Choosing homeschool curriculum one subject at a time

Choose one subject at a time, starting with math and reading, and look at a real sample lesson before you buy anything. That's the short version. You don't have to find one company that does everything, and many families never do. They use one program for math, another for reading, and something looser for history and science.

Start with math and reading

Math and reading build on themselves every day, so a bad fit costs the most there. Get those two right first. History, science, art and the rest can be looser, and you can add them a few weeks in.

Place your kid where they actually are

Whatever the grade on the box says, start where your child is. A nine-year-old who's shaky on subtraction needs to fix that before multi-digit multiplication will make sense, and a first grader who reads well doesn't need to spend a year on letter sounds. Many math and phonics programs have a free placement test on their website. Use it, and trust it over the grade number.

Read one lesson all the way through

Before you buy, find a sample lesson and read it the way you'd teach it on a Tuesday morning. Ask yourself:

• Could I teach this with the book open, without prepping the night before?
• How long would it take, start to finish, with my kid, not an ideal one?
• Is there practice after the teaching, and is there enough of it, or too much?
• Does it tell me what the answer is, and how to explain it if they get it wrong?

That last one matters more than it looks. You'll hit a lesson you don't know how to explain, and a good teacher's guide gives you the words.

Match how much of you it needs

Some programs are written for a parent to teach every lesson, script and all. Others are built for a kid to work mostly alone. Neither is better. It depends on how many kids you have, their ages, and whether you're also working. A program that needs forty minutes of you per subject per child won't survive a house with three kids in three grades.

Check it against what you believe

Curriculum carries a point of view, especially in history, science and literature. Read the table of contents and a couple of lessons with that in mind. If something bothers you, it'll bother you more in March.

Look at how your kid learns

Some kids want pictures and hands-on work. Some want a clean page and no fluff. Some need everything read aloud. You probably already know which one you have. Choose for that child, not for the one in the reviews.

Give it six weeks, then decide

You'll probably have a week in October when the math book is the enemy. Every lesson ends in tears and you're sure you picked wrong. Sometimes you did. Often it's one hard unit, or a kid who needs to slow down for a few days.

Give a new program about six weeks. If it's still a fight, it's fine to switch, even mid-year. Somebody else will buy the old one.

If you'd rather not assemble a year yourself, Arbor lays out a year for each subject at your kid's level, so you can see it before you commit.

Most families get curriculum a little wrong the first year. That's how you learn what your kid needs.