This is a hard one! There are quite a few products available, and they have their strengths and weaknesses. You’ll need something that is as complete as you desire, meaning it either has everything included, or is skeletal and you can supplement and add your touches to it.

It should have attractive art that the kids will enjoy. It should be engaging for students and make learning a fun challenge. It should be at your child’s level, so it could be a grade ahead or behind and that’s fine.

Many professional teachers admit to having challenges with teaching writing and most curricula is weak there, so does it teach writing well or will you supplement?

Is there a handwriting component? Handwriting is the mechanics of forming letters and writing words; writing is the process of putting stories on paper by using the mechanics of spelling and grammar. You will need both handwriting and writing.

Does it have an interesting science focus? Does it offer hands-on ideas as well as theories and information?

Does it offer social studies lessons that are factual, researched, and accurate? Does it encourage critical thinking skills? It should include history and civics, as well as economics and geography. Does it indoctrinate or educate?

In the early grades, curriculum should “spiral.” That means, the topics are revisited in various ways, through the year. It is not exactly a repeat of the same information, although it can be, if students need refreshing. It means that a standard covered earlier in the year is revisited, with a more advanced twist, later. Sometimes the same standard will be revisited more often than others, if it’s a challenging one. If your assessments show the knowledge isn’t solidly attained yet, keep spiraling it more times.

Another great feature to look for is if the information from one topic is integrated into another content area. For example, math concepts are often woven through economics. The arts can be a focus in history lessons. Geography and maps can be part of math, history, or literacy. Look for cross-pollination through content areas. This helps kids to make exciting connections!

Do the grades build each year upon a systematic, logical foundation from the previous year? There should be common threads through the grades, so that previous knowledge is activated and built upon. Concepts start simply in early grades and gain detail and deeper meaning as they progress to third grade and beyond.

Does the spelling program have decodable readers that contain that week’s spelling words? Will those words also be represented in that week’s lessons? Repetition and finding those words in many sources through the day, is very helpful in learning how to spell them.  

Does the curriculum use the Science of Reading (SOR)? If not, it could be outdated and will not be effective for teaching reading, especially for a neurodivergent learner. Avoid curricula that teaches whole language or whole word methods for reading. Avoid those that teach children to guess words or to rely upon pictures for meaning. The Science of Reading is phonics-based, systematic, and builds skills in a logical progression. It is effective for all learners.

Also be open to buying ELA from one publisher, and math from a different one. Sometimes the curriculum companies are good in math, but not literacy, and vice versa. You can add different supporting components to your main curriculum, too. I like adding things like Handwriting without Tears and Heggerty to pump up the main curriculum.

There are curricula that are based on a tactile, paper and book format and others are computerized. It is not ideal for young children to have too much screen time. There is scientific evidence of this. One year I worked in a district that used Chromebooks in Kindergarten, for math and literacy. I was not a fan of plugging them in. For one thing, it was hard to tell if a child was struggling with their lesson or not. They could appear to be engaged but be tuning out or guessing so they could skip ahead. Some of the kids hated the program and fought doing it. The latest recommendations are for no more than 15 minutes a day for preschoolers to be engaged with media, and 30 minutes for kindergarteners. In a computerized curriculum, they can easily exceed that.

There are many great, educational YouTube videos that can supplement your curricula. There are also engaging games on sites like ABCya or ABC Mouse. Adding these into your child’s day can increase engagement and enjoyment. If they are on YouTube all day, unsupervised, that is not what homeschool should be. As a teacher, I did get students that did not succeed in homeschool, because that is what their moms did. Use media with intention and in small doses, and to reinforce your lessons.

I also worked where the curriculum was comprised of worksheets. Each day, they worked on multiple worksheets for everything. It had a weak writing component, and was an aged curriculum that missed many of our standards, leaving holes in learning. In that class, I gave a lesson at the white board, then handed out the worksheets and rotated through the room to assist students in completing them. When finished, they brought them to me for correction and grading. Fast finishers could then find an engaging, educational activity to work on, which encouraged them to do their work quickly. Those who struggled with the worksheets usually did not get to have that activity time, and I could see their frustration and sense of failure grow. Besides being boring for most of the students, the worksheets were chaotic, covering different topics in a haphazard way through the days and week. They didn’t have the interconnectedness that helps kids to learn.

I am a huge fan of activities in which students are manipulating objects, building things, moving parts, creating, moving, talking, negotiating, developing social and oral language skills, making things from scratch, writing stories, doing art and science hands-on, with a small number of quality educational videos that link to the lessons. I am a fan of blank, white paper and writing tools, and for kids to show me what they know, by writing and drawing.

Here are a few ideas for finding your curricula:

• Search online for products
• Get free samples or downloads, if available
• Look at the Scope and Sequence to see what is taught and when
• Look at vendors when you attend homeschool events
• Ask homeschool friends and family for recommendations or warnings
• Ask school-teachers if they know of anything good or things to avoid
•  Read product reviews online
• Pick and choose from different publishers
• Make activities you download from Teachers Pay Teachers
• Create your own

No matter what you choose, I encourage you to use writing as much as you can. Read a story and have them write and draw a picture of how they related to that story. What would they do, in that character’s place? How would they feel about what happened in the story? What did they enjoy the most or what did they not like? Get them to think in terms of stories during the day, in whatever they are engaged. While building with LEGO or blocks, ask the about the story they are telling with it. Have them label or write stories on their art. Make storytelling part of every day and every lesson, even math. What that does is prime their imaginations to write! If everything is a story, then they quickly learn it is not hard to write their stories. They will become eager and creative writers, if you train them to look at life through stories.

The other thing is to teach reading through writing. Writing puts a demand on reading skills. Writing is a harder skill than reading. We understand first, then we think it, then we speak it, read it, and finally, we can write it. When they write, get them to “sound out” the words. Try not to spell them for your students, encourage them to do the work of representing the sounds with letters. Teach them how to break down each sound, write it, then move on to the next sound. When they’ve completed writing the word, have them read it back to you.

Another thing about this is, use inventive spelling when teaching writing. That means, they spell what they hear. It will not be perfect. They will be able to write words with double consonants or silent letters, once they learn those spelling rules. Until then, do not expect perfection. This is their representation of sounds they hear, and your goal is for them to enjoy writing and telling stories, without worrying about doing it perfectly. Perfection kills creativity. The skills for perfect writing will grow slowly and takes a lifetime. The love of writing can be stunted with criticism. Enjoy seeing how they hear words and write them. The only exception is spelling tests. That is where words should be correctly spelled. And after that test, be prepared to see more inventive spelling until they figure it out.