Faith Schooling vs BJU Press for K–5 reading and math

Which one fits: the short answer

BJU Press sells full-grade K4–12 kits across every core subject, with optional Homeschool Hub video streaming or DVDs, priced per student. Faith Schooling uses one K–5 household membership for complete reading and language arts, phonics, cursive, math, Bible, and discipleship, taught by the parent from scripts.

Faith Schooling uses a different model: one household membership for a deep K–5 foundation, with parent-led scripts, print-first student work, mastery pacing, and Apostolic conviction woven through the program.

What each one is, and who does the teaching

BJU Press is conservative Protestant and academically traditional. Reading 1 correlates with Phonics and English 1, so the language-arts strand hangs together rather than arriving as three unrelated books. Teacher editions are classroom-sized; homeschool companions exist, and Distance Learning video puts a studio teacher in front of the child.

BJU Press posts no official K–5 daily time. One parent on the Confessions of a Homeschooler forum described 5.5 to 6.5 hour days when using BJU fully — one household's report rather than a published figure, but a useful signal that the full kit across every subject is a full school day.

Faith Schooling is parent-taught with no video option. A complete reading lesson is scripted at 45 to 55 minutes, from a calm start and prayer through phoneme work, blending, decodable reading with narration, a timed drill, application and a spaced-review card box. Cursive is 10 to 15 minutes. The child's work is on paper throughout.

Side by side

BJU Press facts below were observed on the publisher's own site in August 2026, and the prices are per student rather than per household. Kits, tiers and prices change; check the publisher's current catalog before you decide anything on the strength of this table.

What each costs

Observed on BJU Press Homeschool's site on 26 August 2026: a K5 complete kit at $454.20 and a Grade 1 kit at $1,073.05. Those are per-student prices, so a second and third child in different grades are separate orders. Rebecca Devitt has separately cited video grade packages near $1,099 for 2026 — her published figure, not a catalog pull we verified ourselves.

Faith Schooling All Access is $39 a month, cancel anytime, covering every K–5 program and the complete practice library for every child in one household. The honest offset is printing: student books, workbooks and practice pages arrive as files you print, so paper and toner move onto your side of the ledger.

What you can read before you spend anything

BJU Press does something most publishers do not, and it deserves the credit: free per-course Lesson Plan Overviews that list every lesson in the course. Combined with the scope-and-sequence PDF and sample pages, you can see the shape of a whole year before you order. That is more transparency than the category norm, and it is worth using.

Faith Schooling publishes the teaching rather than the plan. Every reading and phonics teaching guide can be read page by page in the browser before joining, and so can the complete first workbook of each phonics level. Add eight sample pages from every grade's student book, three open sheets in every practice set, and HARVEST placement, which is open to everyone.

Where the Bible sits in each program

Reviewers describe BJU's biblical worldview as woven through the lessons rather than confined to a verse in the margin, alongside Bible as its own graded subject. For a family that wants doctrine taught deliberately and academically, that is a real strength, and it comes attached to a path that runs from K4 to graduation.

Faith Schooling carries Scripture inside the reading week — a Bible hero as the text, a virtue as the theme, and one memory verse quoted exactly from the New King James Version. Direct doctrinal study lives in the free Apostolic Academy: Scripture memory, Bible studies, a ten-volume church history, and family printables.

Pacing and screens

BJU's kits follow course lesson plans across a school year. That structure is why the Lesson Plan Overviews are useful, and also why a mid-year switch means either compressing or repeating. Cathy Duffy notes that families juggling several grades sometimes skip the large teacher editions, and lose the method along with them.

Faith Schooling advances a child on evidence: daily exit tickets, weekly mastery checks with parallel forms so a retest is not the same questions, timed drills with personal-best tracking, and a skill ledger. On screen load, BJU's video is optional and the written work stays on paper; Faith Schooling has no video at all, and its browser layer is for the parent.

Why families choose Faith Schooling

Faith Schooling is designed for parents who want direct involvement, clear scripts, visible mastery evidence, and one coherent K–5 library for the whole household.

• One membership covers every K–5 grade and every child in the household.
• Complete reading and language arts includes structured phonics, cursive, weekly lessons, and original decodable readers.
• Building Number Sense supplies all six K–5 student texts, coordinated K–2 workbooks and guides, and extensive upper-grade practice.
• HARVEST gives free adaptive reading placement and names a starting grade and quarter.
• Print-first student work is supported by browser-based guides, planning tools, and games.
• The free Apostolic Academy states the site's convictions plainly and supports home, classroom, and church discipleship.

Faith Schooling at a glance

Faith Schooling concentrates on a deep Kindergarten through Grade 5 foundation in reading, phonics, cursive, math, Bible, and discipleship, with families selecting complementary subjects around it.

The complete, scripted reading sequence is built for ordinary K–5 instruction. Families can also add appropriate specialist support whenever an individual learner needs targeted intervention.

How to decide this week

Work through these four in order before you spend anything. The comparison gets much easier once you have taught one real lesson from each.

1. Start with the K–5 curriculum map and identify the Faith Schooling programs your child needs.
2. Read a Faith Schooling teaching guide in full and compare its real lesson structure with your family's priorities.
3. Run HARVEST placement and print the report, so the starting point is a skill rather than a birthday.
4. Count students. Per-student kits and one household membership scale in opposite directions.

HARVEST reading placement A day in the classroom