Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Curriculum hunting can be a little overwhelming when you’re homeschooling high school-age children and second-graders at the same time. On today’s Home School Heartbeat with Mike Smith, guest Carren Joye shares a few tips for finding the best curriculum when you’re teaching more than one child.

Mike Smith:
Carren, how do you choose a curriculum to suit as many of your children at one time as possible?

Carren Joye:
Well, it will be difficult to juggle two or three or more curriculum at one time, so it’s important to find a flexible and reusable curriculum that’s designed specifically for multiple children, and there are lots of them out there. Many of them are unit based, so that’s a kind of key word to look for when searching for a curriculum. Whether a family is purchasing or designing their own curriculum, I would recommend combining subjects as much as possible. They can do that with history and science and Bible. Beyond that, I would recommend catering to your oldest child. It’s easier to adapt a difficult program for an older child for younger children than it is to take a program for a young child and try to make it challenging enough for your older child. Another option would be, if they have two children close in age, choose a curriculum in the grade between those two grades. That way they can strike a balance between making it challenging enough for the older child and easy enough for the younger child. Of course, I would recommend choosing a curriculum that fits the family’s religious beliefs beyond anything else. And before investing any money I would ask around support groups and other homeschoolers to see what they use.

Mike:
Thank you, Carren, that’s very helpful. And we look forward to talking to you more about this more tomorrow. And until then, I’m Mike Smith.