almost 2.5 so this would be pretty age appropriate. I have really liked Brightly Beaming Resources http://www.letteroftheweek.com/ for ideas.

Since he doesn't get the concept of writing so much, we have been doing the following:

1. Prewriting exercises printed from http://www.kidssoup.com/ (It's a ~22.00/year membership and has been worth every penny)
2. Jump Start Advanced Preschool World computer program (I click for him) This costs around 40 USDs, but my son really enjoys it. http://www.jumpstart.com/
3. I make my own manipulatives by printing activities from Kidssoup and Kidsparks http://www.kidsparkz.com/index.html Kidsparks (cost 50 USDs) has over 10,000 pages of printable resources. I then laminate the activities and cut them out. For instance, this week, we are playing concentration with different kinds of apple pictures, sequencing different kinds of apples against a control, sequencing how an apple is made, and matching different colored "As" with their lower case partner.
4. I also go over a page or two a day of Get Ready for Pre-K. We don't mark anything at this point in the book. We just talk about things. http://www.amazon.com/Get-Ready-Pre-K-Interactive-Illustrations/dp/1579125492/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247087632&sr=8-1

[early learning17]

I am thinking of buying an online tutorial programme that covers maths and English as a foreign language. My main goal is to build up vocabulary, improve reading comprehension (so I am looking for texts and comprehension exercises/questions thereafter) and an introduction to math for my 5 year old reader. Requisite is for it to be an online programme to take it on holidays. (To visualize on the ipad as with the rover app I can access websites that use flash). Does anyone know this product?
 
http://www.time4learning.com/curriculum/faq.html
 
Looks great to me but as I haven´t found many in-depths reviews apart from these ones,
http://forum.brillkids.com/homeschooling/recommend-preschool-program/
http://forum.brillkids.com/product-discussions-and-reviews/review-time4learning-com/

I would love to have more feedback from fellow BK members who use the programme as I think it has changed quite a bit since the last review posted by two members in 2009.
 
Thanks in advance!

[linzy]

What we use is:

Reading:
6 year old:
Reads through a book list I constructed combining Robinson curriculum, Old fashioned education, Sonlight, Ambleside, Great books (He's currently wrapping up Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn books, soon to be starting Narnia)
2 year old:
The ordinary parents guide to teaching reading
Readingeggs.com
Bob books
Preschool prep meet the phonics and sight words

Writing:
6 year old:
Daily language lessons
Spelling workout
First language lessons for the well trained mind
Writing with Ease
2 year old:
Kumon:upper case letters (done), lower case letters, numbers, mazes, coloring, crafts

Math:
6 year old:
Jones genius Math 3
Dreambox.com
Flashcard review
Right brain multiplication and division (got for free on currclick)
2 year old:
Counting activities
Skip counting songs
Right Start A

For science we own 360 acres so our kids are great at identifying plants/animals, they read lots of books on plants/animals, my eldest loves his snap circuits and does a fair amount of sodering with dad. We also have the first library of learning books which are great.

History is included in reading too, but we also read "Little history of the world" and "Story of the World" aloud. In addition we have a lot of Classical conversation materials that we use. Including the CDs that we listen to in the car with the history sentence songs.

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