It is very rare indeed to find homeschooling books, magazines, or articles that support and encourage the decision to home educate using Christian textbooks. In fact, quite the opposite is found. Comments regarding Christian textbook use are almost always very negative. But, in spite of the negative comments, there are some very happy Christian textbook users out there, myself being one of them.
A very common negative comment regarding the use of textbooks that I hear is: “I would never do school-at-home, I am homeschooling.” But, from my understanding of the definitions of homeschooling and school, this seems rather contradictory.
Homeschool: to teach or educate one’s children at home.
{I do this!}
School: to train or educate in, a place of instruction.
{My home is exactly that!}
Regardless of the method used for instruction, every one of us who educate our children at home, and use our homes as a place to: instruct, educate, and train our children…are homeschooling and doing schooling at home.
I have a family that most consider to border on the side of ‘large family’. I am homeschooling five children. For me, using Christian textbooks affords me organization, preparation with little time and effort, as well as readiness. I have tried other methods that required me to gather various resources, supplies, and info, tweak the spine books for each level I was teaching to, come up with my own daily lesson plans to follow, create my own examples for teaching concepts, and practically stand on my head giving my little darlings every hands on project under the sun. This just does not work for my family, our lifestyle, or the time we have available to use for school. Granted, if I were only teaching two children, unit studies or literature based instruction would probably be more do-able in my home, however, God made my family what it is, and for my family Christian textbooks are a success.
1 Corinthians 14:40 ~ Let all things be done decently and in order.
Order: in a state of proper arrangement, preparation, or readiness
I am also a very organized person by nature, in fact, I just may have a very small tendency towards being obsessive type A {spot less house, everything in place, all boxes checked, etc…} and while most would find this trait to actually be conducive to a more ‘unit study’ or ‘projects oriented’ home educating style, it’s actually, for me, quite the opposite. Those methods actually work against my natural tendencies. I prefer, need, and do best with something that is already organized, laid out, sequential, and in order. It speaks my life language, and it works with me. On the other hand, I am not so rigid that I cannot use textbooks in a way that suits my family so as not to allow a publishers schedule to be my ‘god’. We can very happily use, for example, our Abeka history textbook as a family read aloud, and also assign a few books per child, each year, that corresponds to our period of history as part of their Literature studies.
For my family, Christian textbooks are actually freeing!
- allows me more time for other things as a basic plan is laid out for me
- allows my older children to learn how to work independently
- allows my older children to be active in correcting their own daily work
- gives us a sequential progression, with higher level learning in subsequent years
- helps me to budget my time, my children’s time, and our education finances
- we don’t miss any school because I didn’t have the time to gather resources and books
- the material is presented clearly and in reasonable daily chunks
- teaches my children that learning and work may not always be entertaining
- allows earlier student independence for those days or seasons when needed
- I am able to easier teach things in which I have little or no background
- children learn that somethings in life are caught onto easily, while others are quite difficult
- I am not rebooting my supply list every week in order to continue with school
- our children learn about other world religions, but are not steeped in it
- textbooks are very, very easy to add to if you have the time or inclination, but it’s not required for the times when you do not
If you are a Christian textbook user, here is a short compilation of resources that I hope bless and encourage you. If you know of any others that I could add to this list, please leave me a comment.
Christian Textbook Curricula by Teri Maxwell
Voice for Christian Textbooks by Teri Maxwell
Survivors Guide to Homeschooling by Luann Shakelford
Mangers of Their Schools by Teri Maxwell
Homeschool Tips by Joyce Swann
Accelerated Education by Joyce Swann
A Mom Just Like You by Vickie Farris
Do I feel that my children get a better education with a traditional curriculum? Yes, I do feel that my children are getting a better education with a complete curriculum {not saying everyone should use it, but for my family it’s true}. It is very co-hesive in that skills and content carry over nicely across the subjects within the curriculum. For example they might be learning a specific type of writing skill in English, while over in History they are then asked to use that skill in a history writing, etc…
I also enjoyed reading this quote: “For nine years in our early homeschooling, we used unit studies. Then, when Sarah was entering high school, we switched to traditional Christian textbooks. Both Nathan and Christopher, our oldest children, have told us that they would have liked to have had textbooks for their high school education. Why? They observed Sarah’s study and learning from her textbooks. The textbooks were comprehensive and methodical. They liked history being completely and chronologically presented. They saw the thoroughness of the science textbooks. The boys believe Sarah received a better high school education than they did.” by Teri Maxwell
Every family is different, but for mine, our current educational method and curricula choices have offered us {so far} our best homeschooling years to date.
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