Back to (Home) School! Part 2-Choosing Your Curriculum

Good Morning Everyone!

Time for our second post in our "Back to (Home) School" planning series!  I am not exactly sure how many posts will be in this series, but until I run out of things to share I suppose. :)  Or get too busy--whichever comes first!

To recap, in the first post I shared about how I plan our home school calendar, and a little bit about why it is important and how to personalize your school calendar to work for YOUR family and YOUR unique needs.  If you missed that post, you can find it here:

Back to (Home) School! Part 1-Choosing Your School Schedule

I did have a reader request if I knew of a free program, printable, etc. that could be used for keeping track of required attendance days.  (Thank you for your question!  I love hearing that a post was helpful, or being given the opportunity to share helpful information!) In my state (Tennessee), I am required to keep track and report my attendance of 180 days, but the specifics of what I use to keep track of those days is up to me.  You could circle "school days" on your calendar, mark down in a notebook, etc.  All I need to do when I turn in my grade reports each semester is report our starting date, finishing date, and how many total school days.  With that being said, I do like to have all that information handy for me on one form that I can keep in my home school planning binder, so I use a form like this free one here:

Printable Attendance Form

Using this attendance form, I simply put a check mark or X in each blank if we did school on that day.  This form is just for my own personal use, but it keeps track of the information I need and is a good visual reminder for me to record our school for that day.  If you have an older student you could even pass this job over to them and let them do the record keeping.

O.K., with all of the above shared, it is time for the topic of today's post--choosing your curriculum!

1). Choose Your School Schedule

2). Choose Your School Curriculum

***As we saw already in choosing your school schedule, the very first thing you are going to want to do as you move into choosing your school curriculum is PRAY.  Remember James 1:5, read it again and claim God's promise to grant you HIS wisdom!  Ask Him to reveal to you the ways that your children learn best, and to open your eyes clearly to materials that will work well for that type of learner.

***After praying about it, spend some time simply pondering.  Think about each one of your school age children, and ask yourself how they each learn best.  Do you have an active little boy who loves to tinker and take things apart to see how they work?  If so, a curriculum program that centers around filling in workbook pages is probably not going to work the best for him.  On the other hand, some children--usually a girl--absolutely LOVE filling in workbooks!  Think about what type of learner(s) you have, and whether you will need programs with auditory components to them so your child can listen to their textbook being read to them, or unit studies where they can do a combination of research, hands on projects, and other "outside of the textbook" learning.
If you are not certain about what type of learner your child is, there are numerous free assessments you can look at to help educate yourself on the different learning styles.  I found this link that looks helpful if you want to read more:

What is the Best Way for your Child to Learn?

***Now that you have in mind your child's learning style, it's time to take inventory!  What are the resources that you already have?  Maybe you have never homeschooled before, but you have a relative who has--can you ask about possibly borrowing or purchasing some books that they are finished with?  If so, first make sure their books are ones that are going to work for your family.  Did you already homeschool an older child and you still have some of their books and materials in the house that could be recycled and used again for the younger sibling?  Maybe some materials may not work for your current homeschooler, but some of them can.  Each child will have their own learning style so you cannot automatically assume that what worked great for one child will automatically work just as great for the next--but on the other hand, don't throw out the baby with the bath water either!  For our son, he is an auditory learner so when it came to high school Algebra I ended up investing in a very expensive program that had daily video lessons.  It worked wonderful for him, and I was blessed to be able to purchase it used from a friend.  When our daughter was ready last year to start Algebra, I automatically assumed we would be using the same program with her.  After all, it was a high quality program, and it was already paid for and living in our house!  Well, she started into the program, but I realized after a while that it just wasn't the best fit for her.  I went ahead and purchased for her the Algebra book in the same curriculum series she had previously been using, and she has been happy as a clam with math ever since.  Oh the other hand, the same Science textbook that her brother used in middle school is working great for her as well.

***What "non-curriculum" resources do you have the can be used?  In our house, I have quite a collection of biographies.  Although they may not have been written specifically as school curriculum, we will be using a handful of them this year as a core component of our Geography class as well as using them for literature in our English class.  And don't forget your local library!  I live in a very small town, but can still go online and reserve scores of library books on topics we are going to study in our homeschool.  The wonderful librarians receive my requests, pull the books off the shelves, and hand them to me in a large stack when I show up later at the front desk!  :)  I can even access free videos that stream from some big library source in the sky straight to my computer!  I don't know how it works--I just know it works GREAT for our homeschool.  When I stream a video I don't even need to remember to return it--it just disappears from my library account when it reaches it's due date.  No late fees--yea!

***Write down the classes that you have materials for already.  We THINK that we can remember it all in our heads, but we can't!  And it's a sad feeling to find yourself half way through the school year--or worse, all the way through the school year, and then you "discover" lost on your book shelf somewhere the fun book you WERE planning on using with your child that year.  Don't ask me how I know this--it isn't a happy story!  You don't need a fancy form--a plain old piece of paper will do just fine.  But if you happen to have an on-line planner of some type, of course you can fill in a specific form if you want to.  The important thing is to simply start listing the materials you have already and identify what specific class they are going to be used for.

***Now that you know what you already have, you can see clearly where you have some holes that you need to fill in.  Decide HOW you want to meet that class in your homeschool.  Remember that not EVERY class needs to be taught by you.  When our daughter was younger, I taught her music class simply by singing with her and teaching her to use simple rhythm instruments.  Now that she is older, we pay a professional music teacher to teacher her private lessons.  When she was young, we paid for group swimming lessons--and now that she is older she no longer needs someone teaching her how to swim.  Today, there are swarms of options for homeschoolers.  There might be a co-op near you that you are going to join and the classes will fill in some gaps that you have in your plan.  Or you may have several classes that you are simply going to purchase a curriculum textbook to meet that need.

***Last of all, after you have prayed, assessed the learning style of your child, taken inventory of what you already have or have access to and have written DOWN what you will be using for specific classes it is finally time to purchase what you need.  I strongly encourage you to check several resources for each item you are planning on purchasing.  It is amazing what price difference you may find!  Or while the prices may be the same with two companies, one may offer free or low shipping costs and the other one might require a higher purchase before offering free shipping.  If there is one thing I dislike, it is spending my curriculum dollars on shipping!!!  I want to spend it on curriculum for my child instead! So compare, compare, compare!  And once you have decided which company you are going to order your materials from, don't hesitate to order it!  Not only is it easy to forget to order, but companies get really swamped with orders the closer to Fall that it gets.  Besides that, you need to get those books into your hot little hands so you can keep your planning going. :D

Well, that wraps up all I can think of in choosing your school curriculum.  I hope you have found some helpful ideas here, and I would love it if you would share in the comments the one curriculum/book/resource you are most excited about trying this year and why.  Just ask my hubby--I LOVE curriculum!

~Susan