I often hear homeschoolers ask others which curriculum they use, and I’ve answered such questions, but I wonder if my answers are misleading. For example, I told someone today that we use Glencoe’s U.S. Government: Democracy in Action for teaching American Government, but that doesn’t mean that we started at page one and will work through a majority of the book. (We certainly won’t use all of the book. Even schools almost never use all of a textbook. Textbook publishers include more than any teacher could use in a year so they can easily adapt the curriculum to their students or their own interests or such as they can skip some chapters or sections that aren’t a good fit and spend time on others that others may not get to.) Nor does it mean that we sit down every day and work with the textbook as the major focus of our lessons on government.
So, no, I’m not a faithful textbook user; instead, Continue reading Faithful or Adventurous Curriculum User?