Textbooks and workbooks provide both a framework and a point of reference to guide you as you teach your child.  They are typically heavily researched, tested, and revised over many years.  Curriculum publishers have staff working on constant research, updates, artwork, design, and printing.  The publishers produce clear, concise, organized information in their educational materials that meets requirements needed to comply with the strictest homeschool state laws.

Parents should adapt curriculum to best fit the learning needs of their child. Select and utilize parts of each lesson that will best help your children. Printed tests can be given as pretests to help you assess what your child may know before going through each chapter.  Lessons can be combined or skipped according to their knowledge base. Decide how much of the work you want your child to complete to maximize your child’s understanding.  Using textbooks for some subjects may free you up to be more creative with other subjects. Workbooks can also be a useful tool to supplement curriculum and focus on specific challenges a child may be experiencing with a concept or subject.

Are you concerned you might not know the subject matter well enough to teach it? Don’t worry. Online and DVD courses are available from many publishers.  Your child will play a DVD or stream a prerecorded teacher instruction.  Select which suggested assignments you want your child to complete, then choose additional content to reinforce the lessons.  Some teach in a classroom setting while others talk more directly to the student. For younger students, they often incorporate field trips, experiments, puppets, cartoons, and skits. As a child matures and studies more advanced concepts, they will likely utilize more distance-learning-type courses.  This option will also prepare them for online college courses and the development of self guided learning.

Some parents find it easily manageable and freeing to come up with their own ways to teach a child in the early years utilizing workbooks, only referring to teacher’s manuals occasionally.  Others prefer to use a teacher’s manual to follow specific instructions and find ideas about how to teach a concept. Still others prefer to watch prerecorded videos with their children and walk alongside their child when they learn.  Using textbooks can save you prep time, and there are a wide variety of way in which these textbooks can be utilized.

Some Traditional Method publishers are:

Abeka, Alpha Omega (AOP), BJU Press,  and Christian Liberty Press