Join us in 30 Days of Thanks! We will be posting all month at NextGen Homeschool about some of the things we are personally thankful for, and when we do, the post will include a link-up at the bottom so you can share posts of your own on the topic of thankfulness. If you don’t blog, no worries: We will also post a 30 Days of Thanks prompt on our Facebook page every day this month so that you can add your comments there. All of our posts will include a #30daysofthanks hashtag so you can find them easily.

 30 Days of Thanks: November 25

Lately I have been thinking about how thankful I am for good quality, faith-based curriculum choices. When my parents homeschooled us back in the 1980s, there really weren’t very many choice for the homeschooling parent. We used a little Bob Jones with our Alpha Omega, plus a few books my parents collected at a book drop place where the public schools got rid of textbooks they didn’t use anymore. I remember dad ripping out pages he didn’t like and patching together a quality and Godly curriculum. At times, he just had to put it together completely on his own.

Today as I homeschool my children, I have so many options for curriculum — it is truly mind boggling. The new homeschooler and the veteran like me can easily get confused with all of the choices available. And many of the programs out there are really great. It takes time, research, and knowing your children’s learning styles and your teaching style to narrow down the best curriculum for you.

This is my 9th year as a homeschool teacher and I still make changes mid year and discover new textbooks and styles that work better for us.  Recently, two months into our school year, I totally revamped our Language Arts curriculum. We also finished our Bible curriculum and started something different from Apologia, which we are really excited about.

My son (8) is an excellent reader, but his spelling and writing are very slow to develop. So we just started Institute for Excellence in Writing’s Phonetic Zoo Level A for spelling. It’s great for auditory learners such as Joel. He is still working on his first level, but I am determined that he will succeed as a good speller.

We also went back to First Language Lessons for Language Arts. I used it last year but had planned to move over to Shurley English this year. However, as much as I love Shurley and enjoyed using it with my elder daughters, it just wasn’t working for us. First Language Lessons is straightforward, concise, and easy to put into practice on a daily basis, so it just works for us.

We started out the year doing Firmly Planted’s Family Devotional Part A. It is only 9-10 weeks long, so we finished it about two weeks ago. It was an enjoyable study and really helped us get our school year started off right. Last week we started Apologia’s Worldview “Who is God?” Curriculum. We have only gotten through the first Lesson but WOW! Joel has really been inspired by the lessons and parables. He brings up what he has learned in random conversations throughout the day. I love it when he is truly inspired by something he is learning. And I love how Apologia can teach foundational truth to young students in a way that they can understand and yet is still profound for adults.

We have also moved our math around again. Joel missed doing workbook math so we added back in some Horizon Math, which he actually enjoys doing.

I am so thankful that I have the freedom and the options available to buy curriculum that my son can readily learn from and may even enjoy. There’s no red tape bureaucracy involved when I need to make a change: I just do it! And I’m so grateful for the many quality options now available to Christian homeschoolers like myself.

Will you join us in 30 Days of Thanks this month? What are you thankful for today? What are you most thankful for in your homeschooling journey this week? Share with us in the comments below: We love to hear from you! Don’t forget to LINK UP your Thankful posts below!