Curriculum.

Okay, you've studied the catalog and the internet, read reviews, read books about curriculum and you've made the decision and ordered something and now it's here. What do you do now?   I've opened curriculum books and boxes and thought, "wow, there's not much here." and I've also opened them and thought "Oh my goodness, I'm overwhelmed!"  This is why I recommend, if at all possible going someplace where you can open the books before you buy them.  It is so true that you can't judge a book by its cover, so go to a curriculum fair, a homeschool convention exhibit hall, a homeschool consignment store or a book store and open them up and look inside.  If there is no other option, try a "search within this book" service on a web site or request to download sample pages.  If you get it and there's not much there, maybe you can use it as a "spine" book and supplement it with things from the library and the web.  If there's too much, you're going to need to decide what parts of it you want to teach and what parts you want to leave out.  Yes.  Leave.  Out.  You are not going to be able to possibly teach your children every single fact about every single subject so you need to decide what's important to you to teach and teach that.  Don't let the curriculum writers rule you.  They've written what's important to them.  When we started out, we used a delightful fun curriculum called Konos that required a lot of preparation work from the teacher, but was worth it, in my opinion.  So much fun, so many memories ... the only problem is, my kids don't remember most of it ... only my husband and I do.  This raises some questions in my head.  Do they not remember it because the curriculum we used the next couple of years didn't build on it like it should or do kids just not form solid memories at the early elementary ages?  I guess it's enough that we had a lot of fun and we have pictures.  :-P