Curriculum Choices: What I Considered & Which I Chose

Introduction

Hello and welcome back NEO Homeschoolers! With the unofficial start of summer having just past, most of us are focused on making summer plans and taking advantage of as much nice weather as we can. For me though, the past couple of weeks have been all about curriculum. With Maureen showing signs of being ready for some form of school in the coming school year, I decided to start doing research into curriculum, specifically preschool-kindergarten curriculum. As any experienced homeschool mom can attest, choosing a curriculum involves a bit of a learning curve, and I definitely experienced that learning curve... likely will continue to... as I researched curriculum.

Curriculum Options

As I did my research, there were several options that I strongly considered, and I want to explore what I considered to be the pros and cons of each option.

My Possible Choices

1. AOP Christian Homeschooling: With four brands under the same parent company, this homeschool curriculum offered plenty of options to find what fit best for our family. I was excited by the options, but disappointed in the preschool offerings.
2. Apologia: Both my husband and I want our faith to be a core part of Maureen's education, and the name of this curriculum says it all... Faith is incorporated into every aspect of their lessons. While I will likely still use Apologia materials throughout Maureen's education, I again felt the preschool offerings were not quite what I was looking for.
3. IXL: A more secular option, my thoughts with this one were that I could pair it with a strong Bible curriculum. I really liked that IXL provided a comprehensive curriculum for Pre-K all the way through high school, but at the end of the day, I felt it didn't quite align with what I wanted to be teaching Maureen, especially during her younger years in school.
4. Lighthouse Homeschool Hybrid: Having grown up in the public school system myself, Lighthouse felt like a fantastic compromise between my education experience and my hubby's. I loved that Lighthouse teaches from a Biblical perspective and that it would provide Maureen with what I believed was much-needed classroom experience. I also loved that enrolling Maureen would allow me time to partake in one of my favorite pass-times, helping my friend Quinn with behind the scenes children's ministries work. This was my go-to for a long time. However, as I started seeing Maureen's potential to be a gifted student and doing research on state expectations for safety drills, I began to struggle with using Lighthouse. I still intend to do a tour in the fall of 2026 - when Maureen will be 4 - but am no longer sold on Lighthouse as my choice for homeschool.
5. Calvert Education: Similar to IXL, Calvert would have been a more secular approach to Maureen's education, and while I was still new to considering homeschool, going with a secular approach felt comfortable because it was what I knew. I also loved that Calvert provided not only print curriculum, but also an online option, all from a highly ranked homeschool curriculum company. As I began to feel more strongly about including our Christian faith in Maureen's education though, Calvert began to make less sense as a homeschool curriculum because it did not include a Bible curriculum or approach education from a Biblical perspective.

My Curriculum of Choice

After months of research, I finally stumbled upon the 2 curriculum options I felt would be a good fit for Maureen's learning. The first curriculum I want to use is called Gather Round and consists of comprehensive units that delve into topics ranging from American History to Entrepreneurship in all-inclusive units. I discovered Gather Round through a homeschool mom I follow on YouTube who uses the units with her 5 kids, and had nothing but positive things to say about her experience. After digging into the curriculum myself, I was hooked. Not only does Gather Round include Bible teachings in its units, but it also includes education from every subject ...from math all the way to English... in each lesson within a unit. Not only that, but Gather Round also has an app in which parents can join a community of users, and receive weekly updates from the creators, who - get this - are also homeschool parents! The best part in my mind is that Gather Round can be adapted to meet the needs of students at any age from preschool through high school. It's incredible, and I was super excited to discover that they offer a preschool unit covering letters and numbers in a 4-part, year-long unit study. I intend for Gather Round's Preschool Unit to be the core of Maureen's curriculum this coming school year.

The second part of Maureen's preschool curriculum was added to my plan as a result of a random social media ad that caught my attention. It was for a curriculum called Generations, a Bible based curriculum for kindergarten through high school with everything from math and science to history and missionary studies. I was intrigued with this curriculum because, based on what I saw at a glance, Generations provided a much more comprehensive early learning curriculum than anything else I'd looked at. Generations kindergarten curriculum includes the foundational numbers and letters that every 3-5 year old needs to learn as well as a small, age-appropriate catechism for the Christian faith and a "My First History" textbook detailing the history of God's people... again, in an age-appropriate way. I loved this! After exploring the different books within the kindergarten curriculum and discovering that Generations also provides grade-appropriate read-aloud books, I was sold on using Generations curriculum as a companion curriculum to the preschool letters & numbers unit study from Gather Round. The best part about Generations kindergarten curriculum? I can carry the textbooks Maureen and I don't use while she's in preschool into the next school year as a review! Needless to say, I'm excited, haha.

Conclusion

During a time of year when many are focused on planning out their summer festivities, I've spent the past several weeks focused on homing my plan for the coming school year, specifically focused on curriculum. The aforementioned curriculum choices are certainly not everything I hope to use with Maureen in the coming school year, but it is, I hope, what will provide the foundation of her early learning. In upcoming posts, I will definitely delve more into the additional resources I hope to incorporate into Maureen's early education. For those who are interested in the curriculum mentioned above, I've provided links to each curriculum's website so interested parents can explore options they might not have considered before. For more information on my journey in deciding to homeschool, check out my post titled, "Choosing to Homeschool: My Story," linked here. If you're looking for homeschool-friendly events in the month of June, click here to check out my June Homeschool Happenings post. Finally, check back on Friday for a wrap-up of my family's Memorial Day weekend. Thanks for reading, and happy summer... unofficially! 😉