How to Know if Your Homeschool Curriculum is a Good Fit

Selecting a homeschool curriculum that is a good fit for your child can determine the success of your home school. A curriculum that is a poor fit can be miserable for both the child and teacher and lead to homeschool burnout. On the other hand, a homeschool curriculum that is a good fit can make teaching your homeschool child easy and enjoyable while reducing homeschool burnout. Here are the steps to take when evaluating your homeschool curriculum.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. The first step in determining if a curriculum is a good fit for your family and child is the religious content. Some families want no religious content at all in their homeschool curriculum. Others are very concerned that their curriculum teach religious beliefs while teaching academic subjects. Many are somewhere in between. Choose a homeschool curriculum that will fit your beliefs and won't offend you in some way.

2. Another thing you'll want to assess is whether your child is learning the material being taught by your curriculum easily. Does your child seem to struggle to grasp the concepts taught? Is he falling behind? How are her test scores compared to the average for her grade level? Difficulty learning the material, as evidenced by observation and testing, suggests that the curriculum is not a good fit. Perhaps your child has a different learning style than that targeted by the curriculum. Perhaps another teaching method would work better.

3. Next, you'll want to consider whether the curriculum is teaching at your child's level. If your child complains about school work, it may be that the material is too hard or too easy. If your child complains that it is too hard, it may be that they don't have a full comprehension of previous concepts taught (ie. math facts mastered before moving onto more complicated problems) or the reading level is too high. If your child complains that the work is boring or they already know it, it may be that the curriculum is too easy. Standardized test results will be helpful in figuring out if this is a problem. A low score may indicate the need to backtrack while a high score might indicate a need for more challenging work.

4. Another consideration is the time requirements for the curriculum. Are you a busy mom trying to use a curriculum that requires heavy parent involvement? Are you having trouble fitting in all of the daily assignments but feel skipping parts would hurt the child's understanding of the material? The amount of parent involvement required to teach a curriculum varies tremendously from the parent supervising the entire lesson to the child being able to do the entire lesson without help. Having a good match between how much hands-on teaching that is needed and how much time you have to devote to teaching, will easy homeschool burnout.

5. The quality of the teacher's manuals will also have a bearing on whether a homeschool curriculum is a good fit. In subjects that are you are strong in, you may be able to teach with minimal help from a teacher's manual. In subjects you struggle with, you would probably do better with a curriculum that provides more and better explanations of the material and how to teach it. If you are finding it difficult to teach the subject, consider looking for another curriculum that will provide better teacher's notes.

6. You'll also want to evaluate whether the curriculum is self-contained or whether it require the student to have knowledge in other subjects that they may not already have. Having to stop, research, and teach unrelated material before you can teach your current lesson dramatically increases both the time and the difficulty of teaching the lesson. A self-contained curriculum works better unless you are using a unit study where all subjects are taught together.

7. Finally, you'll want to evaluate whether you and your child is enjoying the curriculum. Is it enjoyable to teach? If not, you may find yourself skipping it. Is your child enjoying the subject? If they enjoy the curriculum, they will be easier to teach. They may even ask to do more work or seek additional information. If they aren't enjoying it, you will find your child harder to teach and less cooperative. Any subject can be enjoyable, or at least tolerable, for your child with the right homeschool curriculum.

Tips & Warnings

• The effort of finding the right homeschool curriculum for your child is worth it. My child used to cry over doing school every day. We were both miserable. When I followed the steps outlined above, my child began to enjoy school overall and to tolerate the most detested subjects.
• Don't settle for a poorly matched curriculum just because it works well for someone else, even another child in your family. Each child is different. What works for one child with one learning style could be disastrous for another child with a different learning style.

[kims3003]

on 8/12/2009 great article and well written.

[lynnhsmomof2]

on 11/14/2008 Good advice! :)

[veryirie]

on 11/13/2008 A lot of great advice and info in this article; thanks!

[Cateeto]

on 11/13/2008 Wonderdfully written article.

[vikki9]

on 11/13/2008 This was an enlightening article for me. I thought home-schooling programs were county/state offerings but I guess religious organizations can offer programs as well. Thank you.