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Free Puritan Homeschool Curriculum
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I know I haven’t been on here much lately…I’ve been sucked in the Facebook vortex and I am slowly climbing back out…
I wanted to share this link with you guys. I have only had a chance to look at some of the world history book, but it is awesome…and free!!!
Heather, intrigued, I clicked on your link to see what a Puritan Curriculum entails. I also checked out the Q and A page to learn about what Puritans believe. I recommend reading that page as well to see if it lines up with your own beliefs. Question #5 provides links to their views on various topics, such as Christmas.
Thank you so much. I sincerely appreciate you bringing that to my attention! Puritan beliefs do line up with our own, on the essentials and on many of the non-essentials of the faith, but I wanted to say thank you anyway!
I am most excited about the history selections on the link. I was going to have to purchase the Biblioplan companion guide for around $50 to make sure I wasn’t leaving out Biblical/church history as we are using story of the World this upcoming term, but now I won’t have to. The Real Story of Mankind and the other history selections provided will allow me to get those portions of history for free!
Thank you again Jennifer!
Heather
What a interesting resource. Wonderful to find so many free resources online. Thanks for sharing.
A note to fellow Catholics: The Q&A from the home page talks about the “perverse teachings of Romanism” (which is their term for the Roman Catholic Church). Tread carefully.
I spent some time reading through their introductory materials to the curriculum (86 pages of it). I am reformed and would agree with them for probably at least 90% of their theology, including what I would consider the most important bits (how we are saved, etc). I really wanted to like this curriculum, especially since they make use of the Psalms, which we also do (see http://lettersfromnebby.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/teaching-kids-to-read-psalms/) and it is very hard to find materials for this.
But in the end, there are some specific areas where I would disagree with them (like to what degree we educate girls and on evolution), but mostly they are just not very CM. They are against all drama (meaning Shakespeare which is a CM staple) and also against historical fiction. The materials they list seem very low on living books and they list lots of Usborne books which to me are the antithesis of living books.
So personally, I may look more at the materials they have on the bible and theology and see if there is anything there I can use, but I just don’t see how they would fit in with a CM education overall.
Nebby
I looked through some of the Q’s & A’s and at first, it just looked like a reformed chhurch, but that didn’t really seem right. So, I kept looking.
Some points that aren’t probably accepted by a good number of us:
*choirs are sinful in public worship
*Sabbath keeping on Sunday is absolutely required
*The Lord’s supper should be administered with a common cup (health concerns are considered rather unbiblical)
*they specify the time that the “sabbath” begins (and it’s not sundown)
*forbidding musical instruments in worship
*they have a rule about saying grace before and after every meal
*you should be barred from communion if you use or provide public transportation on Sundays
Anyway, I doubt that all of those things are in all the curricullum, but just because one is Reformed probably doesn’t mean that you will agree with a lot of Puritan teachings.
Personally, I agree with about half those things. We do keep the Sabbath though not by any strict rules. And we only sing psalms a cappella (never could spell that right) in worship. I wouldn’t consider any of the other things on the list essential but perhaps they would and therefore would disapprove of my practices and beliefs.
I did find other things more related to curriculum that I disagreed with as I read through some of their materials. They would seem to educate girls only to be wives and mothers and they are strict 6-day creationists. They also disapprove (in retrospect) of the American Revolution and believe it was sinful for us to fight for our independence. If one agrees with these beliefs, then this is probably the way to go.
But I will repeat what I said before that it is not at all CM. It uses a standard grading scale and the review questions it provides are very fill-in-the-blank-y. It uses some primary sources within its textbooks but not real living books. I will modify what I said before about Shakespeare. They do apparently have some Shakespeare being read as part of their literatire through the ages course. I am not sure how this fits with their rejection of all drama.
I am considering reviewing this curriculum as part of my ongoing blog series on approaches to homeschooling. I am not sure yet to what degree it is worth it since it does seem to have a very narrow audience.
Nebby
I guess I see a huge difference between setting Sunday aside as a day of rest and barring people from communion who ride the bus to church.
I haven’t found the part about not really educated girls, but, yeah, I’d disagree with that, too.
I agree with you on the bus on Sunday thing. There was a time we didn’t have a car and took the subway to church. We could have walked but it would have taken like an hour, and in New England winters it just wouldn’t have been possible. And now we have African immigrant families in our church who initially at least couldn’t drive. Mostly we have had others give them rides but it is easy to see how there are lots of circumstances in which it is take public transportation or skip church. Maybe that is hard to see if you live in certain environments but in an urban setting where not everyone drives it is hard to avoid pubic transportation.
Nebby
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