What Curriculum Do You Use?

There are enough curriculums out there to make your mind numb! How do you navigate through it all? There are people that will simply say, “Use Son Light.” Or, “Just use A Beka.” Although I believe there is much more to home education than the curriculum, the curriculum you choose (if any) is either going to bless your family or burden your family. It will either add to the riches or take away joy and time and money.

I know it sounds simple, but it never occurred to us to write a statement of purpose or an education goal for our children. Our schooling experience revolved around public education until graduation from high school. “School” was where we were sent and where we planned on sending our kids. It was only a matter of which school.

Early in my investigation of home education, a veteran home school mom loaned me her copy of The Relaxed Home School. This book taught me the importance of having a goal. If we didn’t know what we were trying to achieve, educationally speaking, how in the world could we plan in order to get there?! Sometimes we can be quite dull! It honestly never crossed our minds.

The beauty of it is, once we wrote our goals out, it made finding a curriculum a breeze. There was only one that fit the bill.

I strongly suggest you stop reading and write down your initial thoughts on your goals for education. I am going to show you our goals because it was helpful for me to see someone else’s goals when we were just starting out. But having a sense of what you and your spouse want for your children before you read someone else’s goals will help you write accurate to your family, personal goals that are focused on the things that are important to you and your family.

Our goals (and yes we do change them as they need to be changed over time) are:

• To raise children that love the Lord Our God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength and love their neighbor as themselves

• To ensure they have a solid foundation of the Word of God and know how to search the Scriptures and dig deeper (Hebrew and Greek transliteration)

• To teach and encourage my children to not only gain knowledge but to be able to think logically with the purpose of applying theirknowleddge to their lives as well as the lives of those around them

• To have very balanced children that are well-versed in a broad range of topics

• To provide the opportunity to study in-depth topics of interest such as music, art, writing, etc…

• To foster a life long love of learning and joy of discovery

• To develop children who will become adults of unquestionable character devoted to Jesus Christ and desiring to reach a lost world in the capacity and gifting of the Lord.

It was startling when I first read what we wrote. There was nothing about grades or national percentage. As I looked at this list of goals I realized this could never be accomplished in a classroom. My husband and I needed teach them ourselves.

Please don’t forget, these are goals. Our children are working towards these things. They/we are not perfect people but sinners saved by a perfect God. We’re getting there!

Once you have written out your goals, start checking curriculum and see if the curriculum you are considering will help you achieve your goals with minimal work/tweaking on your part.

After all that, the curriculum we use for our children is called My Father’s World. You can find out more about them at their website [www.mfwbooks.com] but I will attempt to briefly tell you why we like them.

My Father’s World began with David and Marie Hazell. They didn’t start out trying to be a curriculum company. They were missionaries in Russia that home schooled their children. Having had all this experience, they thought putting together a kindergarten package for parents would be a nice way to raise some money for bible translation.

They put it together and the people who bought it begged for first grade too. They hesitated but finally did it. They were firm in their resolve that “that was it”. But God’s ways are not ours ways.

Over many years they have developed a curriculum that spans from preschool to high school. Truly the Lord uses whatever is in your hands to accomplish His purposes.

Because they had no intention of ever forming a curriculum company, they aren’t out to make as much money as they can. Instead of costly consumables, they have an appendix in the back of each teacher’s manual to make photocopies. There are no expensive science kits. They have designed inexpensive experiments and projects that use basic items already found in your home.

We use MFW because God's Word is the core. There are some Christian curricula that have a scheduled bible study time but MFW has the bible as the foundation for learning and it’s study is integrated throughout the curriculum.

They have also taken the best of the Charlotte Mason method, unit study, and hands-on learning to make a very complete yet very sane curriculum that’s easy to teach.

Sorry for the soapbox, I’m getting off now. But I leave you with this, we really do love it and are grateful the Hazells have done so much of the preparation work of home education for us.

Remember when making your choice/choices that your goal is to teach your children not teach a certain curriculum. The curriculum is merely a tool not the end goal.