Christian homeschool curriculum without cartoons

What does “without cartoons” actually mean?

Parents searching this phrase are rarely objecting to drawings. They are objecting to material that has to be made fun before a child will do it — a mascot who reacts to right answers, a lesson whose real subject is the entertainment wrapped around it.

The useful distinction is not whether a page has pictures. A picture that is the thing being worked on is instruction: five ducklings a child counts, a dotted letter he traces, the arrows showing stroke order in a numeral. A picture that comments on the work, rewards it, or exists so the page will not look plain is decoration.

The test takes seconds on a real page. Cover every image with your hand. If the lesson is still there — words to read, a sentence to write, a question to answer — the pictures were doing a job. If the page collapses, the pictures were the page.

What do the pages actually look like?

A Kindergarten reading page runs under the head “Ss is for Samuel” and is titled “Speak, Lord”. Under it sits a four-line story built from sounds already taught — Eli helps Sam see. Sam sits up on his mat. Sam says, ‘Speak, Lord.’ Sam will obey — then three words to trace on ruled lines, two comprehension questions and a sentence to finish. There is no illustration on the lesson.

A Grade 1 cumulative-review page titled “Words You Already Know” holds twelve words in boxes to read and sound out, a lined space for a sentence using one of them, one question about the week’s story — what did Jacob do that showed wisdom — and a tick-list at the foot: contrast, s-blends, l-blends, r-blends. Friday in the weekly packets is a cold read: five highlighted words and three short sentences, read aloud to the teaching adult.

A Foundations to Fluency page for bl- gives a blend ladder, ten speed words, four sentences to read aloud with three circles to shade as each read gets smoother, and dated lines for first read and smooth read. Green and gold labels, cream boxes, no pictures.

Is the Scripture the lesson, or a border around it?

Every week in the K–5 reading sequence is built on one hero, one virtue, one Scripture and one skill, and in the early grades those are the lesson’s material rather than its trim. Kindergarten Week 6 is Noah, trust, Genesis 6:22 and the letter Nn, and the decodable story that week is about Noah, written using only the sounds taught so far. Remove the narrative and there is no text left to decode, because the narrative was the reading practice.

Two honest qualifications. The hero is not always a Bible figure — Grade 5 Week 6 is Augustine and his City of God, humility, Ephesians 4:2 and the Latin root civ, with civil, civilization, citizenship, civic and civilian as the words. And the tie loosens as the grades climb: a Latin-root week is word study with a biography attached, not a Bible lesson.

Not every page is structural, either. On a decodable reader the story carries the virtue and a verse sits small at the foot; there, the verse is a label. Scripture quoted across the site is the New King James Version. The Hidden Word, the free Bible memory curriculum in the Apostolic Academy, uses the King James Version throughout, because its mastery standard is a word-perfect KJV verse.

Why do the lines not share one look?

They were made at different times and do not share one visual language, which matters if a uniform look is part of what you are shopping for.

The reading textbooks and the Foundations to Fluency workbooks carry essentially no illustration — headings, word boxes, ruled lines. Building Number Sense in Kindergarten uses small glossy objects, ducklings and stars, because they are the things being counted, and its number panels show stroke order with numbered arrows; the math practice sheets do the same with cupcakes and apples. The decodable readers use an older design with a scroll-shaped title banner.

Faith Readers Originals, the enrichment set, is the outlier. Its Bible story pages are illustration-led — numbered panels, saturated color, drawn figures including Jesus. If drawn depictions of Christ are a settled conviction in your home, skip that line; nothing else depends on it, and the reading and math sequences do not use it.

How Faith Schooling fits

Faith Schooling is a family-run K–5 publisher in Denmark, Wisconsin. Everything is a print-at-home PDF: you print the pages, the child works them with a pencil, and no software decides what comes next. A skill counts as mastered at 90% or better across five or more sessions on different days.

Reading is the fullest part: six grade textbooks running 8,952 student pages with 3,530 pages of teaching guide, the same sequence in 210 weekly lesson sets, 300 decodable readers and fluency passages, and 96 short phonics workbooks arranged by pattern rather than grade. Building Number Sense is a complete K–5 student-text sequence; Kindergarten through Grade 2 also have a coordinated practice workbook and a teaching guide, while Grades 3–5 have the student text supported by the math practice library instead. The whole Apostolic Academy is free to everyone.

You can judge the pages before paying anything. Every reading teaching guide is readable in the browser without an account, each grade shows eight zoomable sample pages of the student book, every Foundations level opens its complete first workbook, and the first three worksheets in each practice set are free. All Access is $39 a month for one household, cancel anytime.

Look elsewhere if

You want full-color illustrated pages a young child will pick up on his own. These are deliberately quiet, and some children find that dull at first. A publisher whose materials are illustration-led will suit you better.

You want a boxed curriculum that arrives printed and bound. Nothing here is shipped; you print it, and the printing cost is yours to weigh.

You want adaptive software, or a program that keeps a child occupied while you work. This is parent-led, and Kindergarten and Grade 1 are recorded as high adult involvement on every lesson.

You want every school subject in one place. Published here are reading and language arts, handwriting and cursive, mathematics, and Bible; science and a graded history course are not. Faith Schooling is also Apostolic in conviction and says so plainly rather than leaving you to find out in month four.