Homeschooling can not happen without a suitable homeschool curriculum. However, there are a few things to consider before making this important and costly homeschool investment.
Homeschool parents can get recommendations from homeschool support groups and their local schools to find the best homeschool curriculum for their kids.
In this article, you will find homeschool curriculum reviews of some of the most popular homeschooling courses in 2022.
7 Popular Homeschool Curriculum Reviews in 2022
Abeka Curriculum – Top Notch Christian Curriculum
Philosophy
The Abeka Curriculum’s philosophy, formerly A Beka Book, provides a Christian-based, traditional, and conservative education for scholars. Established in 1972, Abeka offers a homeschooling curriculum as well as a school curriculum for traditional schools. Within the curriculum for grades pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, Abeka Academy provides online video materials, traditional textbooks, supplementary material, and DVDs for families who may prefer that option.
Learning Styles
Firstly, Abeka has a traditional approach to education, where all materials are from a Christian perspective. This reflects in science and history books, but not in language arts and math. They also publish teacher edition books and answer keys. The teacher editions contain lesson plans, the whole student text, and selected answers. Secondly, all textbooks and other materials match students’ grade levels and subjects. This traditional approach emphasizes memorization, repetition, practice, and drill. Direct instruction, drills, and workbook activities are the core part of the curriculum. Moreover, the curriculum does include some hands-on activities.
What Makes It Unique?
This homeschool curriculum is visually appealing to students, as it is very colorful and offers many paperback editions, which can help keep the cost lower. They also have some hardcover editions and now many digital versions of the curriculum. The online digital texts include additional features like links to other content, with note-taking features.
The homeschooling curriculum includes teaching material and suggestions, lesson plans, and even provides scheduling suggestions. Abeka provides student book kits and parent book kits for more clarity and less confusion when getting ready for the home school year.
Time 4 Writing – Best Curriculum That Targets Writing Instruction
Philosophy
Time 4 Writing provides a personalized writing curriculum online for homeschoolers and helps students learn how to create effective essays, teach grammar, and improve and expand their writing repertoires. Time 4 Writing presents their coursework online. The program includes eight weekly units, and students work through the units consecutively.
Learning Styles
This writing curriculum is designed for students in elementary, middle, and high school grades. Besides, it is beneficial for ESL students. Students receive instruction in one of 15, 8-week long courses. Skills include paragraph writing, essay-constructing, and grammar. Time 4 Writing’s coursework is a fit for all learning types because it is an interactive and engaging homeschool course that consists of written assignments, cumulative lessons that build on the previously learned ones, and quizzes.
What Makes It Unique?
Throughout the course, parents receive mid-course and end-of-course progress reports. These reports allow them to stay up-to-date on their student’s progress. Once all assignments are completed successfully by the student, students will receive a completion certificate. This personalized attention helps students stay focused and engaged. In addition, Time 4 Writing administers a writing assessment test to determine at what level the student is functioning. The program will then tailor the student’s materials to focus on areas where they need the most help. Certified teachers review and respond with helpful feedback on every writing assignment and give graded assignments.
Math-U-See – Skill-based Math Curriculum
Philosophy
The Math-U-See program elements are designed to allow individualized student learning, where the student’s needs are the main focus. Some clear guidelines and requirements determine when a student is ready to progress to the next level. This homeschool curriculum is suitable for both small groups and single student’s homeschools settings.
Learning Styles
This program may be a fit for homeschool families who follow a traditional or classic homeschool program, are an unschooling family, or are students in the Charlotte Mason program. Besides, it uses a unique approach for different learning styles, especially for visual learners. The program includes colorful manipulative to see a concept represented more concretely visually.
What Makes It Unique?
The Math-U-See is an online-based program that uses different instructional methods to help students gain mastery of each concept. Different strategies are used for learning, including textbooks, practice, assessments, videos, and reviews. Unlike in other programs, this program offers students to learn from one concept to another because it is not organized by grade levels but is skills-based. The program provides workbooks for students to work and practice in and tests to determine their progress. The workbooks are uncluttered and not too distracting for students.
Oak Meadow – Focused on Inclusion, Diversity, and Compassion
Philosophy
Oak Meadow has been providing a flexible, ahead-of-its-time, progressive program since 1975. It provides education options for children who are independent learners in grades kindergarten through high school. Oak Meadow’s homeschool curriculum emphasizes core values many homeschool families are looking for as part of a homeschool curriculum that parents and children love to use. Some of the core values Oak Meadow strives for are inclusion, diversity, compassion, and personalized education for all children. It also focuses on building respect and care for nature and the natural world to list a few values they champion.
Learning Styles
Each course includes 36-weekly lesson plans, with a variety of assignments, activities, and readings. For the home teacher’s convenience, we’ve included assignment checklists, planners, materials lists, and learning assessment rubrics to track student progress. While some families enjoy the structure of our 36-week lesson plans, others take advantage of the curriculum design’s built-in flexibility by adjusting the material as needed. It includes craft kits, supplementary materials, and teacher manuals for further enrichment.
What Makes It Unique?
Oak Meadow’s school courses have provided good, quality homeschooling programs for preschoolers through high-schoolers for more than 40 years. The program’s focus has been and still is to create positive learning experiences that help homeschoolers play an active role in children’s education and work toward creating a better world. This homeschool program offers interested homeschooling families opportunities to attend live virtual information sessions. And the best, after each session, there is a Q & A session.
The Oak Meadow programs are accredited to provide K-12 homeschooling and distance learning, with a curriculum and coursework that includes 36-weekly lesson plans. They are great for kinesthetic learners and include activities engaging in new materials, community-based projects, and research. The program also provides many opportunities and homeschooling resources for children to explore. Users will also find art projects that help students to create and develop their creativity.
Time4learning – Social Studies Curriculum – Tops in History and Social Sciences
Philosophy
Time4Learning’s Social Studies curriculum is available for preschool students, grades 2-7, and high school. While grade levels will get suitable programs for the younger and middle school kids, high-school students’ program is a little different. Their curriculum is divided into five courses. This popular homeschooling curriculum is multimedia-based and has become a popular go-to source.
What Makes It Unique?
Time4Learning’s reviews are not only positive because of their online homeschool curriculum but also because of the great socio-economics programs. This homeschool curriculum focuses on teaching students about other cultures and builds a strong foundation on current events, world, and national history. It also helps homeschoolers to learn how to address current societal issues.
Time4Learning provides extensive resources, including instructional learning videos, worksheets, and online lessons. Homeschoolers will find that the wide range of topics the curriculum covers helps students gain a wide-reaching grasp on various concepts. This top-rated homeschool curriculum allows students to learn deeply and thoroughly. It is student-paced and is free to be adjusted as needed. In addition, it is accessible via any computer with internet access, at any hour, across the world.
Learning Styles
This homeschool-based curriculum offers flexible lessons and grade levels. Students can not only work at their own pace but also enhance their homeschool experience. Students can repeat tests and lessons until the student masters the concept. School grade levels are flexible. The homeschoolers learn are free to learn at their own pace. This provides new freedoms for homeschoolers. Parents with students in grades pre-K-12 who have learning differences, are ESL learners, or are advanced learners, will find the flexibility and resources provided online to help make adjustments to lesson plans and scheduling and help all students develop a love of learning.
This video talks about the Time4Learning K-12 curriculum, a review of the software from the parent’s and students’ point of view.
Fascinating Education – Top Pick for High School Science Education
Philosophy
The creator of Fascinating Education is Dr. Sheldon Margulies, a former neurologist and a professor, who developed this course to inspire more students to love and become more interested in possible careers in scientific areas. This homeschool curriculum helps students to learn how to learn. Homeschool curriculum reviews rave about Fascinating Education and its scientifically focused programs.
What Makes It Unique?
The illustrations included in the curriculum are colorful and interesting yet simple and easy to understand. The Fascinating Education curriculum is great for auditory learners and includes online audio files. High-schoolers can take courses in the sciences, including physics, biology, and chemistry. The programs are presented slowly with detailed explanations and follow a defined storyline. They show how things work and the real-life problems and situations that It can address. In addition, Fascinating Education also offers free sample lessons of online courses to make it easy for homeschoolers to determine if the program is the right fit for their child.
What Are the Results of this Methodology?
The biology curriculum was tested for one hour per week with 95 students at Dunbar High School in Baltimore, Maryland, with an amazing result. As you can see in the graphic below, the students’ scores in biology rose from a 40% pass rate to an 86.6% pass rate.
Science 4 Us – Science Curriculum for the Younger Child
Philosophy
Science 4 Us is a curriculum that meets the need of younger learners. According to research by the American Education Research Association, 62% of kindergarten kids struggle with the sciences due to limited exposure to it, while 54% still struggle by the time they enter the 8th grade. Therefore, Science 4 Us’s online school focuses on kindergarten and second-grade students who need early exposure to develop the foundation for future learning.
What Makes It Unique?
Firstly, Science4Us provides experiences for students they will find interesting and easy to grasp. Secondly, it exposes budding scientists via fun ways to learn about new sight words and vocabulary, which benefits language and literacy skills.
Easy to Access Free Online Resources
There are many free, online homeschooling resources and school programs for homeschooling families looking for their child’s right fit. In conclusion, all of the websites listed below are free for families to research the homeschool curriculum. Families will find homeschool curriculum reviews for children in K-12 grades as well as other valuable online links and materials.
Khan Academy
With the online school Khan Academy, students enjoy watching fun video lessons that help them engage in the subject matter. A vast list of resources and daily lesson plans are available through the academy, with a large focus on math, scientific studies, and other subjects you may be using, including language arts, social studies, economics, and many more.
Brainpop
BrainPOP is a fun and free website that breaks down topics by subject and provides games that expose students to concepts in an engaging, fun manner. Moreover, BrainPOP provides information and resources in science, social studies, language arts, math, music and arts, engineering, technology, and health.
Duolingo
If you are interested in a language learning app, Duolingo offers both children and adult students an opportunity to learn another language. While the language learning app is completely free, it offers more than 40 languages for study. It is a completely online program that breaks lessons into bite-sized lessons. Besides, the lessons’ structure is appealing to young students, with a game-like structure and cool interface, which rewards kids for learning.
More Homeschool Reviews
Homeschool families provide homeschool reviews for families who have used the wide range of currently available programs online. Whether it be an all-inclusive homeschooling program or a program that focuses just on certain subjects, free online reviews can help families choose the curriculum that will benefit students throughout the school year.
Curriculum Review Websites to Check Out
The Homeschool Mom
This site provides curriculum reviews for a wide range of homeschooling programs available online and presents homeschool curriculum reviews from homeschooling families who know are using or have used one or more of the various homeschooling courses.
Cathy Duffy Reviews
Cathy Duffy Reviews is a reputable resource for homeschool curriculum reviews and offers reviews for 17 core subjects and tabs. The search includes reviews for K-12 homeschool extras and curricula, which are sorted by subject, homeschool books, and Cathy Duffy’s digital books.
Successful Homeschooling
In this online homeschool curriculum review article, we wanted to discuss various topics, including how to get started with homeschool teaching and homeschool curriculum reviews. Whether you are looking for a homeschool curriculum for students in first grade, middle school, or in the final school year of high school, this site has a full list of homeschool curriculum information. In conclusion, we hope this article could help you find the right curriculum to create a suitable homeschool schedule.
