Curriculum Shopping!

So after all that trouble setting up a Montessori-style homeschool… We changed our minds! We decided we wanted a more Charlotte Mason style philosophy, so now we were onto the search for a boxed curriculum!

Homeschool blogs are right: picking a homeschool curriculum is daunting! But of course, since it’s our first year to homeschool, I’m scared to just wing it or make our own curriculum. Unfortunately, since homeschooling in the Philippines is still relatively new, nobody could give me recommendations and suggestions. For Philippine homeschoolers enrolled in providers, they typically give guidance for curriculum picking, or some even have their own set curriculum. Somehow, we wanted the freedom to choose and actually wound up buying our curriculum before we decided whether to enroll in a provider or not!

So which were the top choices we narrowed down?

1. My Father’s World – We were very much attracted to the name and the vision of the curriculum: a unit study approach sounded more fun than a recreation of a school setting. MFW offers curriculum that takes into account things learned in one subject and relate it to another. I especially liked how they taught the alphabet correlated to the Bible, and they also use multisensorial learning with manipulatives and such, which I fell in love with! (Must’ve been because we’ve loved my son’s experience at Montessori preschool :D)

2. Alpha & Omega’s Weaver Curriculum – Again, I was personally biased against textbooks and workbooks, so among all the curriculum packages offered by Alpha & Omega, the Weaver Curriculum stood out for me. It’s also a unit study approach, allowing families to teach several children at a time. Although we only have one school-age child at the moment, I couldn’t help looking forward to the future and checking if we could use the curriculum over several years (and save money, haha). In the end, though, when I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand the very thick sample pdf, I knew we had to skip it!

3. Heart of Dakota – This one’s name initially put me off, as it seemed to American. And indeed, its age 5-7 curriculum, Little Hearts for His Glory, did have its history focus moving from Bible history into American history towards the end. But I loved how it came with an open-and-go Teacher’s Guide—perfect for busy moms! It also had one of the strongest Bible focus, and in a way that little kids could understand.

So, the verdict? We decided to go for Heart of Dakota, and ordered their Little Hearts for His Glory package!

Oh, and I realized too late that the recommended Math books (Singapore Math Essential Math) were actually available, so I wound up e-mailing Mike to add it to our order. 🙂 Can’t wait to receive our package!