Choosing Curriculum for the Homeschool Orthodox Christian Family
Depending on what method you use for your homeschool a basic academic outline of subjects to teach for elementary and middle school will look like this:
English
Literature
Math
History/Geography
Science
Fine Arts
Computer/Technology/Keyboarding
Physical Education/Health
For high school it will depend on your state and if and what college your child will go to. First look at your state requirements and than look at a few requirements for colleges. You can also go to HSLDA website and get helpful information for high school subjects and transcripts. I am a fan of HSLDA, I support them and really appreciate what they do for homeschool families. I am very fortunate to have never needed their assistance but I am happy to be a member so that I can be helping other families during some pretty scary times if you have school officials or truant officers knocking on your door!
Some people choose to also teach Latin. Not me, please don't feel you have to. There seems to be quite a bit of pressure in some homeschool corners of the world that this is a must. We tried and it didn't work for us and it's okay!
So let's start with English. Just a note, I like to keep English and Literature separate in my mind as subjects. Some people will group this all together and call it Language Arts. For me, I like to think of English as skills in communicating. Things like learning how to read with phonics or other reading type skills, penmanship skills like manuscript and cursive, composition skills like grammar, spelling, vocabulary and writing. Literature is about reading wonderful books, or being read to wonderful books and talking about characters and plot and in high school doing a bit of literary analysis, but mainly just being exposed to lots of great literature.
I am going to just start off and say I am very enthusiastic about the homeschool curriculum called Sonlight. This has been our main for many years. I will do a whole other post on that. But for now let my just say that using Sonlight will cover English, Literature, History/Geography, Science and they offer terrific math programs as well. For electives I have used some of there computer and art programs and like them very much.
Now, I will talk about other curriculum choices that are not Sonlight and will start with English.
English is such a huge subject because it covers so much. For the Orthodox Christian you shouldn't have any problems finding outstanding English curriculum. You may run into problems if you order from some Protestant Christian textbook type companies like Christian Light, Rod and Staff, Abeka and Bob Jones to name a few. But there are lots of great choices out there that are created by Christians but do not get into any sort of theology.
Here are some I have tried or studied over the years and really love and think quite well of. I have not used every level of some of these programs, but in general I feel pretty confident they are not going to cause problems for an Orthodox Christian family. There may be individual sentences or assignments that some may have problems with, but that would be a similar problem any Christian family may encounter.
Happy Phonics
Explode the Code
All About Spelling and All About Reading
Spelling Power
Winston Grammar
Growing with Grammar
First Language Lessons
Wordly Wise
Reason for Handwriting
Handwriting without Tears
Writing and Rhetoric - Hands down my absolute favorite writing program!!
IEW
Writing Strands
Write Shop
Writing With Ease
For literature some great sources for books would be.
Classical Reader
Honey for A Childs Heart
Honey for A Teens Heart
A great online resource for literature books would be Classical Christian Education Support Loop.
For Math, again as an Orthodox Christian you won't really run into problems here, unless like mentioned above some of the Christian textbook companies may be a problem.
Some of my favorites over the years have been:
Right Start Mathematics
Life of Fred
Math U See
Teaching Textbooks
So, now we come to history and this becomes the sticky wicket. You may choose a secular history book and basically can get a very liberal and no God sort of view, which can be depressing and sad. You may choose a Protestant history curriculum and be told how evil the early church is and how evil the Roman Catholic church is and all the bells and whistles of theses sort of churches are not of God. Again...depressing and sad.
Homeschool Journey - This is a notebooking curriculum created by an Orthodox Christian mom, so suffice it to say it would be a good choice. The downside for my family was that it's too much notebooking for them and for me to keep up with. Just reading lots of books has worked out the best for us. But, the great thing about this is you can use it with many different resources. She does give resource suggestions. I know combining this with Sonlight would just be too much and so we haven't used this curriculum.
Beautiful Feet If I were not using Sonlight this would be my next choice. There may be an occasional comment or assignment in the guides that an Orthodox Christian will disagree with, but in general this is a wonderful curriculum by a Protestant Christian family who love God and love literature.
Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer is very good. She is a Christian but wrote books that even secular homeschoolers can use. She gives a very factual type approach in a story sort of format. It's interesting and engaging. The 3rd book is rather boring because it's bombarded with war after war and despicable leader after despicable leader...but hey...it's history and that's just a part of it!
Susan Wise Bauer's books for high school and adults look extremely dry and very long. I have not read them word for word, just the excerpts and decided not to use them.
Truthquest would be a good choice, but you may want to ignore some of the authors comments throughout the guide. She comes from a Protestant Christian perspective. The meat of the curriculum is basically a booklist organized by time periods. Personally, I have found many of her book selections not available. You also need to have a library in order to use this as I think it would be way to costly to purchase books as you go along. If you have a great library than this could be a good choice for you. I have an Orthodox friend who used the American History guides and enjoyed them.
All Through the Ages: This is a great resource for basically putting together your own history program, this is similar to Truthquest but in my opinion better because it doesn't have all the commentary and it's much cheaper. It's one book!
Some that are toting a line. These may be good but parts of them may be frustrating. Biblioplan and Mystery of History. The author of Mystery of History has said that she has been very careful to share history in a way that is fair and not offensive to her Catholic friends, so that sort of tells me it may be Orthodox friendly as well. I have read through the first book and enjoyed it, other than the very heavy emphasis on young earth and some of her resources are by people who are not too friendly towards Orthodox of Catholics. But, the biggest thing with history are the time periods of the early church and the time of the Reformation. Those are the key times I look at. For Biblioplan, I love the mapping and look of their book, but when I read bout their view on the Byzantine Empire or the Reformation I really struggled and was frustrated. You can see samples on their webiste. Homeschooling is hard and I need to find curriculum that is as easy to use as possible and still meets my needs and objectives.
Science for me has always been either Sonlight science which has tons of great books or Apologia.
The tricky part with science is going to be the whole young earth, old earth and intelligent design debates. They can get quite ugly between homeschool moms and also homeschool educators and publishers! To my knowledge the church really hasn't taken a stance. I know of bishops and priests that are old earth and I know of bishops and priests that are young earth. I happen to be young earth, but I am not so stuck on it that I completely disregard what others say. But until people can talk in a more appropriate manner on this subject I just leave it alone.
The Exploring Creation series is from Apologia and it's for the elementary years. These are beautiful and wonderful textbooks. Yes, they make claims and opinions about young earth but it's not so in your face or offensive. Atleast I don't think it is, I may be biased on that! But, I love how they are always mentioning God's creation and not in a preachy way, but in a way that is honoring. The high school Apologia I only use the ones written by Dr. Jay Wile. To me he has a very logical and level headed view of science and I really appreciate how he writes and talks about science. Again this is from a young earth perspective. The Chemistry book from Apologia has been changed and they no longer use Dr. Wiles book, eventually they will probably re -do the whole series. Dr. Wile no longer works for Apologia, he left and started his own science curriculum. He had differences with the push Apologia was making in the world view curriculum and he felt they were straying a bit from science in pursue of a more biased view. Here is what he said about it. He also is not happy about their new Chemistry book and in response wrote his own. Here is where he talks about the new Chemistry book by Apologia. Maybe some problems have been fixed by now, I don't know. But I plan to use his Chemistry book when we get there. Here is his website, Berean Builders where he offers curriculum for younger kids and his recommendations for other grades and his chemistry curriculum.
If none of this is appealing I recommend checking out Timberdoodle. They have some great choices for science. They are a Christian company, but have choices that will appease all sort of faiths. They have lots of fun stuff too!
Fine Arts - this can include music lessons, art projects. I really love the art curriculum from Artistic Pursuits, How Great Thou Art and Mark Kistler drawing books.
Other Curriculum
Five in A Row is an excellent curriculum for K-5th grade. Literature based, Christian but friendly for Orthodox Christians.
Galloping the Globe, Cantering the Country, Trail Guide to the U.S, Trail Guide to World Geography...all by Geography Matters. Excellent Christian curriculum that is Orthodox friendly. Have not tried their history curriculum.
The Well Trained Mind This is a great resource for a full curriculum. You still need to buy all the books and curriculum it suggests but this books does a great job giving details on what to teach each year and how to go about doing it. It can be overwhelming.
No Go curriculum for me. Just my opinion!
Tapestry of Grace - I am not completely sure but I think this curriculum comes from a Calvinist perspective, which really has problems in my opinion. (sorry) The extensive notes written by the author were the main problem for me. However, I suppose one could just sort of skip that and just use the books and schedule, but this is a hard curriculum to use and even more expensive than Sonlight. I also just don't like their book choices.
Rod and Staff English. Excellent in teaching English but you have to wade through all the Protestant strong opinions and it can just be exhausting!
My Fathers World. I keep looking at this and keep coming back to it, but I just feel like I would have to take out many books and it's just not worth it.
Heart of Dakota. Again great idea and curriculum, but the Protestant slant will just be too much to have to deal with for me.
Maybe other Orthodox Christians have made this work.... I don't know.
In general history and science are the tricky ones for Orthodox Christians, but pretty much all other subjects are not that hard to make work. for 7 years I homeschooled as a Protestant and I still struggled which much the same things. Many times the Protestant curriculum was stuff I just didn't agree with, so even at that time I couldn't give myself over to My Father's World, Tapestry of Grace or Bob Jones University. The Protestant world is very vast with different opinions! But I love having curriculum from Christians, I need and desire that fellowship, kinship and perspective!
