Which Home School Literature Curriculum
Is Right For Your Child?

Interested in using "real books" for your home school literature curriculum? With home schooling becoming more popular, the number of choices for home school literature curriculum has increased, too. Which one is right for you? There's Sonlight Home School Curriculum , Tapestry of Grace, Veritas Press Classical Home School Curriculum, and others. But where to begin? You can’t buy everything!

As a home schooling mom of four, I have struggled with this a lot. What has finally helped me was realizing that I needed to ask myself some key questions before spending any money on home school curriculums.

Before buying any home school literature curriculum, ask yourself these five questions: Do you want a complete home school curriculum, or only individual books? Are you interested in tying your literature readings to history, and if so, chronologically or not? How important are the literature and religion of cultures not your own? How do you want to interact with your child on the material -- through guided discussion, study guides, worksheets, projects, writing or a variety of these? What kind of literature do you want your child to read?

For more detailed information, see the information below. The home school literature curriculum options I mention below are just a few of the many that are out there. There is no way I can keep up with all of them, but in listing these samples, you may be able to gather some insights about other curriculums that you may be considering.

Sonlight Curriculum

We have used and greatly enjoyed the rich home school literature curriculum of Sonlight Home School Curriculum (see our Sonlight review)

1. Sonlight offers a complete home school literature curriculum package, although you can order individual titles as well. (I have found they have good shipping rates and exceptional customer service for any of their materials.)

   Their literature usually corresponds to the historical time period studied, but not always. There are also some lighter weight books that chosen just as “fun” reading.

2. History is mostly, though not entirely, chronological. Some people do rearrange the materials to cover the history chronologically.

3. Studying the literature of other cultures and religions is very important to Sonlight’s philosophy and approach to learning. They seek to understand other cultures from a Biblical point of view.

4. Most of the interaction your child does with a book is based on discussion with you, or through having you read-aloud a book. Some of my favorite home school memories is of reading aloud some of the Sonlight books. For literature that your child reads on his own, there are suggested discussion questions (and answers, in case you haven’t read the book yourself) in the Instructor’s Guides. There are also Activity Sheets which tie in Language Arts (dictation, grammar and sometimes creative writing) for grades K-7.

5. Sonlight chooses a variety of books, including ones with mature themes and possibly disturbing language or content (although they do try to give you a warning in their catalog). They desire to expose children to cultures and religions outside of Western Christianity, so some of the values or perspectives may reflect this. They are not afraid to bring up controversial issues, feeling there is much to be gained in interacting with faiths and opinions that differ from your own. You can read more about why they choose certain books for their home school literature curriculum.

As a side note, I love the variety of literary styles they include in each of their Core levels (similar to grade levels). Poetry, biography, historical fiction, classics, works from non-Western cultures. This is a great home school literature curriculum to give you a sense of the breadth of great literature. Their Instructor Guides guide you to be able to discuss the readings with your child – even if you haven’t read the book.

Sonlight Home School Curriculum is a real stand-out for a home school literature curriculum.

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Tapestry of Grace

If you are interested in a Classical approach, where your child reads lots of wonderful classics of Western literature, you should definitely look at Tapestry of Grace

1. Tapestry of Grace is a complete history, literature, and writing program, with the added bonus of geography, church history, art history and several other subjects included as well. Integrating several subjects is a very effective way to learn both history and literature.

2. The material is arranged chronologically over a four-year cycle, so if you start when your child is in first grade, you could (if you wanted to) cover all of history three times, at increasingly deeper levels.

3. Tapestry of Grace follows the flow of history all over the world, so there are selections from various cultures and religions depending on what is relevant to the time period in history you are currently studying. There is, however, an emphasis on a Christian understanding of how cultures developed and how God’s hand is at work in history.

4. In Tapestry of Grace’s teacher’s guide, there are a variety of ways your child can interact with the materials, in addition to books you read aloud to your younger child. There are discussion questions, worksheets that go along with the literature readings, hands-on projects, map-work, time-line, evaluations and art history ideas, along with suggestions for a co-op or family festival to celebrate what you are learning. There are suggestions for everyone and every style of learning. Yet, you don't have to use any that you don't want to use.

5. As a history-centered home school literature curriculum, naturally most of the literature has to do with history. Some of it is historical fiction, others non-fiction. There are some works of non-historical fiction that are read during the time the book was written. There are detailed notes in the Teacher's notes about any potentially objectionable material.

We used this home school literature curriculum for several years and have recently gone back to using it again. Having all of our kids learning the same thing in history makes my life much easier than trying to have everyone on a different time or theme in history. There is also a certain synergy as we can discuss the topic together.

This home school literature curriculum has really helped me understand the development of ideas and literature over time, and I highly recommend Tapestry of Grace as one of the best home school curriculums available. Its goal is to make it easy to give your children a great classical education, even if you have lots of kids.

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Veritas Press

Veritas Press Classical Home School Curriculum is another Classical home school literature curriculum. I love to browse their catalog and have found all of the literature choices I have ordered to be top-notch classics. All of the titles I have seen are well-known and come highly recommended by lots of different sources. You can hardly go wrong with any of their individual titles, although I haven’t read all of them and don’t have experience in using their materials as a set. Their Omnibus program seems to be very rigorous and quite teacher-intensive.

Although we have enjoyed many of their books, I have found their website a bit awkward to browse online.

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Robinson Curriculum

Robinson Curriculum is another home school literature curriculum that we have used. (As you can tell, we’ve tried a lot of them!) Unlike the others mentioned above, however, it is geared for the student to teach himself. I like to interact with my children in their academic studies more than perhaps Dr. Robinson (the creator of this curriculum did), I can certainly see wisdom in an approach that helps the child take ownership of his own learning. If we give our students the tools to learn, they can teach themselves a whole world of things.

1. Robinson Curriculum is a complete back-to-basics home school curriculum. It focuses on reading, writing and arithmetic, with descriptive science early on and more traditional quantitative science later on.
2. It is not chronological as it is written, however, you could rearrange the books and add in other books to make it more so (that’s what we have done).
3. The literature of other cultures and religions is not really included in this curriculum. The focus is on giving your children the tools to read, evaluate original historical documents, and develop an opinion about what they read by writing about it.
4. The main way your children interact with the material is by either discussing with you informally, or writing about it, depending on their age and writing ability. Robinson Curriculum’s guiding philosophy could be summed up in:
   • the best way to learn to read is… to read,
   • the best way to learn to write is… to write, and
   • the best way to learn to do math is… to do math.

   Very straight-forward, and effective for those who find worksheets and projects to be actually more time consuming and distracting than truly helpful in learning, This doesn’t mean you can’t add in projects, but it does mean that you still get a complete curriculum without having to add in and plan those activities.

5. The literature selections unapologetically hold up heroes and strong moral values such as honesty, responsibility, integrity, and faith, among others. Some of the material is somewhat dated in the language or attitudes towards non-Western peoples.

You can read more about details, supplementing and other information on our Robinson Curriculum review page.

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Other Home School Literature Curriculum

The links in this section are for books or home school catalogs that offer many home school literature curriculum items, although they are not presented as an entire program.

If you are unfamiliar with these different catalogs, I would suggest browsing the following links to get a feel for their offerings and what kind of information each of the companies offer on the books and other resources they offer.

• Greenleaf Press They wrap their presentation of chronological history and literature around famous people of history (hence their series of “Famous Men” guides to history).
• Beautiful Feet Books They also focus on historical fiction and literature, although not chronologically. They start with American history, as often a more relevant place to start teaching literature and history, at least to North Americans. They are well known for their excellent History Through Literature Study Guides.
• Bethlehem Books Home School Literature Curriculum They have a wonderful selection of wholesome, character-building historical books and historical fiction. These are some of our favorite books, and I appreciate how they list their books in chronological order. They also offer several audiobooks.

Try not to become overwhelmed with all the choices from each of these home school literature curriculum providers. I used to feel that I had to find the "perfect book" that would capture my child's imagination and make history come alive for her. Now, I realize that some of the literature selections I choose will be gems, while others will be only so-so. But looking at the overall picture, I am confident that through the home school literature curriculum books we choose -- from wherever we buy them -- we are giving our children resources that will help them love to learn and enjoy literature.

I hope this information has been helpful to you. I think if you ask the five questions I listed above about any home school literature curriculum you are considering, you will have an excellent start for knowing whether that will be a good fit for you and your family.

I'd love to hear how this information has been helpful for you. Feel free to use the Contact Us form to let me know. I sincerely pray that this information will help you and your child find the best fit for your home school literature curriculum.

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