Curriculum "Show and Tell"
An annotated list of resources and recording of our first live zoom meeting
When I first started out homeschooling over fifteen years ago, I was fortunate enough to connect with two “veteran” homeschool moms who generously shared their insights into different curricula and learning routines with me. They offered me an opportunity to examine their resources along with the reasons for choosing them. I much preferred this method of examining potential curricula, as it saved me from being overwhelmed with catalogues and online reviews. Over the years I have had the opportunity to try out lots of different resources, some that I loved, some not so much (my children dubbed one math program we tried the “kill-me-now” curriculum).
While I unfortunately cannot invite you over for some coffee and show you around our bookshelves, I did do the next best thing: I recorded my live zoom meeting Homeschool Curriculum “Show and Tell” that I hosted together with
, who shared her insights on what to do when a curriculum doesn’t work or stops working for you.Below you can access the one-hour meeting as well as an annotated list of the resources that I discussed in the video. These are resources that have remained some of my favorites over the years and include math, spelling, language and grammar, history, and science curricula.
While this particular meeting focused on curricula, I am hoping to host future meetings on other homeschool topics of interest. Stay tuned!
Today’s post is for paying subscribers and will make it possible for me to offer additional live meetings. Thanks so much for your support!
If you are unable to afford a paid subscription, send me a message to schooloftheunconformed@proton.me (no explanation needed), and I will offer you a limited-time complimentary subscription.
Below I provide a sneak peak at one of the resources which will then be followed by the recording of our meeting as well as the rest of the resources.
Math
While this is not our main math curriculum at this time (we have used a variety over the years including: Saxon, Math Mammoth (solid and great value), Teaching Textbooks (not a big fan), Right Start Math (my favorite for elementary years), Life of Fred (most fun)), Right Start Math Games are incredibly versatile, promote solid mental math skills, and can be used to supplement any math curriculum.
When my daughter was around six years old, a friend asked me “Do you love doing math?”. My answer was “No, it ends in tears and frustration too often….”. She then told me about Right Start Math games and it changed the way we learned math and also how we felt about it! This set is not a curriculum per se, but it contains 300 games that provide practice in learning the concepts and facts. It includes number sense, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, money, clocks, and fractions. This can be used with any math program or simply as a way of getting a solid foundation in mental math.
One of our favorites is “corners speed” (see below), where players have to match their cards as quickly as possible to make sums of 5, 10, 15, or 20.
Right Start Math (Grade 1-8) is also a complete elementary and middle-school program that uses “visualization of quantities, de-emphasizes counting, and provides strategies and games for learning the facts. The primary learning tool is the AL Abacus, a specially designed two-sided abacus that is both kinesthetic and visual.” Here you can find a placement test as well as sample lessons.
also mentioned Beast Academy which uses a comic-style format that offers engaging, clear, and high quality math instruction. This curriculum is the elementary preparation for The Art of Problem Solving, one of the most challenging math curricula out there (many students who participate in competition math follow this program).Here is what a sample page of the guide book looks like:
After reading the guide chapter, students complete practice exercises in the workbook:
