Review of "100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum" by Cathy Duffy

 

My last post talked about a few homeschooling books that I did not find helpful.  So here's a book that I did find to be helpful.  I found it by poking around online and I got the book from the local library.  The book I read is called:  100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum by Cathy Duffy.  It was published in 2005 and since then she has come out with an updated version called 101 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum. I'm not sure the reason for the slight name change. She also has a website:  http://cathyduffyreviews.com/.

Here are some reasons her book is helpful:

1.  She discusses the different approaches to education and walks you through a process of figuring out what you envision your approach to be.  She lists 8 different approaches and explains each one which I appreciated.  The approaches:  traditional, Charlotte Mason, classical, unit study, unschooling, independent study, eclectic, and umbrella program.

2.  Is your child an auditory, visual, social, or kinesthetic learner?  She discusses 4 different learning styles of children and then incorporates that into a chart so that you can see how friendly or not each curriculum is for your child's learning style.  I just wish the chart was a little easier to read quickly.

3.  Another feature included in the chart is how much prep time, parent/teacher instruction and ease of use this curriculum requires.

4.  Something I thought looked especially helpful was her list of real books targeted towards children to use for teaching history.  This is not a short list but is seven pages of historical fiction, biography and some legends listed by historical era.  I may buy the book just for that list and other helpful resources.  This list comes later in the book under the history section.

For example, under the Renaissance to Modern Day historical period, she lists 22 books in this section and there are 9 sections--U.S. History is particularly long with 55 books.

After enjoying the first part of the book, I went to the reviews and looked up the few curriculums that I have used to see how much I agreed with the reviews.

1.  I have used Singapore Math a little bit as a supplement to public school math instruction, in particular for my daughter who was struggling with math.  I found it to be completely unhelpful for her.  As far as I can tell, this curriculum is for students who grasp math concepts and math facts easily and quickly.  Cathy Duffy's review doesn't address this fairly significant problem although she does suggest that drilling math facts will have to come from a different resource.  She does mention the concepts that are taught for each level which is helpful.

2.  When I pulled my daughter out of 2nd grade for primarily math concerns, I started using Saxon Math and that was a much better choice for my daughter who needs TONS of review.  This curriculum would have probably been somewhat tedious for my older children who grasped math concepts easily but it worked for my daughter.  Cathy Duffy does review Saxon Math but not for the lower grades for some reason that is not clear.  Since Saxon Math is a widely used resource by homeschoolers (and charter schools in our area), this seems like a definite shortcoming, although she does review it on her website.  On her website, she finds the spiral method of review in Saxon to be inefficient and perhaps it is for the average student.

3.  When I homeschooled my son for afternoons of 3rd grade, I used The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child.  I enjoyed using this resource and while it was somewhat time-consuming, it worked fairly well.  I agreed with Cathy Duffy's review on this curriculum.

All in all, this book was pretty helpful.  I probably won't be buying it since the website seems to be just about as useful and more up-to-date.  (Except for maybe that list of historical books!) And the reality is that I am not a full-time homeschooler so I don't need to buy much curriculum, as tempting as they are.