Save time and simplify
your homeschooling life...
Learn from experienced
homeschoolers how to write your own curriculum.
It really is that easy!
Use this website with Beverley Paine's Getting Started with Home Schooling - Practical Considerations to help you develop your own educational curriculum to suit your family situation, beliefs and lifestyle. The checklists can help you identify your children's current educational skill level in each subject area, as well as find any 'gaps' in their learning, plan what they need to cover or keep track of what has been learned. As you can appreciate this website is continuously under development... It's our aim to add pages on a regular basis in all curriculum areas: check back frequently. We hope you enjoy the articles and activities and find the links and recommended resources useful. Over the next year we will be working our way through each subject area and writing fresh, new content. |
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"Thank you so much for your wonderful website! I was getting quiet frustrated with finding appropriate information on homeschooling - thanks to your website we are now on the right track... Using your checklists for reassurance helped me to have the confidence to come up with my own programme that suits our needs." Rachael "I'm a frequent visitor to your website... I gain valuable knowledge from your website, luckily recommended in the very early stages of our homeschooling journey." Geradine "I checked out your website today and was incredibly impressed by it. I can tell it will be a great resource for our family for many years. THANKS for all the hard work that has gone into making homeschooling easier and much less isolating for families like us." Cynthia |
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Mathematics
Australian versus American Maths Texts
© Beverley Paine
Many homeschoolers are quite happy to do unit studies for the humanities - history, geography, culture; and also environmental studies and science, but most of us resort to using curriculum texts for maths.
On the homeschooling email list once someone asked about the value of using Australian texts as opposed to using American texts. Her worry was about reported gaps in the curriculum of American texts, particularly with the different sequencing, and also with the need to follow through with just one curriculum for the entire period of schooling. This subject has been covered before in the newsletter, but the reply offered on the list by John Angelico , was comprehensive and sensible and worth repeating!
John is often asked about American versus Australian material and this was his answer:
"1. Maths is Maths all around the world;
2. Every curriculum publisher does things slightly differently, as does every teacher (even in Australia);
3. It's up to you where you stop - it's YOUR program, that is you teach your children - not the books;
4. US materials still teach metric although a bit too thoroughly and they teach US/British imperial measurements and use US currency BUT we parents are usually intelligent enough to adapt, skip over or ignore certain bits;
5. The purported gaps are things like stats which I never met in my secondary stuff and happily avoided at tertiary level too (since I did accounting), and the "problem" with the sequence only arises if you "blindly" follow a curriculum (like ACE) without completing it. But if you change curriculum a Diagnostic Test will show what needs to be covered to avoid gaps.
In summary, we can cope with all the problems raised by applying ourselves intelligently to the job at hand. Some problems like Australian money simply disappear because we use it every day. Who needs to "teach" about our notes and coins?
The supposed solution - to follow an Australian curriculum all the way through to year 12 is just as "blind" as following a US curriculum.
What you "should" do (only you can answer that question) all depends on:
a) the content of the curriculum you choose, and
b) the target you have in mind: Uni course needs strong Maths? Then choose what you need to do that course. Saxon Maths is US but it is so thorough and prepares a student so well for SAT exams (and thus for tertiary entry in Australia as well as elsewhere) that we and LEM recommend it almost exclusively. If Maths is not a big deal then trust your own judgement and "do what you like".
Hope this helps you think through what you need to do without pushing
you in any particular direction..."
on this website is of a general
nature only and is not intended as
personal or professional advice.
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Text & Images on this site Copyright © 1999-2008 Beverley Paine. All rights reserved. Please note that the opinions and articles included in the suite of Homeschool Australia websites are not necessarily those of Beverley and Robin Paine, nor do we endorse or necessarily recommend products (other than our own) listed in contributed articles, links, pages, or advertisements.