Are Your Home Schooling Problems Due to Your Curriculum?

It doesn't take too many mornings of home schooling seeing glazed eyes, and hearing voices whining, “But Mom!” to make me think that maybe I need to change something - anything- to bring back some peace to our lives. Surely some new approach, some new format will help our children understand or retain their knowledge better, won't it?

Hi, I'm Hilary, a home schooling mom of four who has, true confessions, spent more money than I care to admit on curriculum that doesn't work for us.

Sure, sometimes a new home school curriculum will help. Sometimes, however, a new curriculum or approach will just mask deeper problems. I have learned this by personal experience after going through several major curriculum changes (sigh…) and problems still kept coming back. Surprise, surprise. I have, however, learned a few things in the process.

So, if you are interested in saving yourself some money, before you start loading up your Internet shopping cart with new books, think with me through some of the basic causes of home schooling problems and what to do about them.

Most home schooling problems usually have a variety of sources, but these can often be generalized into one of three main causes, what I call the Big Three C's of Choosing Home School Curriculum:

• Character,
• Circumstances, and
• Curriculum (what we'll deal with here).

Of course these are generalizations, but they are helpful to keep in mind as you face a pouting child and wonder what needs to change. Please do take a few minutes to read through the other Big Three C's of Choosing Home School Curriculum, Character and Circumstances. There are some very helpful tips on these pages to consider before considering whether or not the main cause of your problems is your home school curriculum.

Moving on, we'll take an overview of some major factors that could be causing problems with your home schooling curriculum or that you'll want to keep in mind as you read various reviews of new home school curriculum to buy.

Think for a minute about “curriculum” and what it really means. It comes from the Latin root for “running” or “course.” In other words, someone, somewhere, thought they could help people learn better - run faster or find the course easier, if you will - and thus they created “curriculum.” They simply made a tool to make learning more effective.

Curriculum could be in any number of different formats (a workbook, DVD, textbook or something else) and it could have won awards or high praise from lots of people or knowledgeable experts. But whatever form it takes, and no matter who raves about it, the goal is the same: to help your child learn.

I'll say it again because it is so important. The goal of curriculum is to help your child learn. Keep this in mind as you think about the home school curriculum you are using now and how it may be causing some problems for you or your child. Is it helping your child learn? Learn what?

Let me first say that the factors I list below are neither right nor wrong, bad nor good. For some people, the things about the curriculum listed below are not helping their child learn, and may be hindering his progress. For others, these same features are great and are precisely the reason the materials are effective for their home schooling situation.

You need to read each of these factors below and decide which do you feel more comfortable with for your child. What might be causing a problem for your child?

• It was written for classroom use not a home school. You may hear this about Saxon Math or Bob Jones or other materials, but I don't think that's the real complaint. Concerned, well-educated specialists wrote this curriculum to help kids learn, and many children learn with it with great results. The fact that it was designed for a classroom with more students than you probably have doesn't automatically make it ineffective for a home schooling setting. So what may be the real problem here? Read on…

• Too much review and too many problems to complete. This is often the real problem. But how can lots of review be a problem, you ask? Simply that sometimes there can be too much of a good thing, and problems can become “busywork” that loose their meaning. Such repetition often comes up in materials intended for use in a classroom setting where there is only one teacher and perhaps twenty or more students.

• Too colorful. Some parents want to emphasize the concepts themselves (“Just the facts, Ma'am”). They find that all the extraneous pictures on their workbooks easily distract their children. Math-U-See and Saxon Math are two examples of math curricula that have a more simple layout to help children focus.

• Too plain and boring. Some children find colorful illustrations a big help to visualizing how the concepts relate to everyday life. Without them, they may have a hard time applying themselves to something they can't seem to relate to. Horizons, Singapore and the University of Chicago's math programs all have colorful, or high-interest text layouts.

• Too structured. In these types of curriculum, every day is pretty much the same format, same number of similar problems. For some children, this can be tedious. For kids who thrive on an intuitive, exploratory approach to subjects, having a structured home school curriculum for math or language arts can stifle their way of learning. Instead, curriculums that are less structured, like Miquon Math, and Brave Writer home schooling curriculum for writing. make the most of children's desire to explore and think out loud.

• Too loosy-goosy. These home school curriculums have the children ask lots of questions, play with the materials, be they magnets, words, or mathematical puzzles. There is less structure and more inquiry. There are few set expectations and not much of a daily routine. Many children, however, like to know what is expected of them each day, and like the feeling of accomplishment in mastering a certain skill. For those children, structured curriculums like Saxon Math or Writing Strands, are good because they focus on one new skill at a time. They use an incremental approach in the process of developing these skills, with each lesson usually building on previous lessons.

These are just a few of the many complaints you may hear from others -- or from your own children. Keep them in mind as you evaluate your home school curriculum needs and plan out what you'll buy or want to change.

Remember throughout the process of evaluating what you have or what you might replace it with, that each of these so-called complaints was designed with a goal in mind. The key question is, is that your goal?

It is obvious, but don't forget that the goal for choosing any home school curriculum is not to have an award-winning shelf of curriculum, but to help your child learn and grow. You may have a few other goals, too. If it helps your child do these things, you have found a real gem, no matter what awards it won or even what complaints you may hear (from your child or otherwise).

We'll be updating this page with more information on specific home schooling subjects, including:

• Language Arts
• Math
• Science
• Enrichment

I hope this information has helped you to make more sense out of some of the problem areas you may be having in your home school.