Episode 418 - How to Choose the Right Homeschool Curriculum for Your Family - With Debbie Wilson

Yeah, so I mean, we're, we're coming, unfortunately, to the start of the school year pretty soon here.

Um, you know, we'll probably wait until after Labor Day, so, uh, we still got a few weeks there, but I know a lot of homeschoolers are getting going here.

Um, so, you know, we kinda talked about last week wanting to kinda do a road to the school year and just getting back into it, kind of a kickoff.

And, you know, the biggest topic that so many people, uh, y- y- that, you know, obviously always comes up is, "What curriculum am I using?" Uh, at this point, I would assume most people have kind of, you know, settled on something for the next couple weeks here, if you're coming, you know, coming up on it.

But I think it's important still because a lot of times you may, you may not really know how much you're gonna like the curriculum until it's kind of, you know, trial by fire, until you actually start using it.

Um, so I thought our topic this week could just be kind of how do you choose the, quote-unquote, "perfect," uh, homeschooling curriculum for your family? And obviously, uh, as you will find out, there's probably not gonna be literally perfection.

Uh, but, uh, we're gonna kinda give some of our thoughts broadly and then maybe some specific recommendations, um, uh, as we go into it.

But Ka- I thought, uh, maybe you could start off, you know, with your, uh, quote that you wrote 'cause I thought that was a good, good way, place to start, and then we can kinda branch off from there.

Uh, but just what was your initial thought when you heard the topic?

Yeah.

I saw this quote on Instagram, and there was a whole post around it, but the quote was really good.

Um, it's by J.R.R. Tolkien from The Hobbit, and it says, uh, "It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations if you live near him." And this was, like, a homeschooler post that was talking about basically sometimes when we're planning out our school year, we kind of forget the dragons that live within our home.

So that could be, you know, finances are super tight, or our kids are super young, and we have lots of, you know, crazy little boys.

Or it could be maybe I have a, a child with special needs, or a husband who works super long hours, and sometimes in kind of our, like, idealistic, you know, when we're writing out our s- our itinerary for the school year, we forget some of those things and kinda set ourselves up for failure.

So the point of the post was Basically take your dragons, your, into account at the beginning when you're planning so that you're setting yourself up to succeed and not to get, you know, a few weeks or months into your school year and feel discouraged because all those life things hit.

And they might not apply to everyone, but you might feel pressured to do it because everyone else is doing it.