1) What size of a family do you have or plan to have?
If your family will be small (3 children or less), you will have the time to be more involved with face to face teaching with your children. This means that teacher intensive methods and curriculums will be able to work for you, if you prefer them. For example, you will be able to do a project based curriculum that may assign your child to make and paint a paper machie globe much more easily than the mom with six or ten kids. Read aloud literature programs will be more easily doable for you than for the mom with a large family.
If your family will be large, you will need your children to learn to be independent as soon as they are able and to take ownership of their work once they are independent readers. You will guide and manage their work, but they will need to do lessons on their own when possible so you can help your non-readers gain a firm footing in reading. Your curriculum choices need to foster the learning environment that you need and/or desire for your family in the long term.
2) How much money do you have to spend on curriculum?
This may seem basic, but it is very important. If money is tight, I would strongly suggest choosing materials that are reusable rather than consumable as much as possible, especially if your answer to question number one is "large". Reusable resources can be used for all children in the home and can be sold as used on websites such as Ebay or Amazon. Speaking of Ebay and Amazon, you can also purchase reusable gently used resources on these sites. If they are taken care of, you can still resell them when you are done with them.
Games/ Flashcards and such are expensive and can be made at home. Weigh the cost of the product against the time it would cost to make it. Maybe the kids can make their own flash cards on index cards? This saves you time and impresses the concepts into their minds as they write and as they review. Ask yourself honestly, will you really make time to do the games or projects? Curriculum that sits on the shelf without being used is a waste.
Some curriculum providers will allow teachers to copy consumable resources for use in their classroom or home only. Check into this before purchasing. Cursive First by Elizabeth Fitzgerald and Rod and Staff English worksheets are two examples of this.
Free quality resources can be found at places such as Librivox (a site with public domain audio books) and Project Gutenberg (a site with public domain electronic books) to save money. Books from either site can be downloaded to an SD card and put on an electronic reader such as a Kindle or a Nook if you have one. (Your reader must be able to play audio books if you will put Librivox resources on it).
3) What style of teaching suits your personality and family environment?
Only you can answer this, really. I would suggest being honest about what is possible in reality versus what you would like to do in an ideal world. For examle, I like to be involved in teaching my children. I am attracted to teacher intensive programs that would involve me with my kids, but I do have six, two of which are non-readers and another is a struggling reader. So, reality dictates that reusable textbooks and independent learning must be dominant in my curriculum choices until more kids are reading fluently. My personality wants to do projects and hands-on learning with my kids. However, my life situation proves that hands-on curriculm purchases will sit on the shelf and end up undone. If I pursue the hands on route, I will set myself up for failure and feel like a terrible homeschooling mom before we get far into a school year. If you really want a little hands-on learning to happen when life is crazy, then consider choosing only one teacher intensive thing to do (outside teaching reading to non-readers) that can involve everyone and recruit older kids to help you organize and set up.
4) What are your goals for your child's education?
If you have a big picture in your mind for where you want your child to be when they graduate, you can work backwards and develop a rough plan about how to get him there.
If a complete education in your household means that a child is able to function as a productive member of society on his or her own before they graduate, you will want to make sure your child has some money management skills, and basic character traits like being punctual and responsible.
With this goal in mind, you can purposefully make allowances in the child's schedule to learn these things. When they are young, you might teach them to do basic chores and keep your standards high. When they are older, you may choose to have your child work part-time jobs during the summers or after school hours during the school year. You may make them responsible to pay for their own entertainment as well as their own car and insurance and any other expense outside what is necessary.
If the above plan is something you want to pursue, you do not want to have them work on curriculum eight hours a day, then go to work for six hours or so. Plan a curriculum that will give the child everything they need educationally and allow the child to pursue part-time employment or consider schooling some in the summers to make up for what the child can't do during the traditional school year.
These are very basic, but important. These are the things I have learned to think through over my mere 6 years of homeschooling. I hope they help you as you sift through the vast array of curriculum choices on the market. I will post reviews in the future comparing different curriculums to each other to point out what I consider their pros and cons to be and how they may best fit different categories mentioned above.
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