For math I like Horizons from Alpha Omega Press, then since it ends after sixths grade I use Saxon afterward.

I really like “The Story of the World” for history up to fourth grade, and “The Mystery of History” afterwar(my only complaint about Mystery of History is that the series isn’t finished, it is to be five book series but only two books are finished.) I’ve heard great things about Tapestry of Grace, but I haven’t tried it.

Go to http://www.rainbowresource.com and request their paper catalog, its the size of a large phone book and has almost every resource ever made listed inside. Most products are accompanied by a detailed description and review. I believe there is a section on African American history, I am not sure though.

If you are interested in a Yahoo group there is one called Support4HomeSchool that is Christian and has homeschoolers from all over the United States as well as from a few other countries who exchange ideas via an e-mail loop. Just go to Yahoo homepage, click “groups” and then search for that group. Its free to join, and it is the most personable group I’ve had the privilege to belong to. I feel more fellowship with them than I do even with my local group I see face to face.

Oh, yeah, my favorite resource for Bible is the Explorers Bible Study series.

God bless you, I hope you like Rainbow Resource!

I couldn’t pick just one favorite, especially since it changes from year to year! If it’s options you’re looking for, you need only look to the Rainbow Resource catalog. It’s over 1000 pages of homeschool curriculum (with reviews). The new catalog just came out (I got mine two weeks ago). They’re also on the web at the link below.

You mentioned Sonlight, Veritas, Christian Book (not familiar with that last one, did you mean Christian Liberty Press?) Are you familiar with Bob Jones Univ., A Beka, and Alpha Omega? These are some of the other big ones.

Much of the curriculum on the market today is Christian (ask anyone who’s not and they’ll tell you!) I’m not familiar with any African-American curriculum, but then, we’re not African-American, so I wouldn’t be looking for it.

Nothing! Well, that’s not quite true. My older kids are starting to like using various curricula. Mostly we use a curriculum for math. Miquon Math is what I’m using with my youngest (3). I love it’s algebraic questions and it’s use of cusinaire rods. Singapore Math is being used by four of my kids (4, 6, 7& 9). It has amazing word problomes, way more challenging than in any other math program I know of. Teaching Textbooks is what my eldest two (10&12) are using. It’s excellent for independent learners (which they are). It does however have lots and lots of review which my eldest who is a math wiz finds very tideous. We’ve used Rosetta Stone a number of times with various languages (Japanes, Italian, Latin Arabic…). It is a great immersion program. Real Science 4 Kids is the only science curriculum we’ve used. It has great experiments and the text is good too. We’ve used all their subjects.

I like:

Abeka and Bob Jones grammar/writing

Bob Jones history, lit, and science

Bob Jones spelling through grade 6; Abeka spelling 7th on

Praise Hymn Bible [THE BEST] through 6th grade

Art – Abeka, Art with a Purpose, anything by How Great Thou Art except the preschool book; we have also used ‘The Big Yellow Drawing Book’ last year and this year are using ‘Drawing Textbook’

For uppper elementary reading we used various Journeyforth books by Bob Jones. My kids still re-read these and LOVE them. There are some GREAT sets – Arby Jenkins, Sherlock Jones, and others I can’t remember. Also the Accidental Detective series is WONDERFUL.

Math – my absolute favorite is MathUSee, although I didn’t start it till pre-alg, so if you have younger kids I can’t comment on that.

You can find almost everything except Abeka books and MathUSee at Rainbow Resource, and most items are cheaper there. They also have GREAT descriptions. They have Journeyforth books much cheaper than other places. I use various logic and writing programs from them, and they list [online] the grades the books are intended for, and provide such thorough descriptions that I always know EXACTLY what I am getting. Other places I’ve ordered from have turned out to be disappointing because the descriptions were not accurate enough for me to know what I was ordering.

Math – Math U See, I’m using it from Alpha through Zeta (1st-6th grade levels), after that I’ll use VideoText Interactive.

Science – I love Apologia! I also use Heart of Wisdom.

Writing – IEW

Language Arts – Learning Language Arts Through Literature

History – All American History, Hands of a Child, Homeschool in the Woods. After I’m done with AAH, I’ll be using TRISMS with Hands of a Child and Homeschool in the Woods from 6th grade-high school.

Geography – Hands of a Child, Geography Matters

Lit – the library 🙂

Latin – I’ve rewritten Prima Latina and Latina Christiana to make more sense and include more instruction

Spanish – The Easy Spanish

Greek – Elementary Greek (my son decided after 2 years of Latin he wants to learn Greek this year…)

Bible – the Bible 🙂 We use The Narrated Bible and work our way through it. We do some studies from Heart of Wisdom as well.

Art – we do Art History units with book from the library.

I think that’s about it? We’re pretty eclectic. I also download audio books and get them from the library, and we do read-alouds a lot. My son has individual reading time each day, but he’s very auditory, so he loves listening to them 🙂

My favorite language arts/spelling curriculum is Spell to Write and Read by Wanda Sanseri (www.bhi.org)

Memoria Press has a free catalog of classical resources you could receive by request.

Beautiful Feet Press and Lifetime Books usually have great resources as well.

Greenleaf Press and Miller’s Pad and Press will also be happy to send free catalogs.

Wow, that is a loaded question… there is a WIDE variety of options out there… and you will need to narrow down your choices. All I can give you is our experiences over the last six years.

I started with my child’s level (age and grade are not necessarily synonymous), his learning style, what we established as goals for academics and then started looking at curriculum.

For my son, we decided on unit studies. We used Learning Adventures which is very parent friendly curriculum. Starting this year, we will be using Notgrass American History. For Math, we use http://www.aleks.com/, and Apologia Biology.

As for African-American resources, visit http://www.naaha.com/

Khepri Enterprises sells secular African centered homeschooling curricula; the link is below:

http://www.kheprient.com/childprod.htm

They sent me a sample page from one of their books, and it was beautiful and quite informative. They focus on African history, as in pre-slavery, because the history of African people did not begin on a slave ship. There was life, community, villages, sculpture, etc. before then.

I also like Christian Liberty Press, because it is quite affordable. However, I found a huge problem with the colorization of the African American characters’ lips in their kindergarten phonics readers. (The lips look off-color and distorted.) However, I wrote to them, and they assured me this will be corrected with the next printing of these readers. For my son, I went through each reader and colored the lips of the characters appropriately before I allowed him to see them, as no child should have to see a distorted image of him or herself.

Other than the aforementioned, I think Christian Liberty Press is a very good homeschooling curriculum–especially for the price.

Time4Learning.com offers a good online home education program for $20 a month–less if you pay quarterly or yearly. They use the same curriculum as many of the public schools.

If you would like to e-mail me off list for further information, please fee free to do so. I hope the above has been helpful.

Sonlight Curriculum will send you a catalogue. Find them on the Web. They send their catalogues out real quick and they are prompt with their deliveries. They also have a money back guarantee. They have what they consider the best materials in their catalogue. It’s worth a look.

We use a mix of curriculums.

ABeka (Math 2nd grade, History) https://www.abeka.com/

Singapore (Math -3rd grade) http://www.lovetolearn.net/catalog/group/Singapore_Math

Bob Jones (Spelling, Reading, Grammar, Bible – both grades) http://www.bjupress.com/nav/category/Catalogs/Order+Forms/Brochures?path=5

Chrisitian Liberty Press (Science -both grades) http://ebiz.netopia.com/clpress/

And we read LOTS of books that we either get from the library or buy on Ebay or locally. http://www.ebay.com/

Science, Art and History is supplemented via books and hands on experiences.

I googled “African American Homeschool Resources” and got this:

http://www.naaha.com/

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/religion/afrocentric.htm

there were many more google results, here is the link: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=african+american+homeschool+resources

Best wishes to you… homeschooling is not an easy road, but it is so rewarding and the fruit of your labor will be seen in your kids.