Do you ever feel as though you’ve hit a wall in your homeschool? Have you ever had to go back to the drawing board on just about every homeschool curriculum decision you’ve made? This past year has been one of those years for me. Even long-standing favorites that I’ve used forever ground to a shocking halt. Over and over again, I found myself back to the drawing board to research new homeschool curriculum. But all of those homeschool challenges and upsets led us to several of our new homeschool curriculum favorites, resources that both my kids and I have loved.
Our Top 5 Homeschool Curriculum Favorites for 2017-18 school year
A Reason for Spelling
After years of struggling through spelling, we’ve found a curriculum that has made a world of difference for us. Reason for Spelling is my top homeschool curriculum favorite. I’ve been absolutely amazed at the progress my dyslexic daughter is making in spelling. We are currently half-way through Level C; we’ve taken our time. It hasn’t been easy to let go of grade-level expectations and to just do the next thing, but I’m learning to celebrate what her success looks like without comparing to others. For my dyslexic daughter, success is that the subject which used to give her the most anxiety is now her favorite; it’s her first choice of the day. For her, success is lesson after lesson of words that she can actually spell. When she got to her first review lesson, she made a bright pink poster of all the words she’d learned and kept it in her room—her trophy of success! That, my friends, says it all!
She works through all of the multi-sensory activities provided for a list, taking just one activity a day. Which means, she is taking about 2 weeks per lesson. At the end of the two weeks, we use the “pre-test” section (we never “pretest”) as her actual spelling test at the end of a lesson. I say the word, read the provided sentence from the teacher manual, say the word once more—and she spells it on paper! It’s a miracle! Half-way through the book, she has not missed more than 2 on any lesson and most lessons are perfect.
She will be a rising fifth grader this next year, and we will be continuing through the Level C book next year. I am not stressing over grade level (at least, I’m trying not to); I am simply thrilled that she is able to spell at this level.
The activities in A Reason for Spelling are amazing. Her favorite is an activity in her workbook where she matches a set of boxes to the correct word by visually noticing the shape of the word. She also loves the exercise where she is catching the spelling errors. Each lesson also includes four multi-sensory activities for practicing her list. Sometimes, she uses letter tiles or glitter glue. Other times, she makes her letters with playdo or pipe cleaners (we use wiki stix). Her favorite is chanting the words out loud with rhythm instruments.
The activities are so fun and such a great teaching tool, that I’ve begun using many of the multi-sensory ideas with my youngest as he begins spelling some simple CVC words.
Writing and Rhetoric
Writing and Rhetoric was one of the surprise successes this year, making it another top 5 homeschool curriculum favorite. When I was searching for writing curriculum last year, I had my daughter helping me. I narrowed her choices to a couple of different curriculum options, and to my surprise, this was her pick. It surprised me because it is more of a workbook approach (though classical in it’s presentation) versus other writing curriculum options that are more activity or games-based. I only bought her one book, even though the website recommends completing two a year, because I just wasn’t sure she could handle that pace or that she would really like it. I sold her short, for sure. She loved this approach to writing and flew through the book. And after we started the curriculum, I understood why. This approach to writing baby-steps the student through the process. When studying fables, she was able to keep the same plot and conflict and merely change the characters, allowing her to work on one element of story-telling or one element of sentence-writing at a time. She didn’t have the pressure of coming up with an original idea and writing it in it’s proper structure. It was ideal.
The second surprise from this curriculum was that not only did my dyslexic daughter like the program, but my oldest (who is a very strong writer) also thoroughly enjoyed the program. Go figure! How did that happen? While my daughter worked through Book1: Fables, my son worked through Book 3 (Narratives) and Book 4 (Chreia, Proverbs). Both were able to do a considerable amount of the work independently, and both happened to win writing contests this year!
Note: My daughter does use some speech-to-text tools to help her when she is writing in her various subjects.
We will be continuing with this program next year, and I’ve gotten two books for my daughter this time.
RightStart Math
We’ve tried Abeka, Christian Light, and Math Mammoth—all ended in knock-down, drag-out tearful days of what felt like force-feeding math to my child. For years, I’ve looked at this curriculum and hesitated to actually try it, for several reasons. 1. It is so much different from other math curriculum options. 2. Reviews say it is teacher-intensive. 3. It is pricey for a math curriculum. But after seeing my daughter struggle through so many different options in spite of being very good in math, I was very ready to try something drastically different. I am so glad that I did!
RightStart Math easily fits within my top 5 homeschool curriculum favorites for this year. I’m blown away by it.
My daughter warmed up to it slowly. I think she had some anxiety about math in general and about trying something new, but by week 2 or 3, she was loving it, too. I also decided to use it with my youngest, since I was making the investment anyway. The manipulatives and very visual BIG PICTURE approach to mathematics have been perfect for both kids, but particularly for my daughter (who probably some mild dyscalculia, in addition to dyslexia). Carrying, borrowing, the multiple operations involved in long division—and let’s not even get started on order of operations—wreaked absolute havoc on her confidence. She is my child that can solve a multi-step word problem in her head but can’t show you how she got the answer; she struggles writing the numbers and solving math on paper. RightStart has been amazing for allowing her to see and mentally answer these longer problems without getting tangled in the web of numbers on the sheet of paper.
And I love teaching it. I’m not spending any more time prepping or teaching than I did with any other curriculum I’ve tried with her, and I never teach math for more than 20-30 minutes. Ever! We don’t worry about how many lessons we do or don’t get done. Some days, we fly through 2 or 3 lessons in our time together. Sometimes, we’ll take 2 or 3 days to finish a single lesson. We don’t always do every game, but we try to play a math game once or twice a week. I often have my oldest son play with her so that he gets some of the concepts down, though he currently prefers to use Christian Light math. I’ve also purchased the game apps that RightStart math offers. I love them because it allows us to take some of our favorite games on the road with us (without me going ballistic about missing cards and pieces). It is pricey, but well worth the investment.
Michael Clay Thompson Language Arts
I’ve done a lot of curriculum searching in the area of language arts this year, particularly for my oldest. Michael Clay Thompson’s curriculum is another option I’ve looked at and hesitated to invest in. I tip-toed in this year with a single purchase of Ceasar’s English I as an interactive iBook, and I was so impressed that I quickly invested in several more interactive iBooks in the series for both my son and my daughter. While the vocabulary is much too challenging for my dyslexic daughter, it is perfect for my oldest. We’ve tried a number of options, but this particular product has not just taught him but inspired him. He is using his vocabulary, spotting it in his reading, and connecting with the material and the approach to grammar—which is why I consider it my top homeschool curriculum favorite for him.
The interactive iBooks include quizzes embedded within the material as well as word searches and interactive grammar analysis exercises, all immediately self-correcting. The grammar, writing, and poetry books also include occasional audio links to here the author reading sections aloud. Paragraph Town is another iBook that I’ve had both my older kids go through. My son is reading through it on his own at a faster pace, while my daughter and I are reading through it together more slowly. In this living book approach, the author explains paragraph coherence and unity, topic sentences, thesis sentences, and paragraph structure (including introductions and conclusions) is a fun tale about two literary ducks who travel through Paragraph Town. Not only is the tale entertaining and witty, but it beautifully illustrates abstract concepts in a concrete way. We will definitely be continuing with more of these iBooks in the future.
Heart of Dakota
This year, I’ve had to face the reality that my long-standing core curriculum was no longer meeting our needs. Switching has been both the hardest homeschool choice and the best choice I’ve made, by far. A couple of months ago, I switched from Tapestry of Grace to Heart of Dakota. I’m loving Heart of Dakota. The whole program has been delightful. And I didn’t realize just what a burden our old curriculum had become until we switched to Heart of Dakota. It was as if our whole family breathed a sigh of relief. There was a very clear shift in our homeschool atmosphere when we began with the new curriculum, instantly winning it a spot in my list of top homeschool curriculum favorites.
I love the simplicity of Heart of Dakota. I love the directness of having the entire day laid out before us. I love the quality of books that have been chosen for each level, living books that are alive with rich character values and examples, books that all my kids absolutely can’t stay out of! All my teaching notes are on one two-page spread each day for each child. I put a sticky note in the guide, and we move along when each section is done. Most days, we do it all. But when life happens, it may take us two days to finish all the activities—and that’s okay! All my kids are flourishing with Heart of Dakota, and I’m relieved to have a break from the pressure of prep and lesson planning.
I will be doing three different Heart of Dakota guides: Beyond Little Hearts, Bigger Hearts, and Revival to Revolution. Each of my kids will be on a different level, though we will still be covering the same era of history together. And I will have to make a few adjustments here and there to keep the curriculum in line with the classical principles we feel are important. But even with all of that, it is still way less prep work than what I was doing for Tapestry of Grace. The advantage now is that I have the time to plan and embellish in the areas I want to spend more time on. It’s a matter of choice rather than necessity.
We will be using Heart of Dakota for history, science, literature, Bible, poetry, music, art, etc. But I will be making my own choices (and keeping some of our homeschool favorites) for English and math rather than following the Heart of Dakota recommendations in those subjects.
Creating a list of top 5 homeschool curriculum favorites isn’t easy, because there are other equally amazing curriculum options that we’ve loved. A couple of those that I just have to mention have been Teaching the Classics, which is my top choice for teaching literature, and Foreign Languages for Kids, which is my top choice for teaching Spanish. I’ve written entire posts on why these two homeschool curriculum choices are a favorite. And while not necessarily a curriculum, our Ultimate Brain Breaks are a must-have product that are still a huge favorite in my ADHD household.
Challenges are always a mixed cup of both hardship and blessing. And while this year has not gone smoothly by any means, it has brought with it a lot of great successes and a lot of opportunity. So if you feel like you are hitting a wall in your homeschool, take heart. Sometimes, going back to the drawing board may be the absolute best thing that can happen to you.
