Homeschool Curriculum Comparison Worksheet

Faith Schooling Published 2026-07-16 Updated 2026-07-20

Print one per subject. Fill in whoever you’re actually considering — including us.

Read this first

We sell curriculum. Faith Readers is our product, which means you’re holding a comparison worksheet written by someone with a stake in the answer.

So here’s our attempt to earn the read: the rows below are the ones we’d use if we sold nothing, and several are rows we don’t always win on. If this worksheet ever starts steering you toward us, it has failed at the job it exists to do.

Step 1 — How much worldview does this subject actually carry?

Check the subject you’re evaluating. It changes what you’re even looking for.

Subject	Worldview load	So buy on…
☐ Bible / doctrine	Total	You teach it. Purchased material is a support at most.
☐ History	Heavy	Whose story, going where, with whom at the center?
☐ Science	Heavy at specific points	Check origins and human dignity. Chemistry and weather are just chemistry and weather.
☐ Literature	Depends on the reading list	Read the list.
☐ Health / family life	Heavy	Check all of it.
☐ Reading instruction	Low — it’s a method	Effectiveness. See Step 3.
☐ Math	Essentially none	Whoever teaches it best.
☐ Handwriting / spelling / grammar	None	Quality.

Where energy usually goes wrong: a great deal of it on finding “Christian math,” and very little on the history sequence — which is where the worldview actually lives. A verse above a page of long division is a nice touch. It isn’t integration.

Step 2 — The doctrinal check (one afternoon, seven items)

Skip this entirely for math, spelling, and handwriting. It matters enormously for the rest.

Publisher:

Check	What you found
☐ Statement of faith (usually online, usually specific)
☐ The salvation lesson — find it and read it. Highest-value ten minutes here.
☐ Baptism — formula, mode, symbolic or essential?
☐ The Godhead — how is God’s nature described?
☐ The Holy Spirit — are the gifts presented as ceased?
☐ Church history — what’s here, and what isn’t?
☐ Origins (science courses)

Differences I found — these are the lessons I’ll teach myself:

Where	What it says	What we believe	Week I’ll teach it

Finding differences is normal, and it’s useful. Most Christian curriculum is broadly evangelical or Reformed — often sincerely and well, just differently. Put those lessons on the plan now. Then teach them with your child watching: here’s what this book says, here’s what the Bible says, here’s why we believe differently, and here’s why these people are still our brothers and sisters.

That’s a lesson you couldn’t have bought.

Step 3 — Reading only: check the method

This is the one place where getting it wrong costs years.

	✓ or ✗
Teaches letter sounds explicitly
Teaches blending explicitly
Teaches patterns in a deliberate order
Child reads words made of the sounds already taught (decodable text)
Irregular words taught honestly — not memorized by shape

The disqualifier

✗ Does it ever tell a child to guess a word from the picture, the first letter, or what would “make sense”?

That habit looks like reading for about two years — often until third grade — and then has to be undone, which is hard on a child. This is a question about the method, not the publisher.

Step 4 — Does it teach?

Doctrine is the filter. Teaching quality is the purchase.

	Option A:	Option B:
Does it teach, or assign? (Does it assume I already know the subject?)
Real daily prep (ask a parent who used it, not the catalog)
Survives February? (can it compress when you’re three weeks behind and someone’s been sick)
Fits this child? (the one who won’t sit still — or reads ahead and gets bored)
Full cost, all in	$	$
What would a parent who used it change?

Step 5 — The row that decides it

	Option A	Option B
*Does it fit you?*	☐	☐

You are the teacher. A program you dread is a program that quietly stops in October.

This is the most predictive question on the page and the one that gets asked least. It’s last so you can’t skip it.

Your decision

Choosing: For:

Differences I’ll be teaching myself:

What would make me change my mind by Christmas:

Before you close this

Buy something adequate and start. Six weeks of actually teaching it will tell you more than six more months of research — and you can change it. Families change curriculum mid-year all the time. It’s normal, and it isn’t failure.

Adequate and started beats perfect and pending, every time.

“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children…”
Deuteronomy 6:6-7

You shall teach them. Not you shall select a vendor.

The curriculum is a tool in your hand — a good one makes a long year easier and a hard subject teachable, and that’s worth real money and real research. But no box you open in August is going to form your child’s convictions.

You are the curriculum. The rest is materials.