How to Choose Christian Homeschool Curriculum for Your Family

How do I choose a Christian homeschool curriculum?

Choose on four things, in this order: whether it matches your child's actual skill level rather than his grade, how much of the teaching you have to do each day, whether faith is inside the instruction or added around it, and whether you can inspect real pages before paying. Price matters last, because a cheap programme you abandon costs more than a good one you finish.

Notice what is not on that list: the cover art, the number of subjects in the box, and the worksheet count. Volume is the easiest thing for a publisher to advertise and the least predictive of whether a child learns to read.

This page is about the decision itself. Where these materials are relevant they are named plainly, and the comparison pages say where another publisher may fit better. If you already know you need a reading programme, or a math programme, the subject landing pages go into those choices in detail.

Where other publishers may fit better Choosing a Christian reading curriculum Choosing a Christian math curriculum for K–5 Authors and method

First decide what you are actually buying

Parents often compare things that are not the same category. A boxed all-in-one and a printable practice subscription are both called curriculum and they do different jobs. Being clear about which one you need removes most of the confusion.

A spine teaches. A supplement reinforces. You need a spine for reading and a spine for math; almost everything else in a K–5 house is a supplement, and a supplement is not a failure of the spine, it is the practice that makes the spine stick.

Practice library — practice, not a curriculum Choosing a Christian phonics curriculum K–5 curriculum for co-ops and microschools

Six questions to ask about any Christian curriculum

Ask these of every programme under consideration, including this one. A publisher who cannot answer them plainly has told you something.

1. Can I read an actual lesson — the real wording a parent would say — before I pay?
2. Is progress determined by demonstrated skill, or by the calendar date on the schedule?
3. How many minutes a day does this require from me, and how many from my child working alone?
4. Is faith in the instruction itself, or is it a devotional bolted to the front of a secular lesson?
5. What is not included, and what will I have to buy elsewhere to finish the year?
6. What does a year cost in total, for every child I am teaching, with nothing hidden?

How to test a programme before you pay

A sample chapter is always the publisher's best page. Judge a programme by a page from the middle of the year instead, and by whether you can find one at all.

Print a real page and teach it. Twenty minutes with your own child tells you more than an hour of reviews. Watch whether the instructions are written to you or to a classroom teacher, whether the page is quiet enough for a child to see the task, and whether your child could do the second half without you sitting there.

That inspection is deliberately open here. The complete teaching guides for the reading sequence, and the guides for Kindergarten through Grade 2 in math, are readable in a browser before joining. Every curriculum grade page carries hand-picked interior pages you can zoom. The first three worksheets in each practice set are free to download and print. If a programme will not let you do the equivalent, that is worth weighing.

Reading teaching guides, readable in a browser Building Number Sense interior previews Free practice sheets A sample week, Monday to Friday

Grade-paced or skill-paced: the difference that decides most families

Traditional programmes are calendar-paced. Week 14 happens in week 14 whether or not the child has week 13's skill. That works when a child is squarely at grade level, and it is the usual reason a family with a child slightly ahead or slightly behind is frustrated by month three.

Skill-paced material moves when the child demonstrates the skill. In practice that means placement matters more than the grade on the box, and an older child can work an earlier pattern without holding something that looks babyish.

The two reading paths here are built for exactly that split. Phonics, Decoding and Early Fluency runs as a full-year sequence by grade for a child who is on track. Foundations to Fluency is arranged by phonics pattern, across six levels and 96 workbooks, for the child who is missing something specific — a nine-year-old stuck on vowel teams needs the vowel-team level, not a Grade 4 reader.

Phonics, Decoding and Early Fluency Foundations to Fluency HARVEST — free reading placement Short-vowel fluency

What Christian curriculum costs, and what to check

Boxed curricula are typically priced per child per grade, so a family of three pays three times and pays again next year. Subscriptions are usually priced per household. Neither model is wrong, but they are not comparable until you do the arithmetic for your own family.

Work out the real number: price times children times the years you intend to stay. Then ask what happens to printing. A print-ready programme you can reprint for a younger sibling behaves very differently from a consumable workbook that must be repurchased.

Faith Schooling is $39 a month, or $299 for a founding first year and $349 a year afterwards. One household, every child, every grade where the resource exists. A large amount stays free regardless: the reading placement, the first three sheets of every practice set, the open game content, and the whole Apostolic Academy.

Membership and pricing Frequently asked questions Homeschool placement tests and skill checklists

Judge the faith integration, not the faith labelling

Almost every Christian publisher says faith is integrated. The word does very different work in different catalogues. The useful test is to open a mid-year page and ask what would happen if the Scripture were deleted from it. If the lesson is unchanged, the faith was decoration.

Concretely: a reading programme with real integration puts biblical narrative inside the decodable text the child is actually decoding, so the reading practice and the Bible content are the same minutes. A handwriting programme with real integration uses Scripture copywork as the stroke practice. A math programme with real integration is honest that seven plus five is seven plus five, and puts its formation in the framing, the diligence and the word problems.

Doctrine deserves a separate look. Christian publishers differ on real things. Read the publisher's statement of belief before buying a year of daily instruction, because what is being handed over is a portion of a child's discipleship, not only his spelling. The companion guide on faith-integrated curriculum works through that test in detail.

What to look for in faith-integrated curriculum Apostolic homeschool curriculum and materials Decodable Readers Learning Cursive

Where Faith Schooling fits, and where it does not

Faith Schooling is a K–5 publisher of reading, phonics, handwriting and cursive, math, and faith formation. It does not publish science, history, geography or foreign language, and it stops at Grade 5. If you want one box covering every subject for a fourth-grader, this is not it, and the comparison pages name publishers who are.

It fits best when you want the literacy and number work done thoroughly and inspectably, when you have children at different levels, when you would rather print than put children in front of video, and when you want the faith content inside the instruction.

The comparison pages are dated, factual, and include a section on where another publisher may serve a family better. That section is the one worth reading with a pen.

Faith Schooling vs Abeka Faith Schooling vs BJU Press Faith Schooling vs The Good and the Beautiful The full curriculum map