3 Tips for Picking a Curriculum that's Right for Your Students

One of the hardest things to do as a homeschool mama is pick the right  curriculum     for our schools. When I was homeschooled, there were a handful of choices. Bob Jones, A Beka, Alpha Omega, and a couple others. Now there are so many choices it can be overwhelming. And let's face it...there's the fear that if we pick the wrong one our children will be forever scarred. So what's a mama to do?

1) Watch your children. How do they learn? Can they learn in a more traditional, workbook approach or do they require a hands-on approach to learning? Are they auditory or visual learners? Kinesthetic? A combination? Once you understand that, you can begin looking for a  curriculum that works to those learning styles.

2) Talk to homeschoolers who have been at it a while and are succeeding. What curriculum do they use? Why? How do they modify it to work in their homes? Ask what else they've used. For example I appreciate A Beka grammar -- it is solid and your student will know how to write when they are done, but I've never gotten the spelling component to work for us. Through asking on Facebook for recommendations, I found a spelling curriculum that is working very well for us. So be open to mixing and matching.

3) Pray. Ask God for heavenly wisdom to know what to do with your kids. And be willing to change it up from year to year. I'm convinced A Beka history and science are the best out there. In part it's because I used them through tenth grade and then got As in science and history in college. But that doesn't mean we don't use other programs, too. My kids just get a double dose of history and science. A Beka is very solid in math, but I also use Saxon especially as we hit the higher grades. But this summer we're going to do a different program for geometry because I noticed my daughter isn't grasping the visuals for geometry. This program emphasizes that aspect.