by Nan Keltie

Created on: June 18, 2008   Last Updated: March 21, 2009

With a new baby on the way, I didn't have time to develop lesson plans or brainstorm for activities and art projects. With A Beka, all I had to do was unpack our curriculum when it arrived and scan over the next day's lesson. It was that simple.

Since A Beka had come highly recommended to us by various friends and educators, we ordered their Kindergarten curriculum with confidence. The day the UPS truck delivered our books, we could hardly wait to start school!

A Beka Publishing has never been one to cut corners. Their textbooks are beautiful, colorful and provided an excellent education for our daughter and later, her two brothers. I appreciated their thorough coverage of subjects and the wonderful teacher's editions, which especially made our first year a breeze.

To demonstrate the high quality of these books, let me share a story with you. We were some of the first homeschoolers in our area of Kentucky at the time. Several people in our church were public school teachers and were a bit "suspect" of my ability to teach our children. In order to put any suspicions to rest, we made it a point to visit the county superintendent of schools before starting kindergarten at home.

We introduced ourselves, shared our plan to homeschool Melissa and then placed our A Beka curriculum on his desk. He flipped through many pages, reading here and there, looked at the scope and sequence, the teacher's manual, the student texts, etc. My husband and I sat quietly while he did this. When he looked up, he smiled and said,

"I'm impressed. You won't have any problems from us regarding homeschooling your daughter. In fact, this curriculum proves she will receive a quality education."

After that positive experience, I showed our A Beka curriculum to one of the teachers at church who was also impressed. She kept saying "Wow!" and made a quick turn-around from being suspicious of homeschooling to being one of our best supporters. She also talked about it to other public school teachers at church, and we suddenly had a whole team of educators behind us! They rallied around our efforts and offered any worksheets or helps that I could use from their files. Needless to say, I didn't have to ask often. A Beka provides more than you can use!

Having said all of this, let me close with something we discovered in the 4th-8th grades. My husband, who has a degree in math and science, was the one who taught the children these subjects. They would get up early enough to have arithmetic with Daddy before

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>