bbcovert@juno.com

One question I often get from folks who are curious about how homeschooling works is this: "Where do you get your books?" Their assumption is that public school textbooks are the only available option. They don’t know about the plethora of teaching materials available to homeschoolers. The question for us is not, "Where can we get it?" but "What should we choose?" It’s mind boggling to be faced with so many choices. However, I don’t advocate the "eeny meeny miny mo" method for selecting your student’s books. It’s going to take a lot of thought and research. Here’s a list of pointers that my help you.

• It will help tremendously if you know your child’s learning style. Most likely your personal learning style will NOT be your child’s learning style, meaning you can’t assume that what worked for you will work for him or her. There are a number of excellent books out there for figuring this out, but hopefully you’ve spent enough time getting to know your child that you sense whether he or she is a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner. A visual student learns by seeing; an auditory student learns by hearing, and a kinesthetic child learns by moving and touching.

• You can find educational materials geared to different learning styles! There are textbooks, workbooks, video series, tapes set to music, computer programs, satellite classes, and learning kits with manipulatives included. You can find programs made specifically for your ADHD student! It is liberating in a way to have the freedom to teach to your child’s learning style.

• Regarding curriculum choices, the new homeschooler may want to get the complete set of all subjects from one publisher that first year. That cuts down on the anxiety of weighing the multitude of options for each subject. This worked for me. I waited until two weeks before kindergarten was supposed to start. Then I rushed to my local publisher’s store and found the kindergarten curriculum I needed. That gave me the rest of the year to get comfortable with homeschooling and research my options for 1st grade!

• Once the parent gains a little confidence about home education, the option of eclectic curricula opens up. That’s when you choose to go with different publishers for each subject, based on your goals and your student’s learning style and interests.

• Another option is to teach with unit studies. They are less formal, but take a lot more planning. Each subject is integrated around a specific topic. Say you choose to study chocolate. Language arts would revolve around reading about chocolate, spelling words that correlate to the treat, and writing a paper on chocolate. Math might involve working with chocolate dessert recipes. Science could be done in the kitchen as well. History would cover the discovery of chocolate. Better yet, you could buy a variety of chocolate – white, milk, dark – and perform taste tests! A field trip might take you to a candy factory! While some experienced homeschoolers design their own unit studies, there are companies who publish these for you, including the list of supplies you will need for each unit.

• The last option is for the experienced homeschooler only, and that is to create your own curriculum. This is done by collecting resource material from libraries, bookstores, friends, and the Internet rather than using traditional textbooks and workbooks.

I’ve used all but the unit study approach. I simply don’t have the time or interest needed to pull those together! I enjoy having a teacher’s manual for each day’s lesson. As I said before, my first year teaching I got a complete curriculum from one publisher. After that I discovered several programs geared to children with ADHD that I used successfully. I use one program for language arts, another for science, a third one for math, and this year (my 7th as a home educator) I created my own curriculum for history and geography – based on my children’s interests and their goal of competing in the upcoming geography bee. The eclectic method works for us. Some of our supplementary education comes from music tapes, where the material is put to music and sung. This is perfect for my auditory, musically-gifted learner! Our science involves many hands-on projects, perfect for my kinesthetic learner. I have lots of educational games that make learning fun.

Having covered your options for choosing curricula, I should move on to where you can find these things! Are you ready to be overwhelmed? Then take a look at this list of websites, followed by a list of other possible ways to find what you need.

6. Some school districts allow homeschoolers to use their textbooks. Also, when they discard books you can probably take advantage of that and get free books. Sometimes they throw out brand news books simply because they decided to switch publishers! If we don’t get them, the landfill will. However, these will be secular books which you may want to use as supplementary material rather than your main curricula since they may contain objectionable material.

I guess it’s apparent by now that homeschoolers don’t simply teach at home using public school textbooks. We have a world of options from which to choose. If you adore books, you’re in for a treat. I can browse for hours and never tire of it. If you don’t love books, well ... you’d just better learn to love books! Or else look up some of the video, computer, and satellite programs that are available. If you can imagine it, it probably already exists out there.

Copyright 2003 by Brenda B. Covert