Our first boxed curriculum was in heavy rotation by month one and down to about a third of its material by month three. It’s still in a closet somewhere. I didn’t ask a single real question before buying it – I just wanted to feel like I’d done something official before we started.
We’ve bought curriculum since that got used once and put away, curriculum that sat unopened for a year, and curriculum we still use three years later. The difference was never the price or the reviews. It was whether I’d actually asked what our real week could hold before I bought it.
Does It Survive a Bad Week?
A curriculum that only works on a perfect day doesn’t actually work. If it can’t bend around a sick day or a rough morning, it’s going to end up in the closet with the rest of them.
Does It Need Supplies We Don’t Already Have?
One “complete” science kit sat mostly untouched because half of what it needed wasn’t something we kept on hand, and the moment to order it always passed. Now I check what a curriculum actually requires before it’s on its way to the house.
Can My Kid Do Most of It Without Me Sitting Beside Them?
A boxed language arts program needed forty-five uninterrupted minutes of me every single day. Our house didn’t have that. It went back within a month, and I started asking this question before every purchase since.
These three questions are the exact filter I built into The Intentional Homeschool Planner – a worksheet to run any curriculum decision through before the money’s spent, not after it’s in the closet.
For the rest of what we’ve learned buying (and returning) curriculum, our Homeschool hub has more.
These questions are explained in full in the Curriculum Survival Filter.
