Choosing a homeschool curriculum for your family is an important part of your homeschool journey. There are many good ones that you can choose from now that you understand the different philosophies and methods and a little more about learning styles.
There are so many programmes in the world that sometimes a parent can be confused even within their chosen method.
When you go to a curriculum fair you will see the benefits of each programme and often it is hard to determine the wheat from the chaff.
In this short video, Shirley and Wendy discuss how to make good choices for your family.
Your choice, once you have understood philosophies and methods from the previous part of this e-course, is now determined by whether you want a complete homeschool curriculum package or whether you would like to piece together your own curriculum, using an Eclectic Homeschooling approach, which is recommended.
Often new homeschoolers feel most comfortable buying a full packaged curriculum covering all the subjects offered in schools. However, experience has shown that this is often not a good or cost effective choice. Many such programmes are only text-book based and require duplicating the school system at home. Children end up bored and frustrated and mothers are burnt out with trying to motivate them to learn. Be careful if you find yourself veering towards any of those options.
Research shows that new homeschooilng families tend to change their curriculum within two years!
Rather start slowly – buy as little as you need to cover the basics. At primary school level, this could mean the 3R’s – reading, writing and maths. For all the other subject you can start by reading library books together until you find your ‘groove’.
Our Footprints On Our Land programmes are flexible not-school-at-home curricula that you can purchase through and from www.south-african-homeschool-curriculum.com. They are designed to make starting out homeschooling as easy, fun and stress-free as possible for families who are just starting their homeschooling adventure. They match most of the CAPS requirements for Social Sciences, without putting your family in a government dictated ‘straight-jacket’! You have freedom and flexibility to learn at your family’s own pace and follow your children’s unique interests too. Footprints and CAPS – Astonishing Alignment explains more.
Our programmes cover everything except Maths and Afrikaans language, but it is not a textbook and workbook based system. Learning is far more multi-dimensional and varied than that!
We do not offer a programme for each grade level, instead our products fill a niche in the market – the need for learning about our own country at three different age group levels. After using one of the Footprints programmes, you will do well to try something different for a year or two and then return and use the next Footprints programme for the next age group. Click here to read more About Footprints
Homeschoolers who have been journeying for a while often enjoy piecing together other items like language, art, science and other electives.
Others often throw off all curriculum constraints and choose to create their own unit studies or in delight-directed homes they purchase specific individualized unit studies to add on to existing language and maths programs to complete their curriculum studies for a particular year.
There is no “one way” to homeschool…and the way you start, is unlikely to be the way you finish this learning adventure! Don’t get stuck in a rut that is taking the joy out of learning and bleeding you financially too! Expect to change programmes and try new ways of learning along the way.
Suggested Reading
You Can Teach Your Child Successfully – Ruth Beechick
The Three R’s – Ruth Beechick
Home Learning Year by Year – Rebecca Rupp
Websites
Shirley wrote an article called The Benefits of a Preschool Curriculum and though addressing preschool in this article, the benefits are not unique to preschool and do apply to all grades.
Coming up in Part 6 of this E-course: Children in your home 24/7…Organization 101!
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