A Beka Review

by Sharla Malone
(McKinney, TX)

Product: Complete Curriculum
Subject: All
Levels Used: 2-4
Dates Used: 2003-2006

Likes: Very nice text books, lesson plans easy for parents to follow, is a full curriculum (PreK-12 ... all subjects included).

Dislikes: After home schooling for several years with A Beka, I came to the realization that it was NOT for my family. I have learned the hard way that every family is different and EVERY child is different.

My oldest is a natural reader (please read my review of MFW curriculum), so being a novice home school mom at the time, I figured that she should excel in all other subjects as well. We started using A Beka in the 2nd grade. We had several family issues that came up from grade 2-4 (hard pregnancy, new baby, selling a house, building a new house, etc). A Beka was so structured that we "fell behind".

As time went on, I felt as though our home school experience was becoming a disaster. It was like being in a public/private school setting in our home. That is NOT what I wanted our home school experience to be like! It was very trying on my daughter (and myself) as I felt that we needed to push through and "catch up" on what we were behind in. We even spent a whole summer trying to "catch up"!

I attended private school all my years of schooling, and I felt that what was going on in my home was exactly what I went through in school ... sitting at a desk all day working out of the same workbook/textbook and being "left behind" because I was not strong in a certain subject, but it needed to get done, so we pressed on.

We had to do something different ... my daughter would cry when we started schooling! I feel as though, for our family, that A Beka is not a good match for us.

It is not a flexible curriculum. It is very structured. Each year you learn a little information on a big subject and then cover it a little more in detail the next year and a little more the next year, etc. Definitely not a "hands-on" curriculum. Very boring reading out of the same book for the whole year.