How to Choose the Right Home School Curriculum
~ Connie Wollenhaupt
A common refrain heard among home school parents is, “Finding the right curriculum is so confusing”. Another familiar concern is, “I tried a certain curriculum and it didn’t seem to work for my child”. Homeschooling parents can be so overwhelmed with the myriad of curriculum choices that they settle for a curriculum they have heard that worked for someone else’s child. After they purchase that curriculum they find to their dismay that it isn’t the right choice for their child. Choosing a home school curriculum can be a very confusing process. There are a myriad of choices out there and unless you have some prior knowledge of the different curriculums, it can be extremely difficult trying to figure out which one will work for your child.
ABBA will take several things into consideration when helping you choose the right home school curriculum for your child.
The first thing to consider is your child’s learning style. Not every curriculum will work for every learning style. If you don’t know what your child’s learning style is you can go to ABBA Homeschool Academy’s ‘learning style’ page and take our ‘Learning Style Online Quiz’. This will help you determine if your child is a Visual Learner, an Auditory Learner, or a Tactile/Kinesthetic Learner. A Visual Learner is one who learns by seeing, an Auditory Learner is one who learns by hearing, and a Tactile/Kinesthetic Learner is one who learns through movement such as touching and feeling. Taking the Online Learning Quiz yourself will let you know if your learning style is different than your child’s. A person’s teaching style will usually closely follow their own learning style. Taking this quiz will help you as a teacher know where you might need to make adjustments in your teaching style to better fit your child’s learning style. Making the necessary adjustments in your teaching style is vital to ensuring your child gets the most out of their home education. No matter what your child’s learning style is, ABBA Homeschool Academy will have a curriculum that matches.
In addition to knowing your child’s learning style, there are several questions you need to ask yourself when deciding which home school curriculum to use. What is your schedule like? How much free time do you have to devote to lesson planning, scheduling, etc? For parents who are very busy and don’t have a lot of extra time the ACE and Alpha Omega’s LifePac might be good choices. They are self-instructional and require minimal lesson planning. They have the instructions to the child written in each lesson. Whereas, the BJU Press and Christian Liberty Press curriculum does require more lesson planning on the part of the parent. The Teacher’s Guides for the BJU Press can be quite large and some subjects have two large Teacher’s Guides for one student textbook. The BJU Press works well when parents spend time the evening before planning out the next day’s school schedule and lessons.
Another question to think about is – How many children do you have? Are they close together in age? If so, the Weaver Unit Studies might be an option. This allows the parent to teach several children at a time. The Switched-On-Schoolhouse (SOS) curriculum uses the computer as the main teaching aid. Everything is done on the computer and the tests are automatically graded for the parent. The SOS does require a little more effort from the parents while installing the software and setting up the school calendar. Once this is done, however, the child can usually work with minimal supervision from the parent. The SOS is a fully interactive multimedia program with thousands of videos built into the software. The SOS and the LifePac curriculum are published by the same company and follow the same basic scope and sequence for the most part.
One question to also contemplate is how much time you spend traveling away from home. The SOS curriculum requires your child to be in front of the computer every school day. The LifePac and ACE curriculums, however, are easily carried with you in a vehicle or on a plane. They come in individual units per subject and can fit into a suitcase or carry on bag with no problem. Other curriculums like the BJU Press and Christian Liberty Press have traditional textbooks which are not as easily packed.
You also need to know if your child is a concrete learner or if they become easily overwhelmed. The Ace curriculum comes in bite sized units of study called PACES. There are 12 paces per subject. Each quarter your child would receive 3 of those paces from each subject. This works very well for children who thrive when they can see progress being made quickly. The children attain a sense of achievement when they complete a unit. This is encouraging to those children who are easily frustrated and who might shy away from a large textbook. The children learn the academic concepts in the paces in a methodical yet interesting manner.
It’s also important to ask yourself if your child enjoys writing. If so, the LifePac curriculum has more of a writing component to it than the ACE curriculum. Your child will write more essays and reports with the LifePac curriculum than with the ACE curriculum. This is also good to know if your child doesn’t like to write as much. The traditional textbooks from the BJU Press and Christian Liberty Press also require essays and reports.
One last question to weigh is whether or not your child seems to learn best by doing hands-on activities. All children usually like doing projects, but for some children this seems to be the best way they learn. The LifePac curriculum has a lot of supplemental activities that a hands-on learner might enjoy. The BJU Press also has extra activities for the child. Research has proven that doing hands-on activities can enhance learning for most everyone. ABBA Homeschool Academy has taken that into consideration and has incorporated Project Boxes with every curriculum. The Project Boxes are shipped every quarter and have enough activities to last from 3-12 weeks. The Project Boxes contain most of the materials needed to complete the activities. Each Project Box is designed to enhance some academic concept your child is studying that quarter.
When assessing learning styles in your child remember that everyone will have a mixture of different learning styles. However, there will be one certain style that is dominant. This is the one that you will want to consider the most. There are other factors to consider also in addition to the learning style of your child. Having a full service academy like ABBA Homeschool Academy can help you determine which curriculum is right for your child. ABBA also allows you to mix and match from our curriculum choices. A parent might like a certain curriculum for math and another curriculum for the other subjects. You are not locked into any one curriculum. If you find that a curriculum doesn’t seem to be working for your child one year, you may make a change the following year. With ABBA you are free to choose what works best for your child.
A common refrain heard among home school parents is, “Finding the right curriculum is so confusing”. Another familiar concern is, “I tried a certain curriculum and it didn’t seem to work for my child”. Homeschooling parents can be so overwhelmed with the myriad of curriculum choices that they settle for a curriculum they have heard that worked for someone else’s child. After they purchase that curriculum they find to their dismay that it isn’t the right choice for their child. Choosing a home school curriculum can be a very confusing process. There are a myriad of choices out there and unless you have some prior knowledge of the different curriculums, it can be extremely difficult trying to figure out which one will work for your child.
ABBA will take several things into consideration when helping you choose the right home school curriculum for your child.
The first thing to consider is your child’s learning style. Not every curriculum will work for every learning style. If you don’t know what your child’s learning style is you can go to ABBA Homeschool Academy’s ‘learning style’ page and take our ‘Learning Style Online Quiz’. This will help you determine if your child is a Visual Learner, an Auditory Learner, or a Tactile/Kinesthetic Learner. A Visual Learner is one who learns by seeing, an Auditory Learner is one who learns by hearing, and a Tactile/Kinesthetic Learner is one who learns through movement such as touching and feeling. Taking the Online Learning Quiz yourself will let you know if your learning style is different than your child’s. A person’s teaching style will usually closely follow their own learning style. Taking this quiz will help you as a teacher know where you might need to make adjustments in your teaching style to better fit your child’s learning style. Making the necessary adjustments in your teaching style is vital to ensuring your child gets the most out of their home education. No matter what your child’s learning style is, ABBA Homeschool Academy will have a curriculum that matches.
In addition to knowing your child’s learning style, there are several questions you need to ask yourself when deciding which home school curriculum to use. What is your schedule like? How much free time do you have to devote to lesson planning, scheduling, etc? For parents who are very busy and don’t have a lot of extra time the ACE and Alpha Omega’s LifePac might be good choices. They are self-instructional and require minimal lesson planning. They have the instructions to the child written in each lesson. Whereas, the BJU Press and Christian Liberty Press curriculum does require more lesson planning on the part of the parent. The Teacher’s Guides for the BJU Press can be quite large and some subjects have two large Teacher’s Guides for one student textbook. The BJU Press works well when parents spend time the evening before planning out the next day’s school schedule and lessons.
Another question to think about is – How many children do you have? Are they close together in age? If so, the Weaver Unit Studies might be an option. This allows the parent to teach several children at a time. The Switched-On-Schoolhouse (SOS) curriculum uses the computer as the main teaching aid. Everything is done on the computer and the tests are automatically graded for the parent. The SOS does require a little more effort from the parents while installing the software and setting up the school calendar. Once this is done, however, the child can usually work with minimal supervision from the parent. The SOS is a fully interactive multimedia program with thousands of videos built into the software. The SOS and the LifePac curriculum are published by the same company and follow the same basic scope and sequence for the most part.
One question to also contemplate is how much time you spend traveling away from home. The SOS curriculum requires your child to be in front of the computer every school day. The LifePac and ACE curriculums, however, are easily carried with you in a vehicle or on a plane. They come in individual units per subject and can fit into a suitcase or carry on bag with no problem. Other curriculums like the BJU Press and Christian Liberty Press have traditional textbooks which are not as easily packed.
You also need to know if your child is a concrete learner or if they become easily overwhelmed. The Ace curriculum comes in bite sized units of study called PACES. There are 12 paces per subject. Each quarter your child would receive 3 of those paces from each subject. This works very well for children who thrive when they can see progress being made quickly. The children attain a sense of achievement when they complete a unit. This is encouraging to those children who are easily frustrated and who might shy away from a large textbook. The children learn the academic concepts in the paces in a methodical yet interesting manner.
It’s also important to ask yourself if your child enjoys writing. If so, the LifePac curriculum has more of a writing component to it than the ACE curriculum. Your child will write more essays and reports with the LifePac curriculum than with the ACE curriculum. This is also good to know if your child doesn’t like to write as much. The traditional textbooks from the BJU Press and Christian Liberty Press also require essays and reports.
One last question to weigh is whether or not your child seems to learn best by doing hands-on activities. All children usually like doing projects, but for some children this seems to be the best way they learn. The LifePac curriculum has a lot of supplemental activities that a hands-on learner might enjoy. The BJU Press also has extra activities for the child. Research has proven that doing hands-on activities can enhance learning for most everyone. ABBA Homeschool Academy has taken that into consideration and has incorporated Project Boxes with every curriculum. The Project Boxes are shipped every quarter and have enough activities to last from 3-12 weeks. The Project Boxes contain most of the materials needed to complete the activities. Each Project Box is designed to enhance some academic concept your child is studying that quarter.
When assessing learning styles in your child remember that everyone will have a mixture of different learning styles. However, there will be one certain style that is dominant. This is the one that you will want to consider the most. There are other factors to consider also in addition to the learning style of your child. Having a full service academy like ABBA Homeschool Academy can help you determine which curriculum is right for your child. ABBA also allows you to mix and match from our curriculum choices. A parent might like a certain curriculum for math and another curriculum for the other subjects. You are not locked into any one curriculum. If you find that a curriculum doesn’t seem to be working for your child one year, you may make a change the following year. With ABBA you are free to choose what works best for your child.
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