I spent exactly $412.50 on a boxed curriculum set from Abeka in the spring of 2021 because I saw a woman on YouTube who had a very clean kitchen and three children who seemed to enjoy sitting still. I thought the money would buy me that peace. It didn’t. My kid cried for three hours over a phonics worksheet, and then I cried for one hour in the pantry while eating a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. It was a Tuesday. It was also the day I realized that most of what people tell you about the best homeschool curriculum elementary kids need is a complete lie designed to make you feel like you aren’t doing enough.
The truth is that most “all-in-one” boxes are basically a frozen TV dinner for the soul. They’re convenient, sure, but they taste like cardboard and leave everyone involved feeling a little bit malnourished. I’ve spent the last three years testing six different math programs, four different reading tracks, and more science kits than I care to admit to my husband when he looks at the credit card statement. I’ve tracked our progress in a messy Google Doc—nothing fancy, just notes on when the kids actually looked engaged versus when they looked like they were being held hostage.
The part where I tell you what I actually hate
I know people will disagree with me on this, and honestly, I might be wrong about the long-term results, but I absolutely cannot stand The Good and the Beautiful. I know, I know. It’s the darling of the homeschool world. It’s pretty. It’s free or cheap for the PDFs. But every time I open those books, I feel like I’m being inducted into a very specific, beige-colored cult where everyone drinks raw milk and judges me for using a microwave. The aesthetics are so distracting that I feel like the actual education gets lost in the watercolor illustrations of birds. It feels performative. There, I said it. If your curriculum looks like a Pinterest board, is your kid actually learning or are you just taking photos of them looking like they’re learning?
What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. A curriculum should be a tool, not a lifestyle brand. When the branding is that heavy, I start to distrust the pedagogy. We tried their Level 1 Language Arts for exactly three weeks before my son asked why all the stories were about “sweet little children being helpful.” He wanted to read about dragons and poop. We switched.
It’s a total scam for your ego.
The 14-minute rule and math that doesn’t suck
I did a little experiment last year. I timed my 8-year-old’s focus during different subjects. On average, we get exactly 14 minutes of genuine, high-level cognitive engagement before the chair-spinning begins. If a curriculum requires a 45-minute lecture from me, it’s a failure before we even start. This is why I have become an irrational fanboy for Beast Academy.
I’ve bought every single guide book they make, even the ones he isn’t ready for yet. I don’t care if something better exists. The comic book format is the only thing that keeps him from realizing he’s doing high-level logic. We tried Saxon Math for a while because that’s what the “serious” homeschoolers use. Saxon is like a slow-moving glacier. It’s effective, I guess, if you want your child to be a human calculator from 1954, but it’s soul-crushing. We did 40 lessons and I felt my own brain starting to atrophy.
- Beast Academy: High engagement, very hard, but feels like a game.
- Math-U-See: Good if your kid needs to touch things, but the videos are incredibly dated.
- Singapore Dimensions: The gold standard if you actually understand math yourself (I don’t).
If you’re spending more than 20 minutes on a single math worksheet in second grade, you aren’t teaching; you’re just supervising a slow-motion breakdown.
A brief tangent about pens
Before I get into the reading stuff, I need to vent about the physical act of writing. I used to buy those cheap yellow Ticonderoga pencils because that’s what you do, right? Wrong. They’re scratchy and the erasers smudge everything into a gray blur of failure. I switched the kids to the Pilot G2 0.7mm gel pens (blue ink only, don’t ask why) and their desire to actually do the work went up by at least 30%. There is something about a smooth glide on the paper that makes a 7-year-old feel like an adult. Anyway, back to the actual books.
The reading list that isn’t a list
I used to think Charlotte Mason was the only way to raise a moral, intelligent human. I was completely wrong. I spent a whole summer reading Home Education and trying to implement “living books” and nature journals. It just made us both tired of looking at birds. My kid doesn’t want to narrate a story about a Victorian girl picking daisies. He wants to know how a combustion engine works.
For elementary reading, I’ve stopped buying “curriculum” entirely. We use All About Reading for the mechanics—which is expensive but worth every penny because it’s scripted and I don’t have to think—and for everything else, we just go to the library. I know that sounds lazy. It probably is. But my kid’s reading level jumped two grades when I stopped forcing him to read “classics” and let him read Wings of Fire for four hours a day.
I’m convinced that 90% of “literature-based” curriculum is just a way for parents to feel superior at co-op meetings. “Oh, we’re reading The Wind in the Willows for the third time.” Cool, Sharon. My kid is learning about apex predators and internal combustion. Who’s going to be more useful in the apocalypse?
The social thing is a lie
This is the part where I might lose some people. I think most parents who homeschool are just doing it to control their kids’ social lives, and honestly, it’s kind of gross. We join these co-ops and buy these specific curriculums just so our kids can be around “like-minded” people. But the best part of homeschooling should be that you aren’t stuck in a bubble.
I don’t buy “Social Studies” curriculum. It’s almost always biased, regardless of which side of the aisle it’s coming from. We just read the news and talk about why people are angry at each other. It’s messy and I don’t always have the answers. Last week we spent two hours talking about why the city is digging up the street in front of our house. That was our civics lesson. Total cost: $0.
Real world over workbooks. Always.
I don’t have a neat summary for you. I’m still figuring this out. Some days I think I’m a genius and my kids are going to change the world, and other days I’m looking up local private school tuition rates at 11:00 PM while drinking a glass of lukewarm wine. If you’re looking for the “best” curriculum, just find the one that makes you yell at your kids the least. That’s the only metric that actually matters in the long run.
Do they know how to bake bread? Do they know how to ask a librarian for help? Do they still like you at the end of the day? If yes, you’re doing fine.
What are you actually using that doesn’t make you want to walk into the woods and never come back?