Cathy Duffy - 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum: Choosing the Right Educational Philosophy for Your Childs Learning Style

To the thousands of dedicated homeschoolers who have resisted the impulse to imitate real schools and have chosen instead to figure out what is best for each of their children, even if it meant writing their own curriculum. You have made the world of homeschool curriculum far richer than the most well-funded schools in the world.

Cathy Duffy

O ne of the saddest sights Ive ever seen was opening day of a three-day homeschool convention. Day one had been designated only for new homeschoolers. Five hundred or more raw homeschooling recruits streamed into an exhibit hall featuring well over one hundred different vendors. Where to even start? Each vendor, naturally, claimed that his or her products were absolutely essential and the best thing on the market. If the newcomers had come with unlimited resources, they could easily have dropped a few thousand dollars at the first few displays they visited. Im certain many felt overwhelming guilt when they did not buy what they were told they needed. That's probably why so many were in tears after the first few hours of the convention.

They knew they needed to buy curriculum, but how on earth could they figure out which one to buy when they didnt even know what they needed to teach? The escape route for many beginners is to simply go to the larger companies that have complete packages for each grade level. Whatever grade the child would have been enrolled in next year at the local school becomes the grade level of the curriculum purchased.

Sometimes, but not often enough, representatives of these major publishers will take time to explain to inquirers that even if they sell a fourth grade package, such a package might not be the best choice for this particular child. A nine-year-old might need fifth-grade-level math and third-grade-level reading material because math comes easily to him and reading does not.

That doesnt make him a poor student or a problem. It does mean that he's a fairly normal child, whatever normal means. After all, our children are not standardized products. None of them look alike (at least not much) on the outside, so why should we expect them to be alike on the insidethe way they learn, their interests, their abilities, and their temperaments?

One of the beauties of homeschooling is that it allows us to recognize and nurture each one of our very special individual children. We have the glorious opportunity to help them figure out who they are, what they want to be, and how they might get there.

In homeschooling, we can take detours unimaginable in the traditional classroom. If a nine-year-old boy is interested in rocket science, homeschooling parents can nurture that interest by allowing him to move ahead of grade level science topics into this more specialized area. They can help him search the library for biographies and other books related to the subject. They can supervise and assist him while he builds his own rockets, fiddles with fuel cells, designs recovery parachutes, estimates trajectories, and learns safety precautions.

That fourteen-year-old girl who wants to be a veterinarian can arrange her school schedule so that she works two days a week with the local vet, getting hands-on experience in her potential career. Shell know for certain by the end of high school whether or not she really wants to spend all those years (and all that money) in college to achieve her goal. Her other schooling can also be designed to support her budding career. She can research and write about animals, physiology, and related topics. She might study uses of and attitudes toward different animals within different cultures. Math and economics studies might include cost comparisons for animal care in traditional zoos versus natural parks.

I think you get the idea. Asking a supplier for a standardized package of curriculum ignores the individuality and special needs and interests of your child.

You can see this more easily if you compare feeding your child's body to feeding his mind. You dont expect all children to eat exactly the same amounts and types of food. Some have particular food allergies. All have preferences and dislikes. And some burn up twice as many calories as others.

Likewise, mental nourishment should take into consideration the strengths and weaknesses of each childteaching to their strengths and helping to overcome weak areas. It should have extra nourishment for those special areas of interest. It should be provided at a pace a child can handlenot too slow, not too fast.

If you are a new homeschooling parent, and you expected to just purchase a packaged curriculum and be done with it, this sounds like bad news. Where on earth do you begin? There are far too many choices. How do you know what your child needs? How can you figure this out?

That's the purpose of this book. First, in we will cover some basic approaches you might wish to use: traditional textbooks, Charlotte Mason/real books education, classical education, unit study, unschooling, independent study, working under an umbrella program, or an eclectic mixture of approaches.

myself. This should give you a clear idea of how to proceed.

Then, in , I help you narrow things down even further by identifying your children's learning styles and figuring out what features you should be looking for in a curriculum to achieve the best fit for each child.

Many parents wonder what should be covered at each grade level, especially if they choose ungraded curriculum. Are you doing enough? Too much? Might your child's frustration be due to expectations that are beyond his maturity level? In I discuss academic goals and how to figure out what you should cover in each subject area.

My purpose with these first few chapters is to help you become goal-oriented rather than curriculum driven. Too many new homeschoolers let that grade-level package of curriculum they purchased dictate the content, methods, and even the schedule they follow. In other words, the curriculum itself drives their homeschooling.

To be goal oriented means working in almost a reverse fashion. You determine what your children need to learn. You decide what methods to use. And you set up your own schedule. Then you find curriculum that has the content and methodology that fits your agenda, and you use it on your own timetable.

After you use the first few chapters to figure out what content and methods are right for your children, you will be ready to explore my Top 100 curriculum choices in to see what is likely to fit your situation. To make this easy, I have included charts that help you readily identify which resources have the features that you will be looking for, features you will have already identified in the early chapters of this book.

Each product featured as a Top Pick also has a complete review in the following chapters. The page number of the review is in the last column of the Top Picks charts. Select likely candidates from the charts, read the full reviews, then make your decisions. I have also included ordering and contact information in each review so you will know how to actually get your hands on each resource.

Obviously, there are many more products than the Top 100 that I have chosen for this book. You might have a specialized need or a specialized topic that is not addressed by any of these resources. If so, you might want to consult the Web site at www.CathyDuffyReviews.com for more possibilities.