If you are brand new to homeschooling, I know how overwhelming the whole set up is. Especially choosing curriculums. Now that we’re heading into our third year of homeschooling, I’m starting to feel pretty confident about what we are doing, and how to make choices. As we get close to 2025, I’d like to share some tips about choosing curriculums with you.
Where To Start With Homeschool Curriculum Choices?
If you have spent even the smallest amount of time trying to decide which books and curriculums to choose for the start of your homeschool journey, you know the choices are massive. I’m going to drown in a sea of indecision and complete overwhelm massive. What can you do to make the task less daunting?
Tip 1 – Take a Deep Breath.
That panic and fear that you’re going to mess up your curriculum choices, has to go! Take a deep breath, and remember that homeschooling is about going on a grand learning adventure with your child. Whatever books, curriculums or programs you choose, your child will learn. Most likely, so will you. As a home educator, you have the power to adapt, skip, or completely change things in your learning plan that aren’t working. This is the wonderful thing about homeschooling. You can tailor learning to your child.
Tip 2 – Start small.
It can be tempting to buy every shiny book and curriculum that catches your eye. Everything looks sooooooo good. The thing is though, at this point in time, you probably still have so much to learn about your child’s learning style before you fork out significant amounts on fancy books and curriculum.
You also most likely don’t know your limitations as a teacher. It takes time to adjust, so you don’t want to completely overload yourself, and your children.
From experience, you might also completely misjudge how much you can squeeze into your day. Once you start adding in various extra-curricular activitites, co-ops, park plays and day trips, days get busy, fast.
How Small is Small?
If I was to do it all again, I honestly would have just done one of two things.
- Gone to my local education supplies store and got my kids to help me choose a book they like for each subject I wanted to cover. English might need a few, as explained further down.
- Used a Twinkl or SchoolHouse Teachers subscription to print out a bunch of content for my children’s ages. I would have put the worksheets/activities in a folder, and worked through them little by little each day.
Twinkl can be searched by subject and age, and provides checklists of what children need to learn to be aligned with the Australian curriculum. Here’s an example ~ https://www.twinkl.com.au/resource/t-l-4666-years-1-6-vocabulary-grammar-and-punctuation-large-poster-pack
SchoolHouse Teachers is an American homeschool service that provides curriculum boxes by school year, based on content available across their vast site. You can find out more about SchoolHouse Teachers here – https://schoolhouseteachers.com/
I also have a detailed review here – https://joyfuljourney123.com/schoolhouse-teachers-self-paced-homeschool-review/
If your children have been in school, the adjustment period is so much bigger than you might expect. In my opinion, you DO NOT want to make it worse for yourself, or the kids, by going big on curriculums with unfamiliar teaching approaches that your kids aren’t used to.
For English, you’d probably want a few books or work folder sections, rather than one, depending on age.
For younger kids –
- handwriting practice,
- combination phonics/spelling,
- story writing prompts,
- beginner grammar.
For older kids maybe add in –
- content that covers all text types and reading comprehension.
- more advanced grammar
Tip 3 – Reflect, and Expand Slowly.
After starting small, and finding your groove when the first few months are through, you might want to think about shaking things up and making some big changes. I’d still tread really carefully, maybe changing up one subject at a time and seeing how it goes. In my experience, not all changes work out wonderfully, and you don’t want to be adapting to more than one or two big curriculum changes in that first year.
Bear in mind also, that if you’re registered with the Education Unit, you’ll have to file your first learning report and plan for the following year two months before your first year’s up (in QLD). So, be kind to yourself, and don’t make the first year too complicated and stressful in terms of curriculum.
Tip 4 – Ask Other Homeschool Parents.
After a few months, you hopefully would have met a few seasoned homeschool parents you can discuss curriculum with, if you didn’t know any at the start. Rather than frying your brain reading endless internet comments and reviews, you can talk to them about their real life experiences before you expand and splurge on really expensive curriculums! This was so helpful for me.
Tip 5 – Stick with it!
For your own sanity and your child’s stability, whatever you choose, just run with it for a while. If the choices you make at the beginning are working and achieving acceptable results, why not just continue on, even if something else looks so much more exciting?
I wouldn’t be tempted to change curriculum every term because “it’s not working.” Things take time, and getting used to a curriculum design and approach is no exception. Stick it out for the year, and then reconsider before you throw away money and more oodles of time, that you absolutely won’t have, swapping midway.
That being said, there have been times I have simply had to drop items out of my plan because my kids weren’t developmentally ready for them. There can be times when things just have to go, and that’s okay.
Tip 6 – Learn to Live With Imperfect Curriculum.
No curriculum, or book is perfect. Sometimes we might need to adapt, or skip content that is too repetitive, or find supplementary resources when it skimps on important foundational concepts. Again, that is the absolutely brilliant thing about homeschooling. We can reflect and adapt for optimal learning.
My example is math. I turned myself inside out deciding on math curriculum and books for our kids. Knowing the terrible math education I received, I wanted something better for them. The choices were brain busting, along with the gazillion contrary reviews about them!
- Math U See
- Saxon Math
- Singapore Math
- Apologia Math
- numerous Australian math workbook series
- online math courses
- Twinkl math pages and games
- and the list could go on, and on.
This is the one subject that had my brain completely fried in the first year and a half. In the end, I’m still not 100% happy with our choice, but I’m sticking with it until high school. Why?
After much stress, we’re all (finally) used to the layout. I’ve learned to plan ahead and find supplementary games and videos for topics that might take longer to stick, or that may not be presented so well. If I got a new primary-aged math curriculum, I’d just have to adapt to a new set of quirks and limitations.
No workbook or curriculum is perfect. No workbook or curriculum will be a perfect fit for your learner. Adapt, adapt, adapt.
Tip 7 – Have a Sustainable Mindset.
What do I mean by that? There are no limits to the number of things that can be learned in this world. There seems almost no limit to the amount of information and books out there. However, the hours in the day are limited. There are many other things for busy parents to do outside of homeschool planning and lessons. Keep your learning program and your schedule as simple as you can.
Once you figure out what works well enough, set and forget for the year. Note I said well enough, not perfectly! That way, rather than burning yourself out in no time, like so many homeschool parents do, you can enjoy teaching your kids and learning with them. Even with imperfect books and curriculums.
Have a wonderful start to your homeschool journey in 2025. May God be with you, and may it turn into a wonderful adventure!
