Homeschooling help and encouragement from experienced homeschoolers - find out how homeschooling works and how to start, get tips & ideas for when things need adjusting, read curriculum reviews before buying, learn how online schools work, gain confidence about homeschooling high school, and more.
Moving Beyond the Page is a comprehensive homeschool curriculum that covers science, social studies, and language arts. Its project-based curriculum covers preschool through about 10th grade and is designed for gifted, creative, and hands-on learners with an emphasis on critical and creative thinking. Continue reading »
The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading is a complete phonics program- very inexpensive, comprehensive, and so easy to use. Little to no parent preparation required. Lessons are scripted to make it even more simple if you wish. Once complete, your child will be reading on a fourth grade level. The program uses a no Continue reading »
Clear Steps to Easy Reading and Spelling by Dolores G. Hiskes
Phonics Road to Spelling and Reading is an all inclusive Language Arts program. Strong in all areas except perhaps writing. A child as early as 5 years can begin. DVDs are included with teacher manual for easy prep. Great Grammar Tunes help kids remember all the rules and exceptions.
"Pinwheels [by Rooted in Language] is a comprehensive literacy program for new readers and writers . . . Within each level of Pinwheels, children learn to use their verbal language skills to strengthen their new literacy skills, layering speaking, listening, reading, and writing for a comprehensive understanding of language arts. "Across Pinwheels, students will develop Continue reading »
Primary Phonics is made by the same publisher as Explode the Code and has a similar feel. Primary Phonics is repetitious, ensuring mastery. Multiple workbooks and storybooks are available for each level.
Progeny Press offers dozens of study guides to accompany literature for all grade levels. Each guide is presented from a Christian perspective, and asks questions related to understanding the story, vocabulary, and deeper themes. Accompanying activity suggestions are also included. These study guides are designed to allow parents a choice in the literature studied in Continue reading »
Reading Eggs is an online reading resource with hundreds of online reading lessons and thousands of e-books for 2-13 year olds who are learning to read. The content contains interactive animations, fun games, great songs and lots of rewards. It supports each child’s learning by offering individual, one-on-one lessons that allow children to progress at Continue reading »
Saxon Phonics provides comprehensive solutions to teach reading that target foundational skills using a unique research-based method. The curriculum includes a multi-sensory approach that engages the visual, auditory, and tactile senses. Saxon Reading is based on current research that indicates that the most successful phonics programs include daily oral language activities, phoneme play, immediate follow-up Continue reading »
Sequential Spelling uses spelling lists which build on words to help children spell bigger words. For example, if they can spell stand, they can spell understand and misunderstand and misunderstanding. The sequences are not based on grade level curriculum. The sequences are based on building from easy words to advanced words as from all, tall, Continue reading »
This curriculum was specifically written for Homeschool students K through 7. Materials for each grade level are sold in a kit package. A kit contains everything needed to teach one child for an entire school year. Each kit contains a Teacher's Manual, a Student Workbook and a Audio CD. Bible-related activities, writing assignments, and sentences Continue reading »
Sing, Spell, Read and Write is a learning-to-read curriculum that uses a 36-step program of carefully sequenced systematic, explicit phonics instruction to build fluent independent readers. Using look, listen, point, sing-along, and echo routines along with gross motor and fine motor activities, the program actively engages the senses and effectively reaches all types of learners. Continue reading »
Spectrum offers supplemental workbooks in the following subjects: Math, Early Childhood Reading & Language Arts, Science, Social Studies and Testing. The materials are grade appropriate, but there are not materials for every grade.
Spell to Write and Read is a language arts, spelling, and grammar program inspired by The Writing Road to Reading. Spell to Write and Read works from some of the same outstanding sources that Romalda Spalding used in The Writing Road to Reading. Both systems draw from the 70 Phonograms (the sound-letter system to the Continue reading »
SpellingCity offers a fun and easy way to practice spelling words and vocabulary. Teachers and parents can create their own spelling lists, save lists, share lists or use those already provided. Students enjoy the benefit of hearing the 43,000+ words and sentences spoken by a “real” human voice. Users have a variety of options available, such as the ability to see spelling words in flashcard format, hear them spoken by a real human voice, play games with the words, and even take practice spelling tests. With each created list, a student has the option to: Teach Me, Test Me, or Play A Game. The "Teach Me" option allows students to reflect on each word of their spelling list while the list and coordinating sentence are being read aloud. The "Test Me" option allows students to take a test from any spelling list at any time. This test option gives the students the ability to hear just the word or have a sentence read. The "Play A Game" option allows students to play a variety of learning games with any spelling list. SpellingCity offers learning games such as HangMouse, Word Search, Unscramble, and many more. Continue reading »
Spelling Power gives your children the opportunity to master the 5,000 most frequently used words at their own pace — in just 15 minutes a day — using research-proven strategies. Everything you need to teach your entire family is found in the one "Big Orange Book". Spelling Power is written by a home educator for Continue reading »
This is a series of books designed to teach spelling using the Charlotte Mason method. Both British and American versions are available. Each book gives dictations out of what they describe as 'the writings of great men and women of history' using 6000 of the most frequently used words in the English language. The child Continue reading »
Starfall offers both a free online phonics/reading program and a (fee-based) reading/language arts curriculum that is "magical, creative, sequential, integrated, and combines content area instruction in Social Studies and Science - that's kindergarten, the Starfall Way. Starfall uses fantasy as a springboard for motivating children to use their natural sense of wonder and curiosity to Continue reading »
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is a complete, step-by-step program that shows parents simply and clearly how to teach their children to read. Twenty minutes a day is all you need, and within 100 teaching days your child will be reading on a solid second-grade reading level. It's a sensible, easy-to-follow, Continue reading »
The Basic Cozy Grammar Course combines a daily video lesson with a worksheet to reinforce the lesson. It is a painless way for any parent to teach grammar, and the lessons are bite-sized to keep student frustration or boredom to a minimum. The course contains two indexed DVDs featuring: an Introduction, Tutorials, a Conclusion and, Continue reading »
This writing curriculum takes an original and highly creative path to teaching elements of literature and creative writing. In this course students learn characterization, plot, setting, theme and conflict--all the traditionally taught elements of literature, but not taught in the traditional manner. These elements are learned in the context of writing their own adventure novel. Continue reading »
The Write Foundation is a Christian writing curriculum for ages 11-17 written by a veteran home educator and tested extensively in individual and group settings. It has proven effective in enabling average writers to improve their writing skills, as well as energizing reluctant writers. The entire system will teach your student how to effectively plan Continue reading »
The Writer’s Jungle is much more than daily lesson plans or writing ideas. It takes you inside the writer’s world. The first nine chapters explain the necessary steps to brave writing, such as, how to read quality literature and discover the principles that make it work, what writer’s voice is and how to cultivate your Continue reading »
Time4Learning.com is an online education program that teaches preschool through twelfth-grade curriculum in an interactive, online environment. Time4Learning combines 1000+ animated lessons, printable worksheets and graded activities to teach math and language arts lessons correlated to state standards. Science, social studies, and art are also provided as bonuses for most grades.
Torchlight is a literature-based, secular curriculum for learners ages 4-13. The curriculum is delivered digitally, with each PDF including daily and weekly lesson plans with prep pages for 36 weeks of instruction. Torchlight also uses specially curated books that can be purchased online, at a local bookstore, or borrowed from your local library. Parents are Continue reading »
This course is literature-based and designed for Christian education. The materials are based on novels and integrate the separate parts of language arts: spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and writing, as well as critical thinking and communication. As the readings are completed, students complete worksheets, writing assignments and engage in supplemental activities. The teachers materials are included Continue reading »
Under the Home offers studio art, art history, music, mathematics, reading, writing, prose, and poetry for grades K-1 as well as science, geography, and history for grade 1. They will be adding grades 2-5 over the years 2017 & 2018. As of January 2017 the price is $30/year.
Winston Grammar does away with the traditional grammar textbook, lecture approach, and heavy emphasis on memorization. Instead, it gives students a set of color-coded clue cards and a book of exercises, which together generate multi-sensory activities. These activities teach grammar sentence diagramming. Students do this through moving, hearing, seeing, and speaking. Each kit has a Continue reading »
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 Continue reading »
This curriculum addresses what the publisher calls the "growing consensus among educators regarding the need for direct teaching of academic vocabulary in a systematic program." The course involves kindergarten through grade 12 vocabulary series that includes reproducible tests and an online test generator. The entire program introduces over 3,000 words, and exercises become more challenging Continue reading »
WriteShop is designed to teach composition skills to junior high and high schoolers in a step-by-step manner. Students learn the four most common kinds of writing—descriptive, informative, narrative, and persuasive (essays)—by means of the following basic building blocks: Brainstorming, Writing Revising, and Editing. This is a two-level program consisting of WriteShop I and WriteShop II. Continue reading »
This program is a comprehensive K-6 total language arts program in which all elements of the language are integrated in spelling, writing, and reading lessons. According to the publishers' materials: "the instruction is explicit, systematic, interactive, diagnostic, and multi-sensory." The program focuses on phonograms, or the 70 letters and letter combinations that represent the minimum Continue reading »
Writing Strands is a full language arts program includes writing, reading, and speaking but only focuses on grammar on a “need to know” basis. The introductory level of the course focuses on basic, organizational, descriptive, and creative writing, while the higher levels concentrate on preparing students for high school and college level writing. The courses Continue reading »
Writing With Ease provides one on one instruction in writing. The course materials allow a parent to provide writing instruction based on the content of the books. There are workbooks that accompany the instruction to work on grammar.
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