Catholic homeschooling options

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Peaceable

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I probably asked this question before, but I might need to make a decision sooner rather than later. I recall Angelicum Academy—Are there any other formal Catholics homeschooling programs, preferably with an online component? I cant do the teaching myself, and would need there to be classes/teachers other than myself. But I’m wondering if there’s remote distance Catholic education that qualifies as meeting State home schooling requirements?
 
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Should add this is for a second grader, possibly preschooler.
 
If you’re looking for an online component, check out Kolbe Academy.

Seton is probably the most well known Catholic homeschool curriculum, and with good reason. At the age level for which you’re searching, though, online options won’t be as plentiful.
 
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The following comparison chart was created by a fellow homeschooling mom and was shared in a Facebook group for Catholic homeschoolers (I’m sorry that I can only attach screenshots here and not an actual file). If you’re on FB, I can highly recommend this group and others!

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in addition to all the ones listed above, there is also:
 
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This is a great resource. I saved all of these images and will print it out for our own use, to see how our “homemade” curriculum compares to it.

We have in the past somewhat “tracked” Seton for math and religion, but Saxon isn’t the best fit for my son’s math learning style, so we are going to try the Fisher book (Mastering Essential Math Skills) for the remainder of this year and next (Grades 7 and 8 respectively). We use the Baltimore Catechism, as does Seton, for religion, but we use other texts as well (and so does Seton).

At the moment we are using Apologia Press’s Exploring Creation through Chemistry and Physics, but I do have to say that the Charlotte Mason approach isn’t the best for us, it’s too narrative and has too much of an “ooh, aah, let me teach you about science, isn’t that neat?” approach, kind of puerile and precious, if you ask me. Yet we are able to extract much good from it. We treat young-earth creationism as just one of many explanations, whereas Apologia approaches it as dogma.

We use TAN The Story of Civilization for history, and aside from the historical fiction stories plopped down in the middle of each chapter (based on fact, but a free interpretation of “what it must have been like”, kind of like James Michener for kids, not my cup of tea), it is fantastic, and solidly Catholic. We are now in the second volume and studied about Augustine and Attila the Hun in our last class.

Every homeschool is different. Hope these tips were of help to you. Good luck!
 
I chuckle every time I see you make a comment about Saxon not being so useful. I thought it was just us! I’ve got two barely used copies on my shelf.

It’s so funny because I’ve seen it in so many different curricula, including in private schools that are live. For us it seems like there was a lot of repetition, but it was very slow in moving on to the next topic. I think the strength might be that it’s fairly gradual, and doesn’t go ahead too fast. This is great! But it didn’t quite engage our kid. Plus there was no context in terms of where the math concept in the real world might be useful. Our kid needs that.
 
(Tbh I feel like “bad partial homeschooling parent” every time I see the unused Saxon on our shelf— it’s so highly regarded, that I feel that I’m doing something wrong by not using it…)
 
Peaceable said:
I chuckle every time I see you make a comment about Saxon not being so useful. I thought it was just us! I’ve got two barely used copies on my shelf.
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Peaceable said:
(Tbh I feel like “bad partial homeschooling parent” every time I see the unused Saxon on our shelf— it’s so highly regarded, that I feel that I’m doing something wrong by not using it…)
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You have to devote a lot of time to Saxon — if you don’t have a “math mind”, which my son sadly does not, it’s not the text for you. I think all of those warm-up exercises and worksheets are just downright silly, and we quit using them after the first few lessons.

Saxon is great, but it’s not for everyone. Our society prizes math and science prowess these days, so if you can do Saxon, more power to you, but be prepared to work for it.

We’re going to be selling the Saxon text and answer book on eBay (the test book is partially consumed, and I may be able to “retrofit” some of the tests for Fisher), summer’s probably the best time to sell homeschool books.
 
Whoa there! Go easy on yourself!

Whether or not I like to admit it, my kids ultimately ended up choosing our math curriculum to the extent that we had to do some trial and error to see what meshed with their learning styles.

Stay flexible with curricula.
Peaceable said:
But I’m wondering if there’s remote distance Catholic education that qualifies as meeting State home schooling requirements?
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States are all over the map, (if you’ll forgive the word choice), with their homeschooling requirements. Have you read up on yours? Homeschool Laws By State

Some of them have changed in light of COVID-19. Update: Changes to Homeschool Requirements in Several States
 
I think the main selling point for Saxon is that it’s a spiral (as opposed to mastery) program and probably one of the best of those. It’s a good fit for our soon-to-be 7th grader but we don’t do all the problems in each unit by a long shot. For our 3rd grader it would be a nightmare. She likes Math Lessons for a Living Education, which moves from topic to topic instead of constantly circling back.

BTW, if anyone else here goes the Saxon route, I highly recommend Nicole the Math Lady’s videos.

@HomeschoolDad, I really wanted to like Apologia science. But we’re not a young Earth family so we went elsewhere.
 
gracepoole said:
I think the main selling point for Saxon is that it’s a spiral (as opposed to mastery) program and probably one of the best of those. It’s a good fit for our soon-to-be 7th grader but we don’t do all the problems in each unit by a long shot. For our 3rd grader it would be a nightmare. She likes Math Lessons for a Living Education, which moves from topic to topic instead of constantly circling back.

BTW, if anyone else here goes the Saxon route, I highly recommend Nicole the Math Lady’s videos.

@HomeschoolDad, I really wanted to like Apologia science. But we’re not a young Earth family so we went elsewhere.
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The spiral approach doesn’t work for us. Saxon exercises and tests are too “all over the place” for my son. I have actually been adapting the tests and removing some of the more esoteric stuff. My son needs a more direct, reinforcement-friendly approach, rather than recursing back over the sum total of knowledge in all previous chapters.

Again, if the student has a “math mind”, if math has always been a source of joy and accomplishment for them, there is none better than Saxon. For others, not so much.

I am able to work around the creationism-as-dogma approach of Apologia, reminding my son that direct, immediate creation is certainly within God’s power, but that we cannot dogmatize over exactly how creation happened. On a recent test, he marked “false” to a question about the earth having been created in thousands of years. I gave him that one, even that’s not what the test author had in mind. I have been trying to get him interested in going to the Ark Encounter re-creation in northern Kentucky near Cincinnati — it would be at least a two-day drive for us — but thus far to little avail. I reminded him that Ozzy Osbourne and his son visited the ark. (Yes, you read that right.) There are abundant opportunities to dig fossils right out of the roadcuts on the hillsides in that part of the country.

Indeed, there are countless educational opportunities when you homeschool. I don’t know if Ozzy was homeschooling his son or not. Interesting thought.
 
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@HomeschoolDad, if you need any of the volume sets for The Story of Civilization, now is the time to buy! TAN’s running a buy 1 get 1 free sale until 06/30. Just picked up two volumes ($300 value) for $150. Lots of other homeschooling books on sale, too.
 
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gracepoole said:
@HomeschoolDad, if you need any of the volume sets for The Story of Civilization, now is the time to buy! TAN’s running a buy 1 get 1 free sale until 06/30. Just picked up two volumes ($300 value) for $150. Lots of other homeschooling books on sale, too.
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We just buy the textbook itself, along with the detachable test books. I know TAN sells a lot of “bells and whistles” to go with it, but we’re on a fairly strict budget. I got the activity book for Volume One, and for our pedagogical purposes, it was next to useless. We also study history topics from other sources, as well as citizenship, current events (the evil one has done a good job of forcing us to deal with those lately!), and politics. I have two degrees in history (BA/MA), so if I can’t teach that, it would be a pretty sorry state of affairs 😉

I might check out the timeline charts. I keep reminding my son of the concept of a thousand years (400-1400) when the history of Europe was basically the history of Catholicism (and from 1054 on, Orthodoxy), and it would be helpful to have a chart on the wall to illustrate this.
 
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gracepoole said:
I think the main selling point for Saxon is that it’s a spiral (as opposed to mastery) program and probably one of the best of those. It’s a good fit for our soon-to-be 7th grader but we don’t do all the problems in each unit by a long shot. For our 3rd grader it would be a nightmare. She likes Math Lessons for a Living Education, which moves from topic to topic instead of constantly circling back.
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I actually remember Saxon math in high school. As one of those I-hate-math types, I loved Saxon. Everything was laid out straightforward to me without any gimmicky explanations. Once I learned one skill, they’d pile onto it a little more. It was a perfect fit for me.

My children ALL love math. It’s weird. If I didn’t have homebirths, I’d swear that I took the wrong babies home from the hospital! 🤣 (Daddy’s a math whiz, too, so there you go). They’re thriving with Math U See, which I sometimes supplement with Khan Academy. They weren’t wild about Saxon or Singapore.
 
Belated thank you all for these resources and your kind thoughts! This thread is gold! I’m looking into all of this.

In the meantime, thanks for also helping me let go of my “Saxon Math Abandonment Guilt.” (Yes, it’s a syndrome.) 🤣

Stay safe everyone, and Happy 4th!
 
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