Find The Best Secular Home School Curriculum
To Teach Your Child
- Are you uncomfortable teaching your child about God and want to find a purely secular home school curriculum?
- Do you want to find quality materials not based on any one religious doctrine?
- Feel alone and wonder if there is anyone else out there like you who is home schooling but not particularly religious?
You’ve come to the right place to find information to help you find the best secular home school curriculum.
Exploring the Options
Just as there are numerous Christian curriculums and styles of home schooling, there are also many secular home school curriculums. You need to ask yourself some fundamental questions:
- How do you want your child to learn? By a computer CD-ROM curriculum, textbooks, literature-based, or online curriculum?
- If you find a curriculum you like, how important is it that it shares your non-religious views?
- Do you want to allow open discussion of religious topics, and if so, do you feel confident in supplementing or replacing certain parts of a religious curriculum?
Once you have decided where you stand on how comfortable you feel with the amount of religion in your curriculum, you’ll need to find out what options there are. Here is information on the ones we have researched so far.
Investigative Curriculum
If one of your core values is to offer your children a chance to investigate other religions and customs from around the world with an open mind, you may be surprised to find yourself very pleased with
Sonlight Home School Curriculum
even though it is a specifically Christian curriculum. While it is Christian, it does an excellent job of raising difficult questions about issues of faith and coming of age, and, as their catalog and website clearly state, they use some books that home schoolers who are perhaps quite religiously conservative would not feel comfortable with.
What does that mean for you and your child? When you use Sonlight you and your child will be discovering for yourself differences about different faiths and value systems. Personally, I can say that the books we read aloud and discuss with our children are really captivating, and bring up lots of issues to challenge my thinking. I also love how the books bring to life cultures beyond North America. Sonlight gives you ample opportunity to learn together with your child without simply accepting and passing on someone else's viewpoint. I don't always agree with everything the characters do, but then that can be a good starting point for a discussion.
There is a group for Secular Sonlight at Yahoo Groups, and when last I checked it had over 500 members. So, quite a few other people feel comfortable in modifying this to make it a secular home school curriculum.
Textbook Based
Started as a provider of both non-denominational Christian and secular home school curriculum,
Core Curriculum of America
offers low prices on all subjects and works to create customized options for their customers. In looking over their website, they seem to be mostly textbook based, although they do offer some other resources. According to their website, their program is:
- Very easy to use,
- For grades K-12,
- Acceptable to public school boards across the nation,
- Includes all materials for every subject plus they offer hundreds of other electives,
- Includes schedules and record-keeping,
- Materials selected from over 180 of the finest publishers and manufacturers,
- Includes computer software and CD-ROMs for students,
- Associate accredited private school available.
If you are interested in this curriculum, you can look at their mission statement to see if it is a good fit for you.
Online or Printed Curriculum
Calvert School
The Calvert Home School has been helping families teach their children at home for over one hundred years. They use an integrated, classical curriculum. They also offer a variety of enrichment courses including audio-visual courses in art and music. You may also be interested in their curriculum for students with language-based learning differences (like dyslexia, dysgraphia and other differences) and an
online middle school.
Keystone High School
Keystone High School is a popular choice for many families with high schoolers.
Laurel Springs School
Laurel Springs School
has a variety of web-based, project-based, and textbook-based courses, depending on your child's needs and learning style. They have over 70 courses for grades K-12.
Oak Meadow School
Heavily influenced by the Waldorf method of education, Oak Meadow has both printed curriculum and online curriculum
options for K-12.
Other Secular Home School Curriculum Options
There are many other fine home school curriculums that may well fit your teaching style and your child's learning style that aren't specifically thought of as a secular home school curriculum. Many people have found that they can tailor existing curriculum put out by Christian publishers to suit their own beliefs, as I mentioned above with Sonlight Home School Curriculum
. I would encourage you to find out what your style is and what your core values are by signing up for our free eCourse
. In the seven-part series I walk you through developing your own philosphy of education that fits yourstyle.
Whichever home school curriculum you choose, whether it is a secular home school curriculum or not, I hope you'll enjoy the opportunity to learn with your child about various belief systems and faiths. May you find true joy and success in your home school journey.
Leave Secular Home School Curriculum and Return to Home Page
