9 Reasons We Love Our Homeschool Curriculum

Recently I had the privilege of guest posting for Harbor + Sprout and share my Affirmations for Homeschooling Families. I’d love for you to see what I wrote on their blog and hope that my words bring peace, joy, and comfort to your days. I also invite you to check out their curriculum, and read below to learn more about why I love it.

Click here to read my blog post over at Harbor and Sprout.

I honestly cannot even remember how I first found Harbor + Sprout. I remember getting their emails and loving everything about their words and the beauty of the pictures. Their Instagram is the visual embodiment of what I would love our homeschool to look like, but just as my home is more Lego magazine than Homes + Gardens, my homeschool is more Jackson Pollock than Claude Monet.

The beauty of H + S is that you don’t have to have a picture perfect homeschool for it to bring wonder into your home.

Here’s what I love most about H + S:

Small business + women created

I always tell my children that we show our values by how we spend our money. In striving to live this philosophy, I seek to support small businesses whenever I can. H + S is a women-owned and run small business that employs artists and educators of all backgrounds and belief systems. I love witnessing how each of them implements H + S into their own homeschooling families.

Learning as a way of life

My greatest goal for homeschooling is that I raise lifelong learners. I believe that my two greatest missions are to: (1) teach my children how to learn, and (2) facilitate an environment in which learning is a way of life. I want them to love to learn. Children are naturally curious. They are scientists at their core. I do not have to teach my children to wonder about the world around them, but rather I am responsible for ensuring that their innate wonder is supported, encouraged, and allowed to blossom.

H + S supports those beliefs. In one of their recent emails, I read, “We think learning should be alive with curiosity and wonder and that life is meant to be overflowing with moments that cultivate connection.” I couldn’t agree more.

Affordable

I know that this statement is fraught with privilege–in fact, I realize how privileged I am to homeschool in the first place–but, when compared to other curricula, H + S is more affordable than most. They regularly offer freebies on their site, you can use code “HSTEN” for 10% off your first month of curriculum, and they also offer units and morning baskets for sale individually.

Engaging topics

I love that H+S covers topics that we wouldn’t necessarily think of or be drawn to on our own.

We’ve learned about a wide host of fields, including Botany, Engineering, Visual Arts, Paleontology, and Forestry, are looking to future releases, such as Entomology, Oceanography, and Astronomy, and will be encouraged to discover topics we would have never sought out on our own like Fashion, Meteorology, and Home Economics.

Emphasis on books

Other than connection, books and play are the heart of our homeschool. Arguably my favorite part of each unit H + S releases is the book list. Before we begin a new theme, I request dozens of books from our library, almost exclusively from the provided list. We don’t always read every book, but having access to all of them expands our opportunity for learning. One of our favorite homeschool experiences to this day is listening to The Wild Robot by Peter Brown on audiobook during our Engineering unit.

Inclusion of art + music

I firmly believe that art and music are as important as more traditionally praised fields of study. Not only do we need to embrace the arts, but the arts provide an opportunity for all other types of learning. Art and Music are both showcased topics in all H + S units, not simply included as an afterthought.

All subjects through one topic

H + S curriculum is divided into themed topics, and each topic consists of: Science, History, Geography, Math, Language Arts, Writing, Music, Art, and Nature Studies. Before I ever adopted a curriculum, we homeschooled with this format. I love taking a deep dive into a field of study and finding opportunities to “teach” each “subject” (I put those words in quotes because I believe we are co-learning and I think subjects are often arbitrarily divided unnecessarily). I love the creativity with which they connect various subjects to a larger theme, and it serves as a wonderful supplement to my own ideas.

Multi-age

H + S is designed to serve multiple ages at once. Each activity is broken into multiple learning levels (I love that they are based on learning level, not solely age). I love that both my children can learn the same topic together and use different activities depending upon what they are ready for at any given time. Moreover, this format means that the same units can be repeated at different times in their development with completely new opportunities.

Un-curriculum curriculum

I am honestly not a curriculum person. I lean more towards unschooling or child-directed learning, and H + S perfectly aligns with this philosophy. I can use their resources as little or as much as I want. There are many opportunities to add my own ideas, or follow my children’s ideas. They offer the opportunity to follow their lesson plan closely for those who don’t want the flexibility that I do, but, for those that do, there is no pressure to complete everything. I like to think of all of it as an invitation to learn.

As I said at the beginning, our homeschool doesn’t look like the beautifully curated pages that are so often shared across social media, and still, H + S has been a wonderful addition to our home. I am honored to have my words shared on their page, and invite you to give their curriculum (or any of their intentionally made products and freebies) a try. Use code “HSTEN” for 10% off your first month of curriculum.

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