How Do I Choose a Homeschool Curriculum?

This is usually the first real decision, and it's the one that stalls people out before they even start. There are hundreds of options, everyone online swears by a different one, and it feels like picking wrong will wreck the whole year. It won't. Here's how to actually choose.

Start with the approach, not the brand

Most curricula fall into a handful of teaching philosophies, and knowing the shape helps more than knowing the product names. Classical leans on great books and structured critical thinking. Charlotte Mason uses living books and nature study over textbooks and worksheets. Montessori is child-led, hands-on, self-paced. Unit studies teach multiple subjects together around one theme (a month on the ocean covers reading, science, and geography at once). Traditional/textbook looks the most like the school your kid just left — workbooks, chapters, tests — and it's often the easiest first step for a nervous new homeschool parent because nothing about the format is unfamiliar.

None of these is "correct." They're just different shapes, and most families end up mixing more than one once they see what actually fits their kid.

Start simple. You do not need to buy everything at once

New homeschool parents routinely over-buy in the first month: a full boxed curriculum for every subject, extra workbooks "just in case," supplemental everything. Don't. Cover the core — math, reading, and language arts — and add science, history, and electives as you get your footing. A curriculum you can actually keep up with beats a complete one you abandon by October.

A few names you'll see everywhere

You don't need to research all of these, but knowing the common names makes the shopping less overwhelming: Saxon Math and Math-U-See for math, All About Reading for phonics, Story of the World for history, Apologia for science, Sonlight as an all-in-one box. None of these is a wrong answer. They're just popular, which mostly means well-tested by a lot of families before you.

The permission slip nobody gives you: it's okay to switch

If you pick a curriculum and a few honest weeks in it's clearly not clicking — your kid is fighting it, or you are — switching is a completely normal, reasonable move. It is not a sign you failed at homeschooling. Curriculum is a tool, not a commitment. The parents who struggle most are the ones who stick with a bad fit out of guilt.

You are not choosing the curriculum your kid will use forever. You're choosing the one you'll start with.

The part the curriculum never solves

Here's what nobody tells you when you're standing in the curriculum aisle: the box doesn't teach your kid. You do, or somebody does. Even the best curriculum on the market is still just pages — a real person still has to sit down, walk through it, explain the part that doesn't click, and check the work. That's the actual job, and it's the same job no matter which curriculum you buy.

Where Kitchen Table School fits

This is the reason Mrs. M doesn't come with her own curriculum to sell you. Whatever you pick — Saxon, Sonlight, a unit study you built yourself, a stack of library books — she reads it, teaches straight from its actual pages, and logs which book every lesson came from. You don't have to pick the "right" curriculum and then separately find someone to teach it. Pick whatever fits your kid. She'll teach it.