Math At Birch Grove Homeschool (2022-23 edition)

An overview of how we do Math here. 

PRESCHOOL 
Math before Kindergarten basically amounts to "counting everything." Constantly asking the child how many fingers am I holding up, or how many apple slices are on your plate. The very best counting exercise I can think of for a large family preschooler is to help count out # of snacks per sibling, or divide a set portion between the children present. I like my children to be able to count to somewhere in the teens or 20's before I start them in My Father's World kindergarten, but abilities vary greatly between children and that's fine. They should probably be able to at least count to 10 before starting kindergarten though. Sometimes, if they are pestering me to be allowed to "do school" like their older siblings, I allow them to do some of the Rod & Staff preschool workbooks. Book C is specifically about numbers and practicing writing them, with cute rhymes to help remember how to form them in the correct direction. I'm not exactly an advocate of either preschool or busywork, but there's a place and time for everything. In my opinion, bookwork/seatwork before Kindergarten should be limited to only when the child is asking for it. Keep in mind that, while Milestone keeps their products reasonably priced, ordering by phone or mail directly from Rod & Staff will almost always save you money. 

KINDERGARTEN 
I use My Father's World for kindergarten, which includes some light math, but I also wrote my own kindergarten math curriculum after seeing my child struggle with understanding place values despite MFW's system. The one I wrote basically teaches place values in multiple different ways, over and over and over through the kindergarten year, so that they will be ready to go into Singapore 1A/B in 1st grade. They circle groups of 10, combine numbers, take numbers apart, and learn about "greedy Mr. Greater Gator" who always selfishly takes the bigger number for himself. I was able to finish enough of it by writing it in segments from the end backward toward the beginning to have my fourth and fifth children use part of the end of it before they started Singapore. Unfortunately I don't think my fourth child was able to use it for long enough to help her as much as I'd hoped, since it was for her that I started to write it in the first place and writing curriculum is a slow process so I wasn't very far along with it when she was a primary student. She's almost 11 and still gets frequently confused about place value. My fifth didn't get much more of it than her older sister, but she has been very bright with numbers all along and didn't need as much help to understand place value - she's a grade ahead in math now. By the time my sixth child was in Kindergarten, the math curriculum was done, however, I finished it during his Kindergarten year so he only had time to use about the last 3/4 of it. [1/2023 update: Youngest is now 6 years, 4 months old. He flew through Singapore 1A, 1B, and is halfway through 2A. He also does 3rd grade Teaching Textbooks . . . for fun. Since the child who got to use the most of the kindergarten math I wrote is now working 2 grades ahead and the child who used it the second most is now working 1 grade ahead, I'm beginning to think I should apply for the commercial rights for the pictures I used and actually sell this curriculum! 😅 ] 

GRADES 1-2 
For math between Kindergarten and about 3rd grade we use Singapore U.S. Edition. I find that my kids are able to place into Singapore 1A straight out of Kindergarten if they have a good grasp on place values. It's really their understanding of place value that determines whether Singapore 1A/B will frustrate them or whether they will thrive in it. Singapore is great at teaching mental math. I believe I have dyscalculia - I can't correctly remember any sequence of digits longer than 4 digits long. 4 is pushing it. They just get all mixed around in my head and sometimes similar looking digits get substituted. Math was a subject I hated because even if I understood it one day, the next day I had to start completely over from square 1. Which was a lengthy and exhausting process and made me hate math with a passion. But I digress... back to Singapore. The math I wish I'd had when I was a primary kidlet. I learned some of these tricks and techniques by sheer desperation, and I thought that I was cheating when I used them. I wish I'd had all of them in my arsenal and known that whatever way you get the numbers to sort out and come out right inside your head is NOT cheating. 
If you are new to Singapore math, there are several editions. I suggest the "U.S. Edition" which isn't specifically common core aligned, but teaches both U.S. and metric measurement systems. Having your child take a placement test before ordering is a good idea. Each "grade" has 2 levels (1 per semester) and each level has a textbook and a workbook. If you order through MFW they send a little answer key/lesson plan book with it that I like. If you don't care about that lesson plan book, you can order Singapore math on Rainbow Resource for a little less than $60/yr, which is $24-34 LESS than MFW at the time I'm writing this. I like the MFW answer key/ lesson plan but it's NOT worth $25 a year IMHO. It says what pages to do each day and the answers, that's it. It doesn't tell you HOW they got the answers and it gives almost nothing in the way of helping you teach. I've heard that most moms start getting stuck somewhere is 3A/B or 4A/B and need to fork out another $50/yr for Singapore Home Instructor's Guides which MFW doesn't even sell, just to be able to continue to teach the curriculum.
And that brings me to why I don't continue to use what starts out as 'such a great curriculum that I wish I'd had it as a kidlet.' Because I have 6 children and I dislike math. Singapore is $97-$102 for the first kid when you get to the age where you might need that home instructor's guide, $30-34/yr for each subsequent kid, and you have to teach and grade it yourself. For me personally, being someone who does NOT like math and sees my kids picking up on my stress when I try to teach it, it's not worth sticking with Singapore long enough for it to become a hassle and make my kids hate math too. Besides, this edition only goes up to 6th grade so after that you have to switch to a different Singapore math or a different brand altogether. In my estimation, it's better to switch before it becomes a headache than to drag through the last 3 years of hating it. The last time I did 4A, with my second child, neither of us being math people, it was taking us 4+ hours a day to get through a single lesson. It was taking me away from being available to the other children for their lessons and then everyone was getting behind on their work and I was SO stressed out. This is why I don't do 4A at all anymore. Now we use Singapore starting when they place into 1A, and ending as soon as they can place into 3rd grade Teaching Textbooks. That's generally when they're somewhere between 2A-3A of Singapore, depending on the child. 

GRADES 3-12  
For a family with 4-8 school-age kids with the large family discount, Teaching Textbooks averages to $25-50/yr per child and TT teaches it, grades it, saves the grades, and I have full control through the teacher dashboard to reassign or even mark something as correct if I know they knew it but they accidentally clicked the wrong thing. This is the BEST thing I've ever done regarding math as a non-mathy homeschool mom: I switched all the kids who are old enough for it over to Teaching Textbooks. They even offer included optional phone tutoring if your child is stuck and you can't help them. Yes, they have placement tests (look on each grade's page, near the bottom, next to a yellow star). I have never had such stress free math goings on in this house before TT. We've had to make use of the phone tutor once for my oldest during Algebra I so far. I hope to continue to successfully use it through graduation with all the kids because it takes such a huge burden off my shoulders. 
So let me tell you a little story. In August of 2021 I had COVID. My husband too. We were sick for like a month and a half! Meanwhile the kids got sick for 2-4 days each over the span of like a week. Obviously we didn't have the kids do school while sick, but there were about 6 weeks where my husband and I were deathly ill and the kids were all totally fine, so they did do school during that time. My teenagers were holding down the fort and my husband and I were trying to keep living. He got a sinus infection on top of the COVID and I got COVID pneumonia and I wound up in the ER getting a plasma treatment. I was there most of the day and let me tell you, being sick in the hospital is 10x more uncomfortable than being sick at home, especially for a homebody introvert! Anyway so I'm in the hospital and through my raging headache I text my teenager to ask if everyone got their math done. She texts back that this kid and that kid missed some problems and the other kid isn't done yet. I reassigned the missed problems from my phone, took like 2 minutes, and told her to have them redo and text me when the other was done if they needed any reassigned. Long-distance homeschooling from the ER. Not what I would have considered FUN by any means, but I was really thankful we switched the kids to TT and that meant I didn't have to teach or grade math while sick, and that I could reassign work from that bleach-stinking rock-hard cot in the freezing cold ER so that my kids could go on with doing normal things instead of having their lives on hold with nothing to do but worry about me. So if our time with TT ends before all the kids have graduated, well, I'll still always be thankful for what a help it was to me during that and this seasons of my life. 

Why Your Kid (probably) Won't Be Held Back by YOUR Education

 This is something I wrote at the end of the 2019-20 school year. I don't remember if I merely began it here in the drafts of this blog, or if I had been telling it to someone somewhere else and decided to save it for inspiration/decided this topic needed a whole post someday. 

     Sometimes I feel obsolete. My 5th grader is doing Theoretical Probability for math and my 7th grader has to help him with it because I can't. 😕 I don't think Theoretical Probability was in my junior and high school math books. If it were, hating math as I did, I might have run away with the circus as soon as I saw it coming.
     And said 7th grader just pointed out that her research paper on some astronomer dude with a name I can't pronounce is scoring above college level for reading level in a word counting thing she's using. When I said that's probably because it uses words like "heliocentric," which I don't think is in most kids' vocabularies, she replied, "But we learned about heliocentricism in 7th grade science!"
     Well then. If I learned that word in 7th grade then I promptly forgot it I guess. The concept, sure; the word, no. And people get worried they can't teach their kids if they didn't go to college... That's not how it works. They don't get "stuck" behind your highest level of education, they instead outpace you and leave you to feel dumb all by yourself in their dust.

The "7th grader" mentioned is starting high school in a week or so. 😮 How time doth fly. 

     My mom didn't go to college. She worked in the Library at Princeton University before she married my dad, but she was never a student there... her highest education was high school. When she decided to pull me out of public school and homeschool me and my younger siblings, I don't know to what degree her parents or friends questioned her ability to educate us properly, but I picked up on enough to know that the idea certainly wasn't universally accepted. 

     This was circa the late 1980's/early 1990's... We managed to miss out on the majority of the time when homeschoolers were being harassed and legally persecuted but even by the time we began, the idea was still far from "okay" with the general public. Every time we were at the grocery store someone would ask, "What grade are you in?" and we would look at mom in confusion. I knew eggs and meat were graded, but children?! Then, upon finding out we were homeschooled (which to their minds translated as being neglected/abused/in a cult), they proceeded to give us an entire multi-subject oral mini-quiz as we stood in line to check out, to reassure themselves that they should let us walk out of the store free without a call to CPS. 

     I know some of you reading have totally been quizzed (or your kids have) in the store by a nosy stranger... or by a disapproving relative at a family event. Some things never change, eh? 

     

     The folks who questioned myself and my siblings upon finding out we were homeschooled were certain that the person who loved us most in all the world, who would do anything or give up anything for us, who lived with us 24/7 and saw all our strengths and weaknesses, couldn't possibly teach us anything of use past the age of learning the ABC song and how to tie our shoes. BUT they were also (ironically) convinced that their equally non-teacher-certified selves could ascertain how well educated and cared for a stranger's kids were in the span of 5 minutes in the checkout lane of the grocery store by asking us questions like how to spell "hopeful" and what's 4x12 and what year Columbus discovered the New World. When I was in public school nobody cared if I learned anything at all, but 2 months into homeschooling and I was suddenly supposed to know these things? All they taught me in public school was how to stand in line, raise my hand to be allowed to use the bathroom, accept that nobody would defend me when I was bullied by teachers and lunch ladies, and that I wasn't allowed to be friends with kids outside my grade. And nobody cared. Nobody cared if I was abused or neglected or uneducated while in the care of the public school system! But how dare my mom believe that she could raise and teach me herself. The audacity! 

     My high school grad mom, thankfully, didn't allow the opinions of others to derail her. She raised and homeschooled 3 kids, the 2 of whom never set foot in a public school both went on to "higher education" after high school. I personally had wanted to become a lawyer to help homeschoolers who were being sued and harassed for their decision to home educate. I was accepted into the colleges I applied to but a career was never my most cherished dream. You see, I had wide open eyes to the beauty and value of marriage and parenthood. Not to say my siblings did not, but for me it eclipsed my desire to have a career so drastically that when things finally began to move forward with the guy I'd liked for 3 years, all my desire to go to college to study law went right down the drain. I was married at 19 years old - half my life ago. I can tell you I have no regrets. For a while I allowed social pressure to make me feel guilty for 'abandoning my chance to make a real difference in the world and help homeschoolers,' but when it comes right down to it, in the end, I made a difference in another way. Just like my mom never went to college but her love and sacrifices made all the difference for me, a kid who would have been labeled ADD and cared too much about peer approval to have stayed out of trouble my whole childhood if I'd been in public school. I will ALWAYS always be grateful to my parents for homeschooling me. 

So you're saying a person who didn't go to college could do a good job homeschooling their kids? 
     Yes! How? That's easy; commitment and curriculum. Here in 2021 we have so many options for curriculum that the question is not how to find it so much as how to choose from the vast buffet of options. We could in theory (and some actually have done) educate our kids from primary through 12th grade using only basic supplies that most homes already have and free resources like the library and the wealth of the internet. How would one figure out what topics are appropriate for what ages/grades? You look up a grade by grade scope and sequence on that great world wide web and use it as a springboard. And yet if you're willing to save up some money you could get a curriculum that will not only give you 180 pre-portioned lessons and an answer key for each subject, but some also give you a script for how to teach it to the child and a list of crafts and supplemental resources to help cement the concepts. If you learned what you were taught in school, you can teach it. And if you didn't learn or retain it, you can (re)learn right along with your child. 

But what about... EDUCATIONAL GAPS?!  

     There it is. The question every new homeschooler has. I'm curious why when we think of homeschooling we worry about gaps as though they were a homeschool-specific problem. EVERY educational model has gaps. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. In fact, I can't think of a more obvious educational gap problem than the startling fact almost everyone coming out of the American Public Education System feels like nobody learned the material well enough to be trusted to teach it to the next generation! Graduation should be the certification that you've learned the material and if you've learned it you can teach it. That's what the long-held concept of apprenticeship is based on. And if public school is certifying all these people as having sufficiently learned their ABCs and 123s through the 12th grade level but these graduates really don't actually know these things, then I'd say that's an educational gap, wouldn't you? 

     ...But is a gap really something to be worried about? I think that depends on the rest of the education. If the educational model is one that values the students learning rote answers like good little copy machines so they can get the exact answer on the next test, then yeah a gap is going to be a big problem. Students who have been primarily taught to regurgitate memorized answers are going to be blindsided when a scenario comes up in which they have to deal with something they don't have an answer on file for. However if the educational model teaches the child how to find information, compare multiple sources, and form conclusions based on logic and evidence, then when that student encounters something they don't have an answer on file for, instead of feeling paralyzed and unprepared, that student will say to themselves, "Hmm. I don't know, but I'll find out!" 

     Let's say for example you decide you'd like to bake an apple pie, which you have never done before. I bet most kids don't learn that in school, so that's an educational gap. Do you lie on the floor and wail that your life is ruined because an educational gap has denied you the ability to bake a pie? No, you go on allrecipes and YouTube and find out how to make an apple pie. Ta-da! Now you have filled that gap, without ever having stopped to think of it as being an educational gap or panicking about it. 
     Perhaps you're building a garden shed and you need a mathematical formula to help you cut the corners at the correct angle. Do you stop and have a cow because you were out sick with the flu the week they covered that in school and thus you have a gap? No, you google it and get on with your life. 
     Educational gaps are inevitable no matter where you go to school, but most humans have figured out that if you don't know something you just... find out. In our modern world where every phone has a calculator and is a portal to dictionaries, encyclopedias, articles, libraries, etc. there's literally no reason to worry about gaps themselves. Rather than worrying about gaps, teach your child how to read and write and then how to find the information they need and form wise conclusions with it. With this power, in the age of information they can be unstoppable. 

Augustus Caesar's World : No, There's No Audiobook (and Why That's a GOOD Thing)

 I see this question frequently in the My Father's World social media groups for Rome to the Reformation at the beginning of each school year: 

"Does anyone know where I can find an audiobook version of Augustus Caesar's World?" 

It's a very interesting book, but the assigned reading sections are really quite long. Trust me, I feel you: my voice was cracking and I was desperate for my teenager to take a turn reading. 

As far as there being an audiobook, by all reports, there isn't one. I saw someone at one point say there was one for access by persons with reading-related disabilities only and accessing it as a person without those types of disabilities would be fraud. Supposedly that's the only audio version out there. 

And honestly, after having read the whole thing, I can tell you that the lack of an audiobook is actually a GOOD thing if you're a discerning Christian parent who wants to protect the hearts and minds of your kids. 

Allow me to explain. When you use an audiobook, what do you do? You put it on for the kids to listen to and you probably get absorbed in sorting up the next worksheets and finding the pages for the next thing you're going to teach. Or you leave the room to go switch the laundry or make a phone call while it's quiet. How many of you actually sit there with your finger on the STOP button to halt it when it gets to a part that is questionable or, for My Father's World users, to a part that the TM says to skip? How many of you follow along with the book to know exactly when it gets to the line or paragraph you're supposed to skip? 

And it does say to skip things. The second line on the 3rd paragraph, or the last 2 paragraphs of page blah blah blah. Because there are some things on that page are better as a family theological discussion not something dropped into the middle of the lesson where the author is saying it like it's gospel and Mom might not be in the room to call the kids' attention to the questionability of some of the statements. 

What sorts of questionable things are in the Augustus Caesar's World book? I noticed, in the course of reading the book, that the author seems to have a universalist-esque sort of view, as it became more and more obvious through the book that the author was describing anyone who held to the view of there only being ONE god as having found the whole truth. Like it didn't matter if they were also practicing pagan spiritualism or if their one-god was very obviously not the God of the Bible, so long as they were monotheistic, the author speaks of them as if they are enlightened humans on the path to heaven. 

Another thing I noticed was the author spoke of Jesus in a way that seemed as though He were just a famous kid in history who was given the title of Savior whether he truly was or not, and spoke FOR Him as though He were just a typical kid with no idea that He was God-With-Us, when this is clearly against the teachings of the Bible. In the MFW TM it says to skip some of these parts of Augustus Caesar's World and read about Jesus from the actual Bible - wise advice. 

Another thing, a lesser thing than the aforementioned possible spiritual misleadings, that would be a problem with using an audiobook format, one for those using My Father's World, is that the Augustus Caesar's World book is arranged approximately chronologically, jumping around from place to place, from people group to people group while holding the timeline. The rest of the MFW Rome to the Reformation curriculum is arranged by locations or by trains of thought. So rather than jumping from place to place to tell all the stories in chronological order as is laid out in Augustus Caesar's World, we would follow a people group until the conclusion of that segment of their history, then backtrack to the next people group and follow them for a segment of time, and so on. This is through all the historical books that MFW has us reading at once, so that we stay with each thought-train through all the materials for a logical span. 

In summary, I think while the book has a very engaging, memorable way of presenting the life and times of Augustus Caesar, more and more toward the end of the book the author's unbiblical beliefs come out in a way that instructs the children that these unbiblical ideas are truth, that the author's fictitious words and thoughts on behalf of Jesus are truth. A wise parent of young children wouldn't want to leave them unattended with an audiobook for this work, and a wise parent of older children would not want to leave the author's opinions unchallenged and undiscussed. 

Why I Stopped Using Apologia & Berean Sciences

 As many of you know already, I started my journey homeschooling my own kids with My Father's World curriculum. As those of you who have been using MFW since 2020 and before probably also know, MFW used to promote and sell Apologia sciences for middle and high school. And those of you who have a middle or high schooler now very likely have noticed that MFW has shifted to promoting and selling Berean Builders science instead now. 

Actually, both science companies were founded by the same person. 

Apparently Jay Wile founded Apologia and then sold it around 2010 to another homeschooling family but continued to work in the company. Then something happened and Wile left Apologia because he didn't want his name associated with them anymore. Apologia has since been going through rewriting/replacing all the textbooks Jay Wile wrote for the company. 

As they have replaced Wile's books, MFW's loyalty has apparently followed Wile to his newer(?) company, Berean Builders, and so as Apologia has replaced Wile's textbooks with newly rewritten versions by other authors, it seems MFW has replaced those replacements with whatever Berean Builders has in stock for the same grade. If you're only here to hear my opinions on Apologia/Berean, feel free to skip the next couple paragraphs regarding my philosophy on teaching Science and resume reading where it says [1] for my/kids' experience using Apologia or where it says [2] for my opinions on what I saw as red flags. [3] is where I mention the reason I don't trust Apologia spiritually and won't use it anymore. [4] is where I begin on why I can't trust/support Berean either. 

Back in the early years of my homeschool career, I didn't pay much attention to the science from the textbooks that came in the MFW cycle years. To be frank, we live rural enough that we see and experience so much science in the natural world that textbooks generally seem boring and redundant. My dad taught me science in the early and middle grades by taking advantage of teaching moments and always being willing to answer my questions thoroughly. I learned more from him than I ever retained from textbook. So I sort of developed the philosophy that before jr. high, science is best seen, heard, felt, tasted, and experienced. We keep a large variety of sciencey pictoral informational books (like Usborne style) around and buy lots of educational STEAM toy kits and supplies. They watch the mantis egg cases until the babies come out, they see tadpoles grow legs, bring me caterpillars so we can look up what butterfly or moth they will be, and watch the birds mate, build nests, lay eggs, hatch, and leave. Last winter they would come in from sledding and draw me all the animal tracks they had seen and if I didn't already know, we would look them up. Last week my 12 year old had a collection of young grasshoppers in an old tic tac container and was observing them for a while. He made many verbal observations about their body structure and exoskeleton. We've learned so much about spiders in the past 4 years that now when we see a jumping spider we all recognize it as a jumper immediately and none of us hesitate to take it to a safe place just because we know so much about them now that the fear is gone. And also we know and recognize the spiders and other arachnids in our area with enough strength and venom potency to do harm and how to safely deal with those. We have a mama deer who lives in our small piece of forest and has twin fawns every year. Well she just brought out this year's babies for the first time the other day and there are 3 of them this year! We look forward to watching them grow, as well as the family of quail that hatches over a dozen little floofs every year. I do NOT ever look forward to the Northern Flicker pair that nests nearby and tries to drill holes in my roof in the wee hours of the morning when I'm trying to sleep. My 10 year old is raising a cucumber plant for fun. My kids use old primary scissors to cut tunnels in the grass to play in and make many observations about the plants and bugs in the underlayers. We saw our first June Bug of the year last weekend. Everyone wanted to photograph it because it had a sparkly copper colored shell and they knew it wasn't a Ten Lined June Bug and wanted to know what kind of June Bug it was. Commentary was made on the barbs on its legs. Wonder was expressed about why it didn't have feathery antennae. Things were added to our list of what to look up. When smoke from the wildfires and lightning from the heat wave drove us indoors, my kids build models with complicated moving parts, and we discussed why yeast and baking soda will make food rise when we're cooking, and read about lightning. Every time there's something cool to see in space, my husband gets out his telescope and take the older kids out after dark to stargaze. 

All this to say my kids are absolutely steeped in science, but I don't really like the idea of using science textbooks before 7th grade. It's not a conclusion/opinion I arrived at all at once, but it's the one I hold now. 

[1] My 13 year old son is absolutely genius at figuring out how things work and building complicated machines, but he's not good at spelling and doesn't enjoy the language arts. I made the mistake, back when he was in 5th-ish grade and his older sister in 7th-ish, of thinking that since everything in the MFW selections up until then had been gentle and adaptable to various ages, that I could and even ought to have these oldest 2 do the Apologia General Science (Apologia says it's for 7th grade) together. I knew zilch about Apologia so when it came, it was a shock how heavy the content was. Tons and tons of reading for my not so reading friendly son. My husband was trying to teach it and decided maybe the Student Notebooks were necessary. Even still, my son read and wrote so slowly that it would take at least 5-8 hours a week to do science and that's skipping all the fluff and condensing as much as possible. They got good grades, but it was a very hard year of science for both kids. My oldest could keep up fine but she was miserable reading these boring endless pages and then trying to remember all these answers she wasn't interested in at all. We figured she'd be fine if she didn't have to wait on her struggling brother... she could go faster and it wouldn't be as boring. 

So the next year I didn't make them do science together. The experience with the Apologia middle school texts had made me start to second-guess my interest-led unschool-y approach to early grade science. I wanted to have him go back to just doing that with the youngers because I had felt like he was learning so much and really loving, understanding, and retaining it... but my insecurities got the better of me and I had him do the science from the ET1850 package. The AIG animal science went well - he did it himself without complaint - but that Apologia botany was like pulling teeth. Apologia style is not a good fit for this child at all. 

Meanwhile my oldest progressed on to Apologia Physical Science (for 8th grade) alone, and this time she was miserable all year on her own. She was so miserable she started goofing off and not doing it. She would just circle the answer in the question and refuse to write anything. On the days I was checking in, she would do well, but I can't check in on every subject every day for every child and it started slipping through the cracks because if I wasn't hovering, she gave exactly 0% effort. Time and time again I would catch her and there would be consequences and she'd have to do extra to catch up. She loathed it. She failed it. We made her repeat it. It was misery for everyone. "Like pulling teeth" I said about the botany with her younger brother, and that applied to getting through the Physical Sci with my firstborn too. In general she's an extremely honest, diligent, and reliable person. This science really brought out her dark side. 

And so I felt this dread... if science is so hard in middle school, how are we going to survive high school?! 

[2] Meanwhile, all these little red flags kept popping up. Just a sentence here or there in the Apologia books that didn't sit right. At first I dismissed them because they weren't terribly clear as far as being "off." Just a nagging, "why is it worded like that?" feeling. The only specific one that comes to mind at the moment was something that eluded to there being an upcoming lesson in a future grade on Global Warming and the way it was worded made it sound like it was about to spout the alarmist talking points instead of a balanced and Biblical position. Nothing solid, but it didn't explain clearly what was meant and so it left me uneasy. 

Now, neither of these middle school science texts were written by Jay Wile. They were Apologia all the way. But during my family's struggles with those, someone shared a PDF in which Jay Wile listed many things he found strange, erroneous, confusing, or just plain didn't like in one of the Apologia texts that replaced his. As I read it, I was concerned about the points he was making, but I was also catching a petty, stuck-up undertone and didn't know if I was imagining it. I asked my husband to read it and he couldn't decided if Wile was just really agitated about the errors or was actually being kind of arrogant. I informed my husband that Wile actually founded Apologia and then sold it and left and started a new science company, and this text he was reviewing was actually replacing his at Apologia. (Can anyone say conflict of interest?) My husband said that in that case, we might NOT be imagining the perceived pettiness. But regardless of his personal motivations and whether I was reading him the right way, some of his points really did concern me about continuing on with Apologia. 

During this time I would come across comments on social media like, 'I'm not a fan of Jay Wile. He was super rude/arrogant to me/a family member at a convention.' and 'I don't agree with some of his points of view that he preaches as if they were gospel on his blog.' I filed that away to look into later. I noticed that MFW was changing everything 7th grade and up to Berean Builders where it used to be Apologia, so that would have solved it if it was only Apologia I was struggling with, but I was having hesitation on BOTH Wile and Apologia. And that's about the time I decided to try looking up WHY he sold and later left Apologia in the first place. It was over a decade ago though, so digging up anything solid on it doesn't turn up a concise answer. Basically just a cryptic blog post by Wile on the matter that felt to me like it was strategically worded to be blamey without outright blaming.  

I'm a busy lady. I didn't have time to keep digging right then. I had other stuff to do. Why he left a decade ago probably wouldn't affect my curriculum decisions now anyway. Right? It was probably personal stuff and it's been a decade so if it was something that bad, it probably wouldn't have been that hard to dig up. Since nothing solid came up right away, maybe it's really nothing. 

I went to Apologia's site to buy the next year's science for my soon to be 9th grader. Alas they were moving to a new warehouse. I didn't want to order and take a chance my order would get lost in the move. I'll wait, I thought, until they're moved. Okay to be completely honest, a part of me breathed a sigh of relief that my decision was postponed. Something really didn't feel right to me about Apologia and now to add to the weight holding me back, I kept seeing comments on social media saying things like, "In my state we have to show our curriculum to a teacher for approval and the teacher looked through the Apologia and said that the middle school ones are like high school level/that the high school ones are like college level." The first time or two I barely registered it, like somewhere in the back of my mind I probably kind of went, "yeah homeschoolers are generally ahead of public schoolers in the same grade" and went on with my life, but the third time I stumbled on just such a comment, I actually stopped and thought, "Hmmm. Maybe it's not that we are science failures. Maybe it's just plain that they really are THAT hard!"

That really tweaked my feeling of frustration over WHY science has got to be so stinking hard! My oldest isn't even college bound, let alone a STEM field. Why does she HAVE to take this advanced, heavy, difficult science that she hates? And my son who probably will wind up in a STEM field? He isn't ready for this level of dry textbookish heavy-workload yet. Not even close. 

[3] Well then they were moved to the new warehouse apparently, but there was an advertisement on their home page for a Health curriculum. I was in the market for some electives for my oldest and clicked on it to see what grade it was for. I saw no grade on it but there was a sample and I read it. 

Red flags galore. Now I'm not worried about her reading about reproduction in a schoolbook, we've already covered that, so that's not the problem. The problem was the pagan personality typing that they drilled on and on and on throughout the lengthy sample as if it were straight out of the Holy Bible. Not just a brief, 'this is what they used to believe about personalities...' thing but extensive personality typing of the student and people they know, like they're actually studying it as if it were truly based in legitimate science. I would have hardly been more surprised if they'd gone into astrology or the enneagram from there. It disturbed me that this was in a book from a company I had been trusting to teach my kid apologetics. And that was the big dealbreaker for me. Especially since I have lost several family members to a "Christian" cult that incorporates new-age and ancient-spiritualism beliefs and practices into "Christianity." After something like that happens to your family, anything that smells faintly of that sort of thing is something you hope and pray your kids flee from with all their might. NOT something you buy textbooks for and teach to them as fact. I showed it to my husband and we agreed; no more Apologia for us. 

[4] So where did that leave us for science? I figured Berean would be similar on the heavy textbooky overkill for a non-college-bound -student front, branches off the same tree and all that, even if there were some theology discrepancies. Plus I kept seeing people say things about him having a bad personality (not in and of itself a dealbreaker by any means) and that he would defend v xx in es as if they were manna from heaven, that he didn't think it relevant that ab or tio ns were involved in the development of those (dealbreakers for sure). Commenters said that the topic had been coming up a lot on his blog lately since a certain v ir us. When I finally got into the research about Wile, I ultimately wrote off Berean as not for my family too. 

If you're curious, we are trying MasterBooks this year. My oldest is on her 3rd week of the Biology and spontaneously talks about what she learned about genetics... and the first week she was serving dinner and made a model water molecule out of biscuits. She has never before shown that much interest in any science that didn't have to do with a cute baby animal. My second is on his 2nd week of the General Science 1 and even he has already had to come tell me about some factoids he learned from his new science books. I don't know about everything in the books yet but the section I read about Cli mate chan ge in General Science 1 was very balanced! Neither "We're killing the plan et! We're all gonna DIE! We must decrease the population and eliminate cow farts or we're all DOOMED!" nor was it "We can trash everything and the world still won't end one minute sooner than it would have. It's all a hoax anyway!" but an actual honest to goodness balanced and scientific view, so I was impressed with that. 

So now down to the references, because I'm sure you want to see for yourself and make your own decision. 

->The Apologia Health, the sample for which moved them permanently to the "nope" list for my family.

->A post on Wile's personal blog about why he left Apologia. I agree with "Involved Homeschool Dad" in the comments and don't like the way Wile replies to him as if it's IHD's mistake that causes the disagreement rather than respecting the difference of opinion. 
A quote from Wile from one of his comments on his blog post: "...the really troubling aspect of the Apologia worldview curriculum is that based on what it says, the vast majority of evangelicals do not have a Biblical worldview. As I read the text, in order to have a Biblical worldview, you have to be a young-earth Calvinist. There is never any point at which the texts I have read (one that is already published and one in manuscript form) actually say that directly, but if you compile all the things the texts say about what a Christian is supposed to believe, that’s what I come up with." 
Um... If he's alternately arguing that all viewpoints are equal/all roads lead to heaven, isn't that universalism or perennialism? Which is not a good thing. I can respect a person with a POV different than mine who truly believes they are right and has reasons, but I can't respect someone who thinks everything is the same and it doesn't matter if you believe the (whole) Bible or not. 

->I obviously don't agree with the content of *this site, but I find their reaction to and comments on Wile's departure from Apologia interesting. I find the quote "...I'm wondering whether Dr. Wile's apparent increased open-mindedness has deeper roots than his textbooks would suggest." to be very unsettling considering both the source and the usual direction intended by the phrase "open minded." 
*Apparently the blog has been removed as of 1/28/23. It was called Old Earth Creationism - I cannot agree with theistic evolution in any way, shape, or form but found the article interesting in reference to Jay Wile's beliefs and possible wishy-washiness regarding a Young Earth stance, as implied by a blogger on the other side. 

->This link is sort of round-about relevant as it mentions the Wile/Enns thing from the previous article, as well as a warning about a book from a publisher from which My Father's World uses other materials. (The publisher of Story of the World and the Writing With Skill which MFW schedules for 7th/8th grade.) 

->This link refutes some disturbing behavior by Wile toward Ken Ham. Apparently Wile doesn't believe that the Bible in any way says that there wasn't (animal) death in/before Eden and seems to me to imply theistic evolution is a valid and non-critical difference in acceptable Christian worldviews despite it being contradictory to the Bible. Wile does sound very arrogant and also misled. I definitely do NOT want him teaching my children. 

->And last but most certainly not least, a link to one of the pro-v__ posts on Wile's personal blog. He doesn't seem to appreciate that there are other interpretations for the data besides his own. Over and over as I've been digging in preparation for this post I see him as dismissing anyone who disagrees with him with what I am reading as a condescending attitude of the dissenter or their source having obviously lied, misinterpreted, or been too mentally or educationally inferior to really comprehend all the reasons why Wile is always right. Before today's research I was fairly ambivalent about him (not wanting to use his products, but mostly ambivalent about the person) but the more of his posts and comments I read, the more he leaves quite a bad flavor. 
One commenter asks how Christians can in good conscience take the new v__s. Wile replies basically that since "the" aborted baby which the cell lines are from was dead over 50 years ago now, its murder doesn't matter anymore if we can use its parts to save people. Not just a horrific thing to think and say, but also this is 'only one' business and ignorantly saying that the research has not contributed to the death of any others is unscientific and a commonly believed piece of misinformation. Here it is from the medical industry on a government website, from a lot more recently than 50 years ago. Try less than a decade. There are more links to articles on the government website about this here. A cell line cannot survive 50 years. They must (and do) continue to acquire new cell lines because cell lines deteriorate. They run out, they deteriorate, and it's scientifically impossible for all the v__s in the world to have been developed from one cell line from a 50 year old murder. I mean just think about what a frozen steak looks like after a couple years in the freezer... how is a cell line that they keep taking out to use bits of going to stay undeteriorated and un-used-up for half a century? It's not. And in dismissing the obvious fact that it's not just one and it can't last forever, he's completely ignoring supply and demand: if people willingly use v__s developed from fetal cells, then the companies making them have 0 incentive to develop them without that ingredient. Supply and demand... also known as contributing to more trafficking in murdered-human cells. 
Wile goes on to quote some Catholics whom Wile seems to think are authorities on the subject, who declare that there is no moral problem with using these v__s / that the good outweighs the evil so it's fine. Well if a Catholic says it, it must be true. I mean, the Pope... no, let's just not go there today. *weary* Seriously, it's just as foolish to believe someone is spiritually correct and speaking truth simply because they are a member of a certain religion or denomination as it is to believe someone is morally correct and speaking truth simply because they identify with a certain political party. Foolish. I said what I said. 

And on that note, I'm gonna keep comments off for this one. 

How to Get MFW Kindergarten "Basic" Items for A Good Price

Okay so everyone is probably aware by now that My Father's World is no longer selling the Basic packages as of July 14th, 2021. From now on it's Deluxe or you can kiss your package discount goodbye.  

That's not the only bad news. I keep noticing curriculum components for their sets are going out of stock (and out of business) and MFW themselves is the only place with these items still in stock. What happens when they run out? Will they wind up having to redo the teacher's manuals to replace these items with something new if they can't get someone to pick back up with production of these items? 

Because of these things, I know there will be some who can't continue with My Father's World. I probably would have been one of them. 

Today let's talk about the Kindergarten curriculum because it's my personal favorite year. I feel like every package we've done from 1st grade to 1850TMT has had something I didn't really like about it or that didn't work for us. That's normal. It's normal for there to be things you like and dislike about any curriculum. The Kindergarten though... every one of my kids has done it down to my youngest currently doing it and I have never had any strong negative feelings about any part of it. So let's take a look at the Kindergarten packages including the now-discontinued Basic package. 

The raw price on the Deluxe as of 7/13/21 is $490.80 with a current 15% discounted price of $417.18. 
The raw price on the Basic as of 7/13/21 is $350.03 with a current 10% discounted price of $315.03. 
Shipping over $100 is currently free. 
So for the K package, Basic buyers who used other books they already had or frequented the library as opposed to buying the package with a book for each week, they would save around $102 by buying the Basic as a package. Buying all the Basic items piecemeal (no package) they save about $67. 

Assuming you have Amazon Prime so shipping for some of these things there is free, and that you order the minimum to get free shipping at the other stores, you can get basically the Basic set for as low as $324 (not including any taxes, etc.) if you shop around. Some things will have to be bought at MFW, such as student sheets and teacher manuals, but so long as you are mindful of shipping you can get it *almost* as cheap as the package discount was. 

On MFWbooks.com : $256.23
[_] Teacher's Manual - God's Creation from A to Z 
[_] Student Sheets - God's Creation from A to Z 
[_] God's Amazing World (unless you're already making an order from bereanbuilders.com - it's $3 cheaper there) 
[_] A-Z Textured Letters by Lauri (these can't be found anywhere else but you can get a lesser quality one for half the price on Amazon that comes in a 3 pack with an upper case and a digits versions as well) 
[_] Say Hello to Classical Music 
[_] Cuisenaire Rods Alphabet Book (seems to be discontinued or at least out of stock with no assurance to restock and MFW is the only place that has them right now) 
[_] Little Jewel Bird (unless you're already placing an order with R&S or Milestone Books in which case you can get it for around $3.60) 
[_] Dinosaurs for Little Kids (OR if you're placing an order with MasterBooks or Christianbook already you can add it to your order there for a little cheaper) 

Other Basic Items : 
[_] My Father's World A to Z Flashcard Set - currently $11.50 HERE 
[_] For the Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay - currently $12 HERE or $11 HERE 
[_] How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World - currently on sale for about $5.95 on both Christianbook and RainbowResource.
[_] The Year at Maple Hill Farm - under $8 on Amazon and Rainbow.
[_] How to Hide a Butterfly - under $4 on Amazon and Rainbow.
[_] Love You Forever - It's a dollar cheaper on Amazon and Rainbow, if you really want it. I personally find it really creepy. 
{The above 6 items came to $51 in my Rainbow Resource cart - free standard shipping is $50+} 

[_] Cuisenaire Rods Set of 155 Rods - currently $19.24 on Rainbow Resource or $15.71 on Amazon Prime 

[_] Inflatable Globe - check Dollar Tree! They often have them! 

Actually if you don't get ANY of even the Basic kids' story books (Little Jewel Bird, How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, The Year at Maple Hill Farm, How to Hide a Butterfly, Love You Forever) because you already own them or plan to use the library, and order it all from MFW, the subtotal is $299.21. 

You can lower your prices more if you keep your eyes out for good deals on secondhand curriculum. 

*All prices were current on July 13, 2021 and are subject to change. 

So if you still plan on sticking with MFW and need Kindergarten... OR ANY other year package... and the Deluxe is out of your budget or you already own a lot of things from the Deluxe package, don't forget to price check other sites. 
rainbowresource.com (they have almost everything ever and almost always cheaper) 
amazon.com (slim pickings on the homeschool front and not always cheaper, but sometimes) 
christianbook.com (decent-ish selection of homeschool materials and big sales often where some things will dip below Rainbow Resource prices. Also carries a large selection of very questionable stuff though so be wise.) 
masterbooks.com (carries lots of AIG products too) 
answersingenesis.org/store (AIG products and masterbooks products)
milestonebooks.com (for Rod and Staff [MFW suggests Spelling by Sound & Structure for grade 2], Little Jewel Books, and various "plain" [Amish, Mennonite] educational materials that are WAY more affordable than other curriculum companies' offerings) 

My Father's World to Stop Offering "Basic" Package Option

My Father's World Curriculum Company to Stop Offering "Basic" Package Option - Showing Preferentiality to Wealthier Customers?

So last night I was shocked to be made aware of this. 

I have some strong opinions, folks. Beware, strong opinions coming in! 

When I first started homeschooling my own kids, we weren't too well off, financially. It had been over a decade since I had been the homeschool student and I had to start from scratch figuring out what curriculum was available. Oh boy, was there a ton more options than when I was a kid! I didn't know how to find used curriculum or sources for price comparison shopping, I was at the mercy of whatever Google spat out for me based on whatever homeschool-y search-keywords my exhausted brain could come up with. I started down the never ending black hole of curriculum research and began sorting into 2 main lists: 
-Won't work/skeptical. 
+Might work/hopeful/appealing. 

I was flat out exhausted because I had all littles. When firstborn turned 5 was right after secondborn turned 3 and thirdborn turned 1... and I was 6 months pregnant with my fourth (dealing with some preterm labor scares) and my mom died that September, my beloved Nana had died a year before that, and for some reason all my teeth had started to become very weak and break/get cavities easily so I was in and out of the dentist's office so many times that year! I quickly figured out that because of my exhaustion and overwhelm, a "boxed" all-in-one curriculum was uncharacteristically appealing to me. I'm naturally someone who has to adjust and customize everything so this was really telling of how drained I was that I wanted something that came pre-planned. But I thought it would actually be good to start out with a boxed package and then just change what doesn't work little by little as the years go by. This was enhanced by the fact that I would find a subject I liked the looks of here and there but then some subjects I would wind up not liking anything and I would be left wondering how to fill those gaps if I did NOT go with a boxed. I mean, just fork out money for something I'm already thinking isn't going to work? That's not a thought a person on a budget wants to entertain. Did I mention we weren't living high on the horse? My husband was the only breadwinner and we had our 4th child on the way and now my boatload of dental bills and prenatal bills... We even had a neighbor who was like this underground distributor for a dumpster diving crew and she'd make sure we always had bread and bagels when the stores threw away the nearly-expireds. I would try to eat the dumpster stuff myself so I didn't have to waste the new store bought food on myself and could make sure the kids got the food less likely to make them sick. But I digress... somehow my + curriculum list wound up being dominated by boxed sets.  

From there I sorted the "+Might work" by price. There were some that, as much as I liked the look of them, were just way too expensive. My next set of lists were: 
$$ Too expensive, can't afford! 
 $  Probably could swing it if we save up and my mom did offer to help with the cost so maybe? 

I'm just going to tell you right now that if MFW didn't have a Basic package option, they would have been on a different list. Because even though my mom was offering to help this time, and Dad did make the offer again in her memory the first year after she passed, I somehow knew that it wasn't going to last. I felt guilty taking the money after growing up very poor; I felt like if they had any spare money now they deserved to use it on themselves. Then after Mom passed, anything reminding me of her just hurt for a long time. I knew that if I LIKED this company and wanted to stay with it despite my need to adjust and customize things, the Basic/Deluxe difference was likely going to be the difference between being able to stay with MFW or not. 

Not to mention I would pick up art/craft/music things for a few cents at yard sales and thrift stores and didn't need most of the Deluxe things anyway. I do hate being 'forced' to spend my husband's hard-earned money on things I already have or don't need because they are part of a package deal. 

However, since they did have the lower priced option and since I did wind up loving the curriculum, we kept with them. And now it's about 10 years after ordering that first MFW package for K for my firstborn, and I have all the packages from K to 1850TMT. I've bought some Deluxe, when the year was good and it looked like stuff we needed. I've bought Basic, when I already had the Deluxe items and when the Deluxe items weren't something I wanted and when our finances weren't up for the added expense of Deluxe. Once someone blessed us with the Adventures package second hand. Once I bought the RTR package from my sister. Other than that, we always ordered our packages directly from MFW brand new, very glad to have that Basic package option.

I'm sitting here after reading the announcement wondering how long they've been planning this. I wonder why they have come to the conclusion that a more expensive education is superior? This sounds very elitist to me. I remember perhaps 5 years ago trying to price some of the package components on other sites and coming across comments several times saying that MFW always strove to have the lowest prices and make the curriculum affordable for everyone, even down to offering no-frills Basic packages with only what they considered bare-minimum. And then this spring I was doing the same comparing and research/shopping again, when after noticing they'd added things to packages I already owned and upped prices, I thought I'd price compare and see if I could get the items that they'd added since I bought. I was thinking COVID inflation, not greed at the time. Well this time I noticed that many of the items were a few cents cheaper on Christianbook.com and most of them were about 30% cheaper on RainbowResource.com. I wondered why MFW was now charging more than competitors when I'd been led to believe one of their goals was to keep homeschooling affordable. Well here's the thing: the package discount wouldn't look so appealing if the individual items weren't so steep. That crossed out price number before the discounted price number needs to be significantly different so people feel like they are really saving money buy buying the package. The package discount is 100% absolutely the cheapest way to get every single item in it together - if you actually legitimately NEED every one of those items. But how many people actually want and need every single item in it, I wonder? The more items in the package I don't like/want/need, the less value that package has for me. 

And now they're getting rid of Basic packages because they conducted "years of research" and customer feedback leading them to the mistaken conclusion that if someone buys the Basic package over the Deluxe they will not continue homeschooling longterm or won't have MFW's idea of a good experience. On the social media post where I first heard about this, there were so many moms saying it was terrible news... obviously these moms' feedback didn't get counted. I know mine sure didn't. They never asked me. So if their entire sampling was only those who felt compelled to quit homeschooling after using the Basic package and couldn't resist laying a verbal guilt trip on MFW over it, but those of us who have been happily and silently using MFW for the past decade don't get a say, that's a faulty data sample. And after many of the long term Basic package customers contacting MFW to voice their misgivings, MFW is now reportedly replying with a CUT/PASTE message like this: We appreciate and value your feedback as a family that trusts My Father’s World. The decision to provide one curriculum package was not made hastily or without prayerful consideration of several years of customer data and feedback. Individual items will continue to be available. We are happy to help you purchase individual items at any time at 573-202-2000.

Individual items that cost up to 30% more than you can get them on Rainbow Resource. So basically, they already decided and didn't ask those who are now blindsided and upset by this, so now your voice doesn't count. Pay or don't play. The end. And the C&P thing is like salt in a wound. I can say it's obvious that IF the only way someone was able to homeschool with MFW was the discount from buying Basic vs. Deluxe, then this leaves them with the option of public school or find a more affordable homeschool curriculum that might not fit their child's needs as well. 

I'm really disappointed. 

I'm disappointed in MFW for the way they're treating their poorer customers - customers who probably feel like they are being devalued and ignored. 

I'm really REALLY disappointed in the moms who are rich enough that this doesn't affect them, or have the good health, internet service, and free time to shop around and piece it together and think that means everyone who claims they simply can't is just a whiner who sits around waiting for reasons to complain on the internet. Moms who act like MFW is a social club for those are are willing to pay in and you could be in it too if you REALLY wanted to. Moms who glibly say just pray and your curriculum will magically appear. Moms who say things like, 'oh just buy the Deluxe and then sell the things you don't need' as if everyone lives near enough a functional post office and doesn't mind dragging all the little ones out to mail this and that. Acting as if everyone ought to be totally cool with the risks of buying and selling person to person on the internet or having the market flooded with all the extra nonsense we're all now forced to buy at 30% more than RR has it for sale without the risk. Have some compassion, people! Get over yourself and realize that you aren't them and everyone has unique circumstances so yeah, for some people, this IS a deal breaker and NO they don't have to justify that to you, even if they aren't living in poverty or on their death bed or having the curriculum bought by a relative and shipped to them in a foreign country. And it doesn't mean they are faithless or not praying hard enough either so sit yourself down with your holier-than-thou routine. 

I'm disappointed that nobody seems to be able to think outside of their own circumstances and understand how this will negatively affect others. 

Another thought voiced by a concerned mom is that everyone who already has packages may be in for an unpleasant surprise too, since the TMs mention Basic and Deluxe package items and they will likely want to redo them now. I'm thinking if they're redoing it to take out all references to Basic vs. Deluxe already, they will probably want to do any other updating necessary at the same time. Which if they DO go as far as a full new edition update, devalues the resale value of our Basic-option-era Teachers' Manuals. And if they don't go that far and merely remove references to differing packages, will drive up the demand and price of used curriculum to the point where in leu of getting new materials at a discount, home educators are having to get used materials for almost the same price they'd have paid for a new Basic package before. 

Recently, in shopping for high school for my oldest, I noticed something. There are no Basic packages for high school. MFW offers one choice and that's that. Putting everything MFW deems necessary for 9th grade into the cart spat me out a subtotal of about $1,000. For one kid. For one year. Not including some required extras to be bought elsewhere such as a $40 calculator and $300 lab kit for science. Looking at the things in the package, seeing questionable items like the newer version of The Purpose Driven Life and other things that triggered a vague memory of someone warning me about them, I wondered why I'm being forced to buy these things, why they're not optional as part of a Deluxe set for only those who want them? 

And that's where I got off the MFW train, folks. (Meaning I no longer make a yearly purchase order from them nor do I consider myself a "fan" any longer.) Sure, we're in a much better place financially now, and I have all the pre-highschool packages I need so I'm only needing consumables for the younger kids, so if we used that stinking stimulus money that we were forced to receive for The Virus Which Shall Not Be Named, we could have done it just fine. But that's not the point really... the point is that people don't appreciate being forced to buy extras they don't actually want, it's completely unnecessary (and IMHO wasteful) to spend $1,000+ on curriculum for one person for one year, most average people would be barely (or not even) able to afford that and only if they have every lower grade package already so they're not buying 2 packages in one year, and the most important thing is that I don't want my money supporting misleading philosophies. On the thread of that last part, I stumbled on a copy of The Purpose Driven Life from back when it was still called The Purpose Driven Life and bought it so I could read it ahead, in preparation for the decision of whether to go with the MFW high school packages or not. And that book was a no for me. It was quite a mix of "That's great!" and "Woah, that is NOT Biblical!" I prayed about it for months with my husband and alone and eventually we decided not to use MFW for high school because they FORCE you to support that with your money when you buy the associated high school package, just like how now they are now set to FORCE all customers to buy art and craft supplies and nonessential subjects when you buy one of their lower grade packages.

Remembering what it was like to be new to being the teacher-parent in the homeschooling endeavor and sick and exhausted and mourning and overwhelmed and just wanting to find a packaged curriculum set that would get me through the year without the cost starving us to death and with all the major boxes checked, I feel an empathetic sense of dread as to what MFW's decision is going to cost their less financially-endowed customers. 

UPDATE 01/29/23: 

The latest from MFW is a push for micro-schools. See the presentations for yourself here. I have always wanted to start one myself, so I was interested in what they had to say. Unfortunately I felt like in some places some of what was said could be construed as advocating that micro-schools are better than homeschools or that God intended for children to be educated collectively rather than by their own parents all along. I felt like some scripture was misrepresented/misapplied to support this view and the main idea was that children are better off with the village raising them so we should curate a good village to raise our kids. Perhaps I misunderstood but at the time I watched it, I remember being bothered by a comment that insinuated God gave our children to everyone not just to the parents as a justification for having them in a micro-school instead of homeschooling. 

Now, I'm all for micro-schools being created and available for those who want them, especially as an option for those who want the benefits of homeschooling or private schooling but can't right now. But something about all of this just doesn't sit right with me. Now I'm looking back at how the website design for MFW had changed over the last howevermany years to appeal as much/ more to private schools than homeschools, and honestly the price hikes (meaning how much their prices have gone up compared to competitors, not how much everyone's prices have gone up since COVID) make sense in that light. People sending their kids to a private school expect to pay more. People starting a private micro-school could be willing to pay more to micro-school than to homeschool because the budget and labor would be split with others and the overall cost would be less than a traditional private school. Making the homeschooling side of it more expensive and overloaded with time-sucking extracurriculars for us plebians could push diehard MFW fans into the micro-school format. More MFW-using micro-schools would undoubtedly mean overall profit increases for the company. I see absolutely nothing to back up the absurd claim that parents who buy minimalistic (basic package) curriculum with which to homeschool are less likely to continue homeschooling long term. If that were true, my mom wouldn't have homeschooled 3 kids to graduation going the cheapest way she could every year. You either believe in the value of homeschooling or you don't. I have never seen anything to back up the claim that most parents WANT to pay more for bigger packages with more irremovable elective options that they didn't get to choose. Therefor it is logical to me to wonder if this whole thing was profit-motivated. I have nothing against making money: I am strongly opposed to both overpricing things and to manipulating people into buying things they don't want or need. 

The whole situation makes me feel rather like my trust in the company was misplaced all along. I was led to believe that they cared about helping everyone homeschool no matter how poor they are or how simple they need to make it to have it work for their family. Now I see a company which has done a 180 to support and push for micro-schools even OVER homeschooling and cater to those homeschooling parents who are more well-off financially. Feels like a bait-and-switch. 

Will I ever use the materials I bought from them again? Some of them, yes. As I think I have mentioned before in other posts, some of the package components didn't work for us and some of the books I found to be questionable in content. However many of the various components were very educational and enjoyable. Most of what MFW sells are items that are curated from various other companies. I own K, 1st, Adventures, and the whole Family Cycle already and had bought extra student sheets for many of them along the way, so I may well use these packages again at some point. I would say it's even probable that I would use something I liked and own and even have backup consumables for and had always intended on using again. It's not that I think the product has no merit, I just can't support things with my money that I feel are predatory, dishonest, ineffective, useless, wasteful, etc. and in my personal opinion some of those negative descriptions apply to some of the products they offer in packages that you can't take apart. I have begun to feel uneasy about MFW as a company in the last few years, uneasy about their current advocation of micro-schools over homeschools, uneasy about trusting them to buy their packages blind and know that I'm not going to be giving money to companies producing spiritually-questionable products. Therefore I will indeed continue to use what components I already own that I don't find morally or spiritually questionable, but will I buy from them again? Very unlikely. If I liked a component that much I would go to the company that actually produces it and buy it there. 

And on that note, I will say I have been very grateful for the wide variety of curriculum brands that MFW has exposed me to. I have been able to find many wonderful things that suit my family very well after hearing/trying the brand name through MFW. For that, I will always be grateful, and for the good memories from the years it was the perfect fit for my family. I simply no longer wish to support what I've been seeing from them in the last few years. 

Should I let my Teenager read Harry Potter?

"I'm considering letting my 15 year old daughter read Harry Potter. She's been asking for a while now because her cousins have read and talk about the books with her and she's really into reading mythology. My SIL says it's harmless pretend magic and that if something supernatural happened she wouldn't let them read it anymore, but that she doesn't think there are really any supernatural intentions and that they are even somewhat allegorical to Christianity. When I mentioned it to my friend though, she seemed kind of horrified that I was even considering it. Are they really all that bad? My daughter is very discerning for a teenager and she's saved and very mature so I don't think there should be any problem with letting her read them." 

Well first of all, there's no such thing as a spell or incantation that does not have supernatural intentions or results. Reading a book about a wizard and saying "IF something supernatural happened..." as though one would be downright shocked if it did, is very naive. One simple example, using spells to make things fly is a very common theme in the series, from book one. They use more and more complicated and impressive spells as the series goes on, fighting larger and more supernaturally powerful and terrifying villains as the series goes on. I mean, think about it; they are at a school for wizardry and they spend the rest of their childhood going to school there. So they are there for the express purpose of learning witchcraft. 

1 Peter 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

Deuteronomy 18:9-12 When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the LORD, and because of these abominations the LORD your God drives them out from before you.

Ephesians 6:12-13 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

If you believe witchcraft and the occult are wrong as the Bible says, then consuming them into your mind via pleasure-reading is wrong. Witchcraft and the occult are not good, pure, right, true, admirable, etc. and the Bible says to fill your mind with that which IS good, pure, right, true, admirable, etc. I believed at her age that I was strong enough in my faith to do and read pretty much whatever I wanted without it sucking me in, that I had good discernment and was wise enough to know where to draw the lines, but is that really the point? Is the point of freedom in Christ so that we can still act like the lost and consume what the lost consume? 

Also, I was wrong. Very very gradually over many years of that point of view, I wound up obsessed with vampires and fallen away from God. Even supposedly Christian allegories can be dangerous. An older relative of mine was allowed to read The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit as a child on the premise that they were allegorical, and that began an obsession in him with the occult similar to my own slow obsession with vampires. Except that he never came back to God. He turned his back on God completely and is now living a lifestyle which declares he believes his own understanding of what feels right and wrong to be more important than what the Creator SAYS is right and wrong. I would not myself have thought those particular books that detrimental, not nearly so detrimental as Harry Potter for sure, until I learned that they were the turning point away from God for this person. 

I'm not saying there's never a place for reading allegories or that one can never read things that have some allegorical benefit alongside some questionable material and come away unharmed, however I believe if one reads such things it should be with ACCOUNTABILITY of another Christian who is mature in the faith reading it WITH them and discussing the content frequently through the lens of God's Word. I do not believe it is good or safe to read things that have questionable and unbiblical content with the intent of mere pleasure reading. To read a book for pleasure, to read it alone, is to read it with your mind and heart wide open, whether you believe that or not! Sometimes if we are very guarded and careful we can read a book and keep the doors partially closed but the act of pleasure reading by default opens the door to your imagination and because getting drawn into the story so that it plays out like a movie inside your own head is really the whole point of pleasure reading, it's pretty much impossible to keep the doors closed against seeping evil completely, unless there is accountability. I would wholeheartedly urge you to read the books with or before her or else hold firm that No she will not be reading them. ESPECIALLY since it seems that your daughter now has a taste for books about the supernatural and mythology. Once one develops an appetite for that sort of thing, and I'm speaking from experience, it is very hard to keep from continuing down that road. Once you put your foot in the Harry Potter pond and say that's okay because she's got discernment and is saved, what else will be arguable as alright to read on the same grounds? If it were my daughter, I would under no circumstances allow her to read Harry Potter without my reading it with her and discussing it heavily as an object lesson of the things we are told to stay away from as Christians and why. I would require skipping reading of any descriptions of specific occult practices and spells also. This is my 2 cents and I understand that I'm probably in the minority but this is what I firmly believe. 

One last thing, just because something is said to be allegorical to the Christian faith doesn't mean it's automatically beneficial to the Christian faith. The Devil pollutes by taking something good and mixing in a little bit of poison so that we will consume it based on the good, thinking we are strong enough to just spit out the poisonous parts. Well even if you spit out poison, a bit of it touched your mouth and soaked in as you spat out the rest, and you may not die or even see the effects of it from one or two exposures but after years of consuming media laced with poison, the poison has accumulated and you may not even realize the gradual effect it has had in eroding your faith until you're years into pain and suffering and feeling abandoned and persecuted by God and you look back at your bright eyed young self and think, "How happy and full of faith I was! If only I could feel like that again..." or worse, you lose your faith entirely.