Seton Home Study Pros and Cons

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My fourth and third graders used Seton for half a year. The books are wonderful, the curriculum outline is wonderful but we found that it was simply too much work for the way I wish to home educate our sons. The fourth grader had 13 subjects that had to be addressed if we wished to utilize the full course. I was not new to home educating - it was my second year. I tossed the curriculum and used the texts that I wished to and found that we learned a lot better that way.

I am now going on my fifth year of home educating and I design my own curriculum, using many different sources. Home educating is wonderful and there is never a moment that is not a teaching moment, albiet most of the time informally!

God Bless you as you educate your children at home.
 
I have been homeschooling for 5 years. I started out designing my own curriculum. It was great in that it was individualized. But in reality it was so much work. Some of the books I used were Seton’s. I liked them alot. Then last year, I enrolled my son in a single course. This gave me an idea of how Seton worked for us, using the lesson plan. Finally, this year I enrolled my son full time with Seton.

The good thing about homeschooling is that you have the flexibility to try different curriculum. Whereas a school is locked in to use the approved curriculum for the year, even if it’s not working. So when starting out try some materials from the different homeschool curriculum providers. See what best meets your needs first. It’s a lot cheaper to buy single books or items than to commit to a full enrollment plan. Then later you can select a single provider if this is what you want to do.

I finally chose Seton, because they have an excellent special services dept. So they were the best choice for us.
 
Very thorough, orthodox. We used it with our children for some subjects, although we didn’t enroll. That is a downfall in my opinion. For a large family on 1 income and its not much we can barely afford the books. I found with the older grades especially, is that we needed lesson plans, telling me what to do. Simply having text books, and answer keys( they weren’t always up to date either) wasn’t enough.

JMO,
 
We have been homeschooling our two sons for 9 years now (Tyler is a junior this coming year and Trevor will be in the 9th grade), and we have used Seton for that whole time. We are very pleased with what they have to offer.

Seton is a very tough curriculum and they expect alot out of the students. For this reason, one must be prepared to work very hard, much harder than we had expected! The rewards are great though, as both of our boys have scored very well in standardized tests.😃
 
We have been with Seton 5 years. DS is finishing 10th grade and DD is Senior. I can’t recommend them more highly but I see many people having the same mis-understanding. Seton tries to emphasize over and over that we are to fit the work to the child and not the other way around. When you look at what is actually required for a grade/transcript/diploma from Seton the work load is quite reasonable. They suggest more work than many students need.

On the other hand I have a friend with a son who finishes ALL the work assigned and STILL has too much time to torment his brothers each day!

Their electronic grading has been a real blessing. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to not have to mail papers. We upload word processing files or math papers scanned into the computer and they send them back as .pdf documents with correction, comments, and suggestions.

Their re-do policy allows for most papers to be re-submitted one time and the 2 grades are averaged. For example if a child re-submits a 80 score paper and gets 100 then the final score will be a 90. This also has the effect of having our child “taught” by the grader.

The counselors are also great. I have had concerns about something in a paper. I will e-mail with a question and a sample of the paragraph or whatever and the counselor will walk me through it. This has been especially helpful when I am being too stringent or requiring things that are not the purpose of that particular assignment.

This are just a few of the most important issues I have about Seton.

Oh, and yea there was the time I was so upset at my son’s behavior that I called Seton in tears and Mary Kay Clark gave me some wise counsel and much needed hope.
 
I have not yet decided to home school my kids, but I like the idea of a structured program like the Seton Home Study School.

One question I have is - how individualized can you make it? If your child is a 2nd grader, but reads at a 5th grade level, can you use the 5th grade reading instead of the 2nd grade? Do they insist that you use only the materials for the grade level that your child should be at based on his age?

How complete is the program? Are there other things that you add to help with your child’s education?

Thanks,
Iguana
 
You can mix and match grade levels, if you think that 3rd grade reading, 5th grade history, 1st grade spelling, and 9th grade math are what you need. I think that Seton would work with you. They do have standardized testing though which you normally take when you first enroll, so they can give you a recommendation, but they allow you to do what you think best.

As far as being complete, academically speaking yes. I should think that it is hard to be more so, however, a parent could always add some things just for fun.
 
We are in the process of starting out with Seton for our two children (6th grade and 4th grade). Mailing in the evaluation (CAT) tests this weekend. So far Seton has been very straight forward to signup and understand. We plan to start out at our grade level then advance through the easy stuff. If we wanted boredom or silly work we would be back at the parish school. Dr Clarks book is a good read and quite reassuring.

We are supplementing Seton with a Latin course on DVD.

God Bless
 
Iguana,

First, I am a Seton High School student myself, so it’s nice to see someone mentioning it. Well, since I’ve done Seton all my life, I don’t think it is that hard. It is very convenient that they have many counselers to help you choose what is the most important. In fact, I just talked to one of the high school couselers who helped me choose the ideal 4-year plan for high school. Yes, they do assign a good chunk of reading, writing, and other written comprehension but that is in fact enjoyable for the most part. Also, if you have a question about something but aren’t able to call them immediately (for some reason or another), they have online message boards for both students and parents. setonhome.org/phpbb2/index.php . If you have any more concerns or if anyone would like a further viewpoint from a student’s view, please feel free to contact me.
 
Hi!

We use Seton to homeschool our four children. We have the three oldest 12,11&10 doing 6th grade and one going into first.
I signed up one to send in his work for grading so I could see how things are done as far as grading…to see how many points they count for each question etc. I really need the lesson plans!!
It is much easier for me to rely on there schedule as opposed to mine which would be irresponsible.
The only drawbacks I “feel”-based on laziness I suppose-revolve around the book analysis due each quarter. It is never like a normal book report. They require a thesis. You must not simply tell what happened in the book. They want you to analyze the story for the underlying meaning…etc.
My son did one so far above his grade level the grader thought he was a highschool student and gave him an 92.
When I saw the grade, I was quite shocked at how “low” it was. Then we resent it in and they re-graded, explaining what happened…they raised the grade. It ttok him so long to do it. He spent so much time on it.
I do not know if I even want to go through it again! He was very obsessed with impressing them. It really takes a lot, though.

So, then I have one son with epilepsy who is difficult to homeschool due to the disease-absence seizures- and the meds.
It is hard for him to do the memory work. They have to memorize VERBATIM the Baltimore Catechism. The whole thing.

I love Seton, do not get me wrong! It is very difficult though with four of them. This is an example of following their curriculm for one DAY:

Religion:Religion 6 For Young Catholics Week ** (3 pages of reading then work page. Baltimore Catechism:Memorize a couple of pages of Q&A’s…Bible History 10 pgs reading then answer Q’s…
Reading:Reading assignment-do Q&A’s, a workbook 1-2 pgs
Math: whatever you think, we use Saxon
English:Voyages-old ed. 4 pgs reading…Q&A’s, write paragraph on ******, etc.
Science reading and workbook assignment
History: chapter reading assignment and discussion questions and assignment for notebook.
Music:whatever you choose
PE:whatever
Spelling-A workbook with words that must be alphabetized
then with syllabication. Takes a while.
Vocabulary:Look up each word to write definitions that must be memorized verbatim.
Whew! Hopefully I haven’t missed anything,…oh, read your book report book or work on it. Plus work in some leisure reading time…
I haven’t figured out how to amend this to make it really be feasible for us yet. Still in the works.
Love in Jesus,
Shelby Grace
 
I could not afford to enroll my children in Seton so I was only able to purchase workbooks and answer keys, no curriculum guides. I do feel that is a huge drawback. I really liked the Science, it is very hands on in the younger grades, but uses everyday stuff you have around the house. The history book I purchased for the 4th grade was hugely outdated. Good history, but talked about “current events” like seeing men walk on the moon.:rolleyes: I loved the readers, and workbooks. The kids could work on reading skills while learning more about our Catholic faith and the saints. The art was enjoyed by us all. And the writing workbooks, although hated by the kids (don’t enjoy writing) I loved because they could practice cursive and work at memorizing prayers at the same time! Since I was unable to purchase curriculm guides, I stuck to Abeka for Language and Saxon for Math. AHH! I can’t remember the name I used for Spelling. It cost around $50 but you could use it year after year all the way through highschool. You had a mini test everyday at your level. after missing no more than 5 words or working for 5 minutes, you did different exercises for words missed with the addition of up to 5 misspelled words from school work. The whole thing took only 15 minutes a day! I loved it but can’t remember the name!!!
 
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iguana27:
Are there any participants in the Seton Home Study School here?
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Have not used it for our homeschool, but have heard it is A LOT of work and a heavy courseload. It is also extremely popular!

We are using Angelicum this year:
angelicum.net/
 
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