Eeny, Meny Miney Moe....

Choosing curriculum is a very daunting task for a first time HSing mom. But it doesn't have to be that difficult. The key is to not worry about what others use. Just determine your child's unique learning style, then select a curriculum that is designed for your learner. This will save you a lot of time, money, and stress! When I first started HSing, I heard so many wonderful things about sonlight that I jumped right in and purchased it. As it turns out, there was a lot of reading. And, while my son was a great reader, his comprehension was not so great and he got bored with it easily. We were very stressed and wasted $$ on something that I should have known would never work. lesson learned. 

So how do you determine a child's learning style? There are many online assessment tools that can help. Here are a few that I've found helpful.

Vark's assesment
Abiator's assessment
Abiator assessment 2


Once you have determined the learning style of your child(ren), the rest is easy. Just match curriculum with learning style and determine which ones are within your budget. Once you have narrowed your choices down to a few curricula, I suggest looking at a few reviews. Or even better, see if your HS friends have that curriculum that you could look through. 

For us, we homeschool on a limited budget so I don't buy a whole lot of curriculum. The ones that I do purchase are math and science. We love math u see and the apologia science textbooks. We use the knowledge box central lapbooks along with the apologia science books to make a more hands on learning experience  I have created our own American history study and Bible lessons based on the websites linked.  Our grammar, composition, spelling, and vocabulary are from the glencoe McGraw-Hill series. For geography, SH #1 is doing an in-depth study of the 50 states and SH #2 is working on mapping and other kindergarten skills. SH #2 is also working through Hooked on phonics and the dolch site words. Mrs. Perkins dolch site word's website is a great resource. She provides sight words as well as flash cards and worksheets to help children master them.