Is your homeschool curriculum bossing you around?

Personally, I don’t like my curriculum telling me exactly what to say and do. Maybe I have other things to say than my curriculum does about Christopher Columbus, the Civil War, or the ecology movement. Maybe I don’t want my kids to do all those activities each week.  Isn’t there ever any time for them to just… play?!  If you’re tired of feeling bossed around, you may be ready for a more unstructured homeschool curriculum, such as our Unit Program Tools

If you are just starting out homeschooling, you might want a curriculum to tell you exactly what to say, what to do, and when to do it. There’s no shame in that. In fact, that’s why we created Daily Lesson Plans from our original Unit Program Tools curriculum — for moms who want and prefer that kind of structure.

But if you have homeschooled for a while, you may feel you don’t need or want that much structure anymore. You might be ready to branch out and do more exploration. Maybe as a Charlotte Mason mom, you want to let your kids form their OWN relationships with the concepts they are reading about without needing a textbook to spoon-feed them everything you want them to know.  

An unstructured Homeschool Curriculum can work FOR YOU instead of bossing you around.

Not only is it frustrating that your curriculum tells you what to say but it can also give you more to do than you think your kids need. (And if you don’t need it, it’s just busy work.)

And when you don’t check off all the little boxes, you either feel like you aren’t doing a good job homeschooling, OR you add extra hours to your day to get everything checked off. (Otherwise, you’re wasting all that money you spent, right?)

With this tyrant in your home, your homeschooling is not turning out to be nearly as fun as you imagined it would be, is it? You’re skipping all the fun stuff in order to get all those dumb boxes checked!

If you’d like to relieve the pressure before you blow a gasket, have more flexibility to go down those rabbit trails without feeling guilty, and make homeschooling FUN again, you can!  All you need is the guiding hand of a less structured homeschool curriculum.

How to make it more fun without creating curriculum by yourself

After all, don’t you want to bring your kids’ homeschool education to life?  Livegiving education and a happy, thriving home are what you wanted for your kids when you started homeschooling.  In fact, you may have walked away from a boxed curriculum some time ago.  You may have been scrambling to piece curriculum together yourself for some time. I remember staring at my laptop, blurry-eyed, looking for something fun to do with Ancient Egypt the next morning.  Exhausting.

We call our Unit Program “Tools” because they include the structure you need, so you aren’t starting from scratch trying to create your own curriculum. With nine historical units beginning with Creation and ending with Modern, curated book lists organized by time period and topic, and many history, science, language arts, and fine arts assignment ideas, you are well on your way. You have a framework to organize around.  We’ve also included a “Teacher’s Overview”  to remind you of the notable people and events of each unit/time period/topic.

But are a new homeschooling momma, worried about what you don’t know (and don’t even know to ask?!)  We’ve got you. You also get a Teacher’s Manual with each Unit Program Tools component. In addition to telling you what you’ll need to homeschool, there are tips for organizing everything and for teaching each subject we cover (and some that we don’t.)

.Planning forms, checklists, and other printables round out the Programs.

Read some homeschool moms’ thoughts about our Unit Program Tools:

              “I came across this gem several years ago as I was searching for a Charlotte Mason-style curriculum that would work well with our notebooking pages and philosophy of education. True to its Charlotte Mason roots, Train up a Child Publishing has tossed the dry, dusty textbooks and carefully selected the best available “living” children’s literature to recommend with their integrated study of history, science, fine arts and language arts (grammar, spelling, vocabulary, composition, literature study, poetry, etc.).

           I have tried a variety of curriculum plans and each has their particular perks, but with this curriculum I feel I have all I need (not too much, not too little) to plan a wonderfully RICH, Charlotte Mason-inspired, literature-based history program for my children.”      ~Debra, mom of many

 

         “E. is in 4th grade right now and C. is in 1st grade. I love being able to use Train up a Child Publishing curricula with both of them! (And we’ll be adding L. in kindergarten next year.) What a blessing this curriculum has been and continues to be for us! Thanks!”     ~Julie

 

          “The kids and I just finished playing a ’20th Century Trivia’ board game that A. made after I saw it in the Preparatory Unit Program of Train up a Child Publishing. What a great idea! He had to come up with the idea, use history & geography to come up with the categories and then the questions, make the board, paint the board and then make up the rules. It was a great 2-week project!”         ~Vicki

 

            “I love the Unit Programs’ FLEXIBILITY!!!! We can dig deep and do lots of writing and projects with each unit or at a bare minimum, just read some of the books listed – all depending on how busy the rest of our life is at the time. The kids LOVE the books. Also, I can teach multiple children of differing grades very easily with it. I will recommend this program [because it is] fun, flexible and far out! (I was trying to think of an F word that meant it’s awesome and good quality.)”        ~Julie Y.

Maybe it’s time for you to try a more unstructured curriculum.

Then YOU can add the structure when and where you need it.

Our unstructured Unit Programs give you the TOOLS you need to homeschool your kids:

• Our 100+ page teacher’s manual teaches you how to use excellent literature for teaching history and science
• We show you how to choose copywork, teach your kids to do narrations, and use the same books you’re using in history and science to teach grammar and punctuation.
• Each of our unit programs has over 400 top-notch, pre-read book suggestions, divided by historical period, subject (history, science, and fine arts [music, art, and architecture], topic, and reading/listening levels.
• Each historical unit also contains a 3-10 page overview of important events and people for that unit.
• Our manuals include checklists of important English Skills for different grades, including phonics, so you don’t miss anything important.
• Each unit has a page of history and science activities and projects to choose from, and our middle school and high school unit programs also have many assignment ideas as well!

With this unstructured homeschool curriculum, you can cover what you want to cover each day and journal what you did, rather than obsessing about what you didn’t do!

It might be time to toss that limiting checkbox curriculum that is cramping your style!  Are you ready to try a more unstructured homeschool curriculum like our Unit Program Tools?

 

Happy Homeschooling!

 

P.S. If your homeschool could use more flexibility and engagement, click on Unit Program Tools and look for the levels that will fit the ages of your children:  Primary (Kindergarten through 2nd grade), Intermediate (3rd-5th), Preparatory (6th-8th) and Secondary (9th-12th). Click on the individual levels at the bottom of the page to see samples of each level.