Secular homeschoolers

[rafiki]

.

[hsmom]

go check out http://www.thedenimjumper.com it is a great secular site.

[Jenny in Atl]

Do you have a listing of secular homeschooling materials? Are there any secular homeschooling or traditional homeschooling boards you frequent?

 

http://www.angelfire.com/or/mtdewbydo/secularcurric.html

http://www.midnightbeach.com/hs/OtherHomeschoolHomepages-SecularByRating.html

http://secularhomeschool.net/

http://www.atheistview.com/secular_homeschool.htm

http://www.vegsource.com/homeschool/secular/index.html

http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/

http://www.thedenimjumper.com/community/index.php

 

What do you use for History in middle and high school? I've been using a combination of Sonlight (not secular but very easy to adjust) History Odyssey, and SOTW. Also Susan Strauss Art's bks. For High School I may still use some SL but also The Human Odyssey by Spielvogel, World Civilizations by Ed Burns and P. Ralph, and The World Since 1500 by Stavrianos,

 

How about writing, grammar, and literature? I'm using Classical Writing, Warriner's English Grammar and Composition, AG. GWG for my younger daughter.

 

Can TRISMS easily be used Secularly for history? What homeschooling method would you say this fits? Trisms is secular (used in public schools). I'm thinking about using this for HS. I think it has a classical feel.

 

Is AG secular? Yes, as far as I can see. Is there anything similar to R&S, yet more modern and secular? For grades k-6 GWG is similar.

 

Any textbook style writing programs aside from Write Source or Flashkids?

Many like Wordsmith. You also might check with PH.

Lightening Literature? Secular in the 7 & 8. I have used one of the high school level united. There was some non secular contents, but it fit the materials and easy to adjust if one wished to do so.

 

Is Megawords secular? I have not used it, but hear many who love it.

[Greta]

The Denim Jumper is great. There's also a number of secular homeschooling groups on Yahoo. Some are just general secular homeschooling, some are secular Charlotte Mason or secular WTM, etc. Just do a search there and you'll find several.

 

As far as resources go, Galore Park comes to mind, especially for Latin and English. I believe they have a history program too, though I haven't heard as much about it. I'm sure there must be tons of others, but since I haven't started formal grammar and writing yet with my dd, I haven't looked into it much.

 

Also, you might want to check out this secular homeschooling magazine: http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/

[nukeswife]

We just finished our 2nd year of hsing and we are a secular hsing family. We aren't teaching any specific religion in detail. We are getting general overview of them in our history though.

 

My kids are going into 4th and 1st this year with a 3 year old tag-along :)

 

This is what we use.

Language Arts:

Writing we use Evan Moor products for writing although we may be trying the new Writing with Ease that SWB is releasing soon.

 

Grammar: we use Growing with Grammar. I feel it's a great program and covers things well, we've never tried R&S but I know many have switched from R&S to GWG.

 

Spelling: We're using All About Spelling as I feel it will help with reading as well

Reading is covered just using real books, no curriculum for it.

 

Math: We're using Saxon, we've tried many others (Horizons, McRuffy, my own ideas) and this is what we have come back to at the request of the kids. I like it too. It just makes sense to us.

 

History: I was using just SOTW with the Activity guides which are really good but I've now found History Odyssey which looks great and uses SOTW as it's spine but is arranged in a way that I think we'll get more out of it.

 

Science: We tried Sonlight and Noeo. Noeo was nice but just wasn't our style so I'm trying R.E.A.L. Science (by the same publisher as History Odyssey) and it looks like it will be a lot of fun.

 

Not sure what we'll be using for middle school but I hope this helps a bit.

[Greta]

Thanks for all these links! I only knew of about 1/3 of them!

 

Does anyone happen to know if Writing Tales and Lively Latin are secular? I haven't seen any religious references on their sites or in the samples, so I'm thinking (hoping) they are.

 

Also, it's interesting that RightStart Math isn't listed on any of these secular resources lists. I am wondering why. We've used levels A, B, and half of C and have never encountered any religious references.

[Jenny in Florida]

Do you have a listing of secular homeschooling materials? Are there any secular homeschooling or traditional homeschooling boards you frequent?

 

These boards are actually my favorites. I find them not only the most helpful in terms of the nuts and bolts of homeschooling but also the friendliest.

 

What do you use for History in middle and high school?

 

We've done quite well creating our own mix. I just choose some kind of spine--an encyclopedia or history book (usually something intended for general readership, not a text)--and pair it with a reading list, and we're off. It seems to work pretty well. My daughter went off the college this year and did two semesters of History of Western Civilization, got great grades and said she didn't encounter anything that threw her for a loop.

 

How about writing, grammar, and literature?

 

Well, we've consistently tied literature to history, as recommended in TWTM. So, I just make up a list of Great Books and good books as a starting point. We've used a variety of resources to help us dig into the reading, including free study guides I've found online and a book called The Book of Great Books I bought on a bargain table a few years ago. We're also read the notes in The Well-Educated Mind about various genres and specific books.

 

My daughter did quite well learning writing and grammar just by working with me. (I have a degree in English and 10 years of so of experience as an editor and technical writer.) My son dislikes taking criticism directly from me, so we're going to try Classical Writing next year in the hope that it will give us more of a framework.

 

I'm afraid I'm not famiiar with any of the specific packages or programs you mentioned. I mean, I know the names, but I've never looked at them closely or used them. So, I can't comment.

[Linda...inOwasso]

MegaWords, Lively Latin, and Writing Tales are all secular.

[Greta]

n/t

[Karen in TN]

The Yahoo group WellTrainedMindSecular is my favorite.

 

Karen

[Laura Corin]

Do you have a listing of secular homeschooling materials? Are there any secular homeschooling or traditional homeschooling boards you frequent?

 

What do you use for History in middle and high school?

 

Denim Jumper. For history, I plan on using Kingfisher with Van Loon, Gombrich and Suzanne Strauss Art. More details if you like...

 

How about writing, grammar, and literature?

 

 

 

 

I use a combination of English Prep (Galore Park) and Lightning Literature for middle school English studies. Both are secular (at least so far - EP books 1 and 2; LL7). Galore Park's books are all secular, as far as I know.

 

Best wishes

 

Laura

[AngieW in Texas]

>Do you have a listing of secular homeschooling materials? Are there any secular homeschooling or traditional homeschooling boards you frequent?

 

WellTrainedMindSecular and SonlightSecular are great email loops.

 

What do you use for History in middle and high school?

 

I've mostly adapted Sonlight to work for us. SL Core 100 (American history) for 9th, Prentice Hall Connections to Today (world history) for 10th but only covering up to 1900, SL Core 300 (20th century world history) for 11th, Great Source Government and a one semester economics course that I haven't figured out yet for 12th.

 

> How about writing, grammar, and literature?

 

IEW for writing and grammar application. I love IEW's writing programs. They have a grammar program called Fix-it that runs along the same lines as Editor-in-Chief and The Great Editing Adventure, but it has 5 years of work in one book.

 

I mostly use SL for literature. Since it's a literature-based program, it's easy to adapt for secular use (except for Core 200).

 

I use Flashkids for grammar at the lower levels. It's worked great for my middle dd, but I don't think my youngest is retaining much from it, so I'm going to try Winston Grammar with her.

 

Hake is a very thorough grammar program and is secular. If you use this program, the general recommendation is to spread each level over two years and then skip a level. My oldest used it for 8th grade level only (and took 1.5 years to complete it). After finishing it, I figured she was done with grammar forever.

 

>I think I'm okay with Science, moving from literature based in elementary to PHS Explorers for middle.

 

PH Science Explorers is a great program.

 

> Is Megawords secular?

Completely.

[deeinfl]

Easy Grammar

Saxon Math

Modern Curriculum Press Phonics

Modern Curriculum Press Math

Modern Curriculum Press Spelling

Story of the World

The History of US

Handwriting Without Tears

Megawords

Explode the Code

Child's History of the World(CHOW)

PAC-Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum for highschool

Singapore Math

Singapore Science

Singapore English/Writing

Spelling Power

Sequential Spelling

Phonics Pathways

Teach your Child to read in 100 Easy Lessons

Let's Read, A Linguistic Approach

Tatras

 

There are probably tons more, but this is what I could think of off the top of my head. :)

 

Hope it helps some...you could do a google search for any one of these and their websites should come up.

 

Blessings!

 

Dee

[treestarfae]

Bump. I like some of these suggestions.