Working from the idea that literature communicates powerfully to young minds, WinterPromise developed a curriculum that is strongly literature-based. This offers parents the opportunity to do less teaching and more "learning together" with their children. This "Learning Together" method has the additional benefit of requiring almost no preparation for the parent, preserving as many moments as possible for "face-to-face" time with their children. WinterPromise curriculum contains vibrant activity sets in each program. These sets offer activity kits, books, and ideas to help parents introduce a hands-on aspect to the time with their children. The goal being to create family memories and a family culture. WinterPromise offers curricula by Grade, Themed Programs, Language Arts Programs, Notebooking & Timeline Programs, Science Programs and Chess Programs.
Website: WinterPromise
(6 Reviews)
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Contributor Reviews
Reviews are solely the opinions of the contributor.
Cons: Overpriced, poor customer service, low quality
Grades Used: 3-4
I had such high hopes for using Winter Promise. After finding their website, which has great marketing by the way, I felt pretty confident in ordering. I placed an order for Language Arts 3, the America Story 1 themed program, Equine Science, and the Dinosaur Days pdf download. I was not able to find many reviews on Winter Promise, which worried me a little but I thought maybe other families hadn't used it all that much since it is a newer curriculum. I was still hopeful based on their website that my order would be fine. I put trust in the company, spending around $800 for all the programs combined, which was my own mistake.
After placing my order, I received the Dinosaur Days pdf and was immediately disappointed. After looking at the schedule provided by Winter Promise for the program, I learned that they only schedule science 2 days per week, for 36 weeks. This means that I paid $79 for a "guide" which tells you what day to do what pages, and when to use what book, as well as "note booking" pages. This price did not include the required resource books, which were an additional $50+. Half of the lessons in Dinosaur Days are NOT about dinosaurs at all! They are about machines, which I am very unsure why machines would be included with a study that is supposed to be about dinosaurs. The reading included in the note booking pages is very poorly written, with many confusing paragraphs which do not at all correlate nicely with the information they are trying to teach. The pictures and quality of pictures seem like downloads from Microsoft word images. The poorest quality of materials I have ever seen. You would be better off going on Pinterest and finding FREE unit study downloads.
As for the remainder of my order... after waiting 3 weeks for my order to ship, I still had not received any updates on my order. I emailed Winter Promise several times over the next 2 weeks. After 3 or 4 emails, I finally got a response which stated they would ship my order the next week. As an apology, they sent me the pdf download of the American Story weekly guide, which really did no good since I did not have the included reading material to start the program. I also received the American Story building set pdf download which looked promising. I printed it all out on cardstock and my husband and I quickly realized after trying to assemble the set with our daughter that the quality was absolutely not worth the price we paid. Pages were missing, instructions were very vague, and the set up was hard for even us to do, let alone a child. After one building, it all went in the garbage and was a complete waste.
Another week and a half went by and I finally received one package, which included one part of the American Story reading material and one part of the American Story note booking journal. That was it. Out of all of the items I had ordered, that was all that I received. Very, very disappointed, I quickly emailed Winter Promise, asking yet again when the remainder of my order would be shipped, and still received no response. I thought I would give them time, hoping maybe they were just busy and would get my order out soon.
We started the first lesson of American Story and it was HORRIBLE. the pictures were nice and inviting, but the quality of the writing was horrendous. The instructions for the notebooking journal were very vague and I eventually had my daughter skip some of the first few lessons because the activities either didn't apply to what we were learning, or I could not figure out what they actually wanted her to do with the pages.
After another week passed with no response on the remainder of my order and noticing how terrible the quality of the materials was that I had received, I quickly felt like I had been scammed. No response from the company, and such poor quality material. Luckily I had paid with PayPal so I had disputed my order. It would take 10 days to get my money back. PayPal had notified Winter Promise of my dispute with my order. On day 9 of the 10 day wait to receive my money back, Winter Promise finally emailed saying they were not aware of why I would file a dispute. They asked me to cancel the dispute (this would also mean that I wouldn't get a refund for the order that I had placed), which I thought was very strange. Where was my order? Why were they holding around $700 of mine but still hadn't shipped anything after a whole month, with no response from them? The owner, Don, emailed yet again and stated that one of their other workers there said that I had called and we resolved the issue, which was a LIE. I had absolutely NOT called them. So now they were blaming me for the entire issue, saying I was wrong to dispute the order. A few days later, I had received a package from Christianbook.com with one of the parts of the spelling workbooks I had ordered included with the language arts program, but no second part to the curriculum either.
Winter Promise disputed my refund through PayPal, but PayPal did end up refunding my money, at least for the items I did not receive. I was still out of the $100+ I had spent on the Dinosaur Days ebook, which ebooks are non-refundable after purchase, as well as the reference books I had already purchased to go with the dinosaur days program.
We are a one income, homeschooling family. I am so disappointed that a homeschool curriculum company would treat it's customers this way. We are living on a very modest income and cannot afford to throw money away on curriculum. Unfortunately, I was confident that a "Christian" (as they claim to be) homeschool company would not scam homeschool families like Winter Promise has. I partly blame myself for not being wise enough to see this wolf in sheep's clothing, and we are unfortunately paying for this huge financial mistake that I made, wasting over $100 that we can't get back. However, I am so thankful that I paid with PayPal and had buyer protection.
Please do not make the same mistake I did, and please DO NOT order from Winter Promise. There are so many other homeschool curriculum companies out there that treat their customers how they should be treated, that show the kindness and honesty of Christ, and offer so much support to homeschool families throughout their homeschool journeys. Please do your research and read reviews before ordering anything so you don't get ripped off like we did!
Cons: Horrible customer service
Grades Used: N/A
I want to start by saying I have never gotten the chance to use their curriculum, but I do feel pretty familiar with the ethics (or lack) of the company. I ordered a curriculum (costing 172.00) on January 8, 2019. By February 8th I had received nothing and the site showed my order as processing. I emailed the company twice and my attempts to contact them were ignored. On my third email I got a response saying they were having bad weather but the curriculum would be shipped that week... By the same time the next week my order was still showing processing. I contacted them again and asked for a refund so that I could move forward and purchase a different curriculum. I received an email from the owner, Don, apologizing and telling me again about the weather. I told him I was sorry about the weather, but I needed to move forward with my son's education and they had already wasted a month of my time (when the weather was not extreme). He said he would refund my order, and then proceeded to send me ebooks that I didn't ask for. I emailed a week later asking about when I would be refunded and he told me within the next 2 days I would see my refund... 2 days later I was refunded 47.83.... When the curriculum I ordered was 172.00. By this time I was done with the run around and told my husband what was going on. I am a SAHM, and he handles the finances so I told him basically we had been ripped off when we are already living on one income. My husband called them and Don literally REFUSED TO SPEAK TO MY HUSBAND and used an employee as a go between. Still no progress on the refund, but I want to make sure no other families have to go through this experience! Please be cautious when ordering from WinterPromise.
Cons: Organizing the materials once you first receive them can be a tad overwhelming bc there's a lot
Grades Used: 1st grade
I love Winter Promise. The complete grade packages come with pretty much everything you need. Super easy to use. Teacher's guide is awesome. It did take me a little while to set up the materials in a way that I felt like was organized. I set it up so that all I needed to do was open up my guide and had everything I needed for that week behind the "weekly" lesson plan sheet. I felt like that was the easiest way to do it..... this way I wasn't taking time every morning gathering the materials.
I really loved all the materials they include in the complete grade packages. The website is so easy to use. The customer service is AWESOME and so accommodating. I highly recommend this company.
Cons: Non-Resale on Some items
Grades Used: 2-7
We discovered Winter Promise a few years ago when we were in a bit of a homeschooling slump. I'd never heard of the curriculum before & was a little nervous about trying something new, but boy what a wonderful year we had!
All up we've used a half dozen different themes: Animal Worlds, Sea & Sky, All American 1, Quest for The Ancient World, Children Around The World & now Quest for Middle Ages. We've even used a few science themes: Jiggle Jostle Jolt & Human Body & Forensic Science, & Language Arts: 4 & 6.
My kids really enjoy their Winter Promise themes & getting to choose which projects they'll tackle each week. There are many, so we don't generally attempt them all, rather let the children each pick one that really hits a note with them. I especially love the notebooking pages the kids create & the amazing Timeline System that stores all of those wonderful pages. It's not only fun for them to share with family, it gives us substantial work to show our state moderator.
Winter Promise has recently gone digital which is a wonderful thing for our family as we live overseas & international shipping has gotten quite pricey. We can still print out all our material, or look at it on the computer or other e-devices. It also means if you have multiple children in your home you are granted permission to print what you need for them!
While I don't find it a downside for our family, I feel it fair to mention that you can't, obviously, resell digital items. However, they do permit resale of the hard copied items from 2014 forward.
Cons: broad age range
Grades Used: k/1st
We've used Animal Worlds this year with the young learner's guide. It's a beautiful curriculum with many well thought/planned activities. We are half way through it and I have had to tweak it to make it my own. The LA is amazing! My son was half way through the phonics and started reading! I love their phonics program (the Basic phonics) and the animal notebooking pages my son makes for each animal, it's a great keepsake. We haven't made all of the animal crafts because some didn't seem that exciting to us, lots of paper crafts. We ended up scrapping the Take a Walk books as they are way over my 6 year old's head at this stage. He will listen to the One Small Square books for about 5-10 minutes. He has loved the family read alouds. I do feel like it's a little choppy, I wish that it were a little more cohesive in it's layout of when the animal of the week is presented, which is often NOT the first day of the week. There is an animal height chart that's included and you put the animal of the week on there to compare all the animals---so cute!! The Bible portion is pretty weak, if you took out the Bible devotional which you only read once a week, it could be secular, which if that's what you want, this may be for you! I personally want a stronger Bible curriculum. I have added in my own Bible memorization etc, which is extra work for me. I think this is an excellent science curriculum and will keep it for later on when my boys are older to revisit! You can teach much older children with this curriculum! The nature journal is great! And the dioramas too, we still haven't done those. I will be switching to My Father's World, but I will be buying many of the WP exclusives to supplement, as I believe they are superior in this area, hands down to any other curriculum out there! I just wish overall that it were more cohesive and had more of a Biblical foundation...then I would stick around for 1st grade.
Cons: Can be too much material - costly
Grades Used: 5th
We are using WP this year and overall we love it. I had to give myself permission to take longer than the 4 day plan that WP provides. I finally figured out that I don't have to do all the hands on projects ideas that WP provides. I do love all the projects but I was a little overwhelmed at first. One thing that WP did that I think was a mistake is that they put too wide a grade spread with the Ancient History Quest. They go from 4th to 8th and I really feel that either it will be too hard at the lower level or too easy at the higher. Either way they should tighten up the levels. I really love all the living books and how WP has put it together - overall an awesome curriculum with great insights about the ancient world. I learned a lot too! I will do this curriculum again but next time I will buy WP's guide and buy or borrow the books separate because although I don't think they overcharged for the books - the delivery was so delayed and in quite a few packages and I needed to keep calling to check on it. We plan on doing the Middle Ages next year and the activities look like a blast.