Homeschooling: Curricula

On this page:

Buyer be aware: 
A short commentary on making yourself aware of the variety of motivations of providers of services.  Just because 'it' is labeled 'homeschool,' does not mean that 'it' is a quality product, or that 'it' is poor material.

Free online curricula
A list of references that freely provide either information or courses.

Links and Websites
Further information on finding materials useful in raising a child educationally.

 

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Buyer be aware

Homeschooling is a market discovered by corporations, businesses and entrepreneurs outside the homeschooling community around the late 1990s. New service provders continue to discover it, and put together materials and services with a 'build it and they will come' enthusiasm.  Some marketers have get rich quick schemes dancing in their heads, others would like to corral homeschoolers and return them to the 'fold' of oversight and accountability, and other others provide a service.  Products range from websites (such as this one), to books, to subject-specific materials, to comprehensive programs that drop in everything from primordial soup to modern day religious nuts.

Pity the poor new-to-homeschool parent who has made the choice, then finds herself at the bottom of an avalanche of information.  Sorting out the information was daunting enough when one relied on magazine advertisements and snail mail information requests.  In the 1990s, I was able to request enough information to fill up the tops of tables for a community fair held for new community members each fall after the annual summer-PCS.

Imagine the glut of information available now through a few clicks of a mouse, given the ease of desktop publishing using electrons instead of paper and ink.

For the homeschooling parent, sorting through all this information and sorting out the good from the mediocre from the poor materials is a challenge that persists throughout the homeschooling years.  One moment the problem of the day is finding a resource that is well-written by a knowledgeable author, and the next moment (or so it seems) you find yourself looking for another well-written resource because your child has outgrown the first one, or because your child's interests have changed, or your own focus has shifted.  The process never seems to end.

The activities of some businesses led to the writings on the Buyer Be Aware page of this website.  To save yourself some time and money, homeschool yourself about the market that is homeschooling.  It's what you'd expect your kids to do, isn't it?

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Free online curricula
 

Preschool

• Homeschooling preschool

School-age to teens:

• Ambleside Online
  Hoagies Gifted Site:  online high school curriculum
   
• World Book, Typical Course of Study.   If you use this site, you'll need to acquire most of your own materials, but the basic course guidelines are provided, and links to supplemental information are provided
   
• Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching, Mathematics Enhancement Programme (Primary Extension)
  This is a math site with lesson plans for elementary mathematics instruction, with practice pages for each lesson available for downloading.  The texts are written in British English, so cross-cultural experience will be gained along with math.  Tests do not appear to be downloadable.
   
• AP Courses:
  Monterey Institute for Technology & Education AP Courses
   
• Annenberg Foundation
  Online via Video on Demand
   
• Hoagies Gifted site:  free text materials
   
• Also see links on the Subjects page of this site.  Not all links are to free sites, but many are.
   

College:

• Open Learning Initiative from Carnegie Mellon
• MIT OpenCourseWare
   

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Links and websites

The Military Homeschooler articles and pages

• The Most Ignorant Boy in the School
  I was inspired by the books written by Gerald Durrell, and by his biography, so I wrote an article about him. I hope he inspires you, too.
• "Where Do I Find Curriculum?"
• Subjects (listing on this site)
   

Pages from external sites

• A to Z Home's Cool:  Curriculum reviews
   

• Home Learning Year by Year by Rebecca Rupp.  See the first chapter, The Truth About Curricula:  Or, There is no such thing as a first-grader
   

• Successful Homeschooling:  Homeschool Curriculum Reviews
   

• Tammy's (Mostly) Home Schooling Curriculum and Book Reviews
  "I like hanging out at some of the home schooling bulletin boards. It seems like some of the same curriculum questions keep popping up over and over. So I've put a few reviews up here to live permanently."
   

Used materials

• Rainbow Resource
  

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