Choosing the Best Family Style Homeschool Curriculum

Are you looking for a family style homeschool curriculum? Trying to find the best homeschool program for your family can be a daunting task. But if you’re tired of the struggle of trying to juggle multiple kids and grades and ages, then consider how a family style homeschool curriculum can bring more simplicity, peace, and success to your homeschool experience.

Family Style Homeschool Curriculum

A family style homeschool curriculum brings the benefits of learning together into full focus. Instead of segmenting each of your children off on their own for learning, the whole family can learn together.

And the homeschool mom finds that suddenly her day goes from frenetic and chaotic to peaceful and enjoyable!

If you’re having a hard time finding a good fit for your family, then consider how a family-style lesson for each of the main subjects will greatly simplify your homeschool day.

What is Family Style Homeschooling?

Family style homeschooling is simply learning most subjects together as a family. That means older students and younger kids spend much of their school time with a family-style lesson and group activities.

The core curriculum can be learned together. This means that subjects that are knowledge based, like history, geography, literature, Bible, read-alouds, and science, can be taught together as a group. The core curriculum is learned together. Then for the skills-based content area like math, language arts, and phonics, your children will work at their own levels.

Benefits of Family Style Homeschooling

Family style homeschooling allows you to spend as much time together as possible, which greatly simplifies the average daily load for the homeschool mom. But spending this time together also allows for family bonding, which is one of the most important aspects of homeschooling.

No More Juggling Grade Levels

Instead of juggling four different grade levels of a large family, this style of homeschooling allows mom to give her attention to group activities and group teaching. Then, she can focus on the few subjects that each child needs to work on independently.

Older Siblings Can Help

Younger students benefit from learning with older siblings because they’re able to pick up on concepts that are challenging or just a bit above their normal grasp. But this is a great growing experience for younger kids.

Even the preschooler that’s playing in the same room as a group read-aloud will pick up vocabulary well above his years! It’s just one of the many benefits of a family style homeschooling day.

Family Style Homeschooling Saves Money

Family style homeschooling can also save you money! Instead of purchasing separate curriculum for each subject for each child, you can study many subjects together, thereby saving money.

When you can use a literature-based family-style curriculum, you’ll save even more money as living books form the foundation of your studies rather than textbooks.

You Can Include Litte Ones

Finally, family-style homeschooling allows your toddlers and preschoolers to join in the learning fun! Instead of wondering what to do with the little ones while you school the older kids, family style schooling includes all ages and stages.

What subjects can be taught family style?

A family style homeschool curriculum will include lesson plans that cover the knowledge-based content areas together. The entire family can learn these subject areas together:

• history
• geography
• science
• literature
• Bible
• read-alouds

Most family style lessons are perfect for 3rd-8th grade students and then older children can be required to do additional work while younger students can still join in the fun.

How to Teach Science with Multiple Kids

You can easily teach science with multiple kids when you use a family style homeschool curriculum. The way this works is that everyone is learning the same topic and same content in family-style learning.

Younger children will do more narration, hands-on activities, and maybe some notebooking. High schoolers can do all of those plus a bit more reading, higher level narration, or even written reports.

Using high quality living books and resources makes it possible to teach a span of ages while still appropriately challenging them on their level.

Nature study is another aspect of science that can be taught together with multiple kids. Resources such as science unit studies also present a cohesive topic that children of all ages can learn from at their level.

What subjects should be taught one-on-one?

The subjects that should be taught one-on-one are the skill based subjects, or as Sonlight calls them, the Table Subjects. These subjects include math, phonics, and language arts. Children progress at their own pace based on their skill level with these one-on-one subjects.

How to Start Family-Style Homeschooling

It’s simple to ease into family-style homeschooling if you include the family style subjects in your morning time plans. Large families will find that they can cover many subjects together in the morning, leaving the rest of the day to work individually with children on their other subjects.

This format greatly simplifies the daily plan for homeschool moms.

You could also start family-style homeschooling by finding a unit study you would all enjoy. Then see how it works by learning together with kids of multiple ages all studying the same topic.

You really don’t have to wait until a new school year to try family-style homeschooling! You can try it on a small level using these ideas just to get a feel for how it works.

The Best Family Style Homeschool Curriculum

The best family style homeschool curriculum will include great books, family activities, and a literature-based curriculum.

This is what makes it easy to implement with kids of all ages! Sonlight is the original literature-based curriculum company. By utilizing living books, younger children and older children can learn together no matter their grade level.

Using Sonlight to Homeschool Multiple Children

Sonlight makes it easy to homeschool multiple children because this family style homeschool curriculum incorporates Couch Subjects and Table Subjects.

Couch Subjects are things like great books, history, and science that multiple kids of various ages can learn together.

The Table Subjects are based on skill level and each child will have his own level of math, for example. If you’re just not sure which level your children are at, Sonlight offers free placement tests for reading, language arts and phonics, and multiple math programs.

Best Christian Literature-Based Curriculum

If you want a homeschool program from a Christian perspective, then Sonlight should be top of your list. In addition to offering some of the best curriculum for literature-based learning and homeschooling multiple children with ease, Sonlight’s Christian worldview is another core foundational aspect.

The best part of Sonlight is that you can enjoy a fully customizable family style curriculum. You can order a complete curriculum package for each student, but you can also customize it so that multiple children are studying the same Couch Subjects together. This will greatly simplify your homeschool day and efforts!

The family activities and family-centered environment of a Sonlight program is one of the benefits of homeschooling. The Instructor’s Guides from Sonlight are your step-by-step guide for implementing the family activities and read-alouds. You won’t ever have to wonder how to use the materials with your children. They’ve taken the guesswork out of family style homeschooling!

In Conclusion 

If you’re having a hard time figuring out how to successfully homeschool multiple ages and stages, you need to consider a family style homeschool curriculum. Using this kind of curriculum can be one of the best things you can do for your homeschool because it will allow you to actually enjoy homeschooling again.