COMPLETE My Father’s World Homeschool Curriculum Review

Welcome to my My Father’s World Homeschool Curriculum Review PLUS Video REVIEWS! We have been using My Father’s World (MFW) curriculum in our homeschool for grade’s 3-8 since 2017 and today I’m going to share all of the pro’s and con’s we’ve found along the way, what we love about it, some things we don’t and why we stick with it.

COMPLETE My Father’s World Homeschool Curriculum Review

MFW K-8 is a beautiful homeschool curriculum that scored in Cathy Duffy’s top picks for good reasons. Best way I can describe it is that it combines a Charlotte Mason meets Classical education meets Unit studies meets Classical Conversations, all with a Biblical approach (and at a fraction of the cost of other comparable curriculum’s).

MFW is one of the two best curriculum’s we have ever used. Parents out there, I’ve got to tell you, not only do I look forward to school days with My Father’s World, but my kids learn more (with less headache) and more joy with this curriculum than any curriculum we’ve used before. For the record we’ve used Lifepacks, Horizons, Abeka (in some subjects), Weaver, as well as random books by publishers like Scholastic, Usborne, etc….

My Father’s World groups grades preschool-3rd together in the Discover level, grades 3-8 together in the Investigate level, and the Declare level is high school (9-12). If you have children in the Investigate level they recommend using add on’s for your children in the lower level. We have only used it for grades 3-8. We do not use it for the lower elementary or high school grade children we have.

I love so many things about this curriculum. From it’s heavy emphasis and focus on history from a Biblical perspective, to it’s approach to science (also from a Biblical perspective), to the social studies, and civics education and of course art. I love how it goes through in a chronological way that makes sense and uses unit studies to combine all the subjects, making them meaningful to children at multiple maturity levels which invites discussions among the kids and further learning.

There are many reason’s people choose to homeschool, we personally have dozens. Two of them include 1. to give our children a firm foundation in the teachings of Christ as early as possible and 2. because academics are important to us and we believe we can do a better job for our children in this area.

Since academic excellence is one of the reason we homeschool, one of the things we appreciate about My Father’s World is that we feel like with it there are less gaps in education. I like to use it with the What Your Child Needs To Know series of books as a library supplement for my children (especially in grades 3-6), and these books fit together nicely with MFW. Having used the curriculum since 2017 and read through some of the What Your Child Needs To Know series I can honestly say that if academic quality is one of the reasons you are homeschooling, than you’ll be glad to know My Father’s World seems to do a superior job making sure kids are learning everything and more that they need to know.

In my opinion this curriculum is an excellent choice for helping kids excel in academics, in character, and most importantly in their knowledge and love of Christ. We love that it relies heavily on a Charlotte Mason approach which nurtures a love of learning, nature walks, and incorporates whole child and positive parenting principles.

.From their website;

My Father’s World Christian homeschool curriculum combines the best of Charlotte Mason’s ideas, classical education, and unit studies with a biblical worldview and global focus. By always keeping God’s Word central, we partner with you to provide life-transforming, academic excellence with a Christian worldview.

My Father’s World Website

12 Pro’s to My Father’s World Curriculum

1. It allows you to teach children in various grades at the same time-3rd-8th graders work on the same things at the same time-8th graders will have a couple extra books to go through AND if you have younger children they can join in with the older kids (again they will have a few of their own easier books to work through).
2. It is accommodating to various learning styles (maximizing the child’s retention).
3. There is very little prep work involved-it is big family mama friendly and what we call “open and go”. This is one of the reasons why I chose it over a strict Charlotte Mason pedagogy.
4. In Charlotte Mason fashion, this course provides books written in a more conversational tone by people that are experts and passionate about the subjects they are writing about (as opposed to traditional textbooks that are generally very dry, missing detail, full of rote facts to be memorized-and forgotten after the test- and uninteresting).
5. Yearly packages can be purchased for $350 to $500 and most of the material is non consumable!!!! That means you can use it again for the younger kids! Please don’t make the same mistake I made when I looked at the curriculum the first time and thought the $500 is per kid, it is NOT per kid, it’s per level/year for ALL the kids in 3-8!
6. MFW staff and the support is AMAZING. For example if you are not sure what level to put each of your children in they will walk you through it (they saved me $200 last year). What is more is they even give you a call at the beginning of the school year to ask you how you are doing and they ask if they can pray with you!
7. Of all the curriculum’s I’ve seen MFW is one of the more economic choices if you have multiple kids because basically the only thing you need to buy for future grades or multiple students are the student sheets which average $30.00. Most everything else is non consumable. So it’s probably one of the most inexpensive curriculum’s if you have multiple kids to teach.
8. The lessons can be adapted to be easier for the little ones and more in-depth for the older students. So for example, while the older kids are memorizing and writing a paragraph on what an archipelago is the younger ones can be drawing or painting it, or creating a clay sculpture.
9. Another thing I loved about this curriculum when I only had kids in 3-8 is if we needed to take a couple days off was not impossible to catch up. In fact, there were some days we decided to double up and do two days in one. This of course made for a longer day, but was doable. Note; once we had more kids branching out into high school and kids in preschool through 2nd grade this aspect became less do-able and doubling up days were no longer possible for us.
10. The schedule usually allows for a light Friday so that any work not completed during the week can be finished on Friday-or the day can be used for review.
11. Courses teach a creationists viewpoint-some people have voiced concern that MFW includes Usborne books which teach evolution-please note that Usborne has worked with MFW and adapted books to be evolution free specifically for MFW and the evolution portions are removed from the Usborne books.
12. There are large, exceedingly helpful support groups on Facebook, not only for the full curriculum, but for each of the levels so you will likely never feel alone using this curriculum!
13. The curriculum is PACKED with RICH education.

7 Con’s To My Father’s World Curriculum

I use “con’s” loosely because all of these may or may not be an issue and/or problem to you!

1. This first one isn’t a con but more of something to know; My Fathers World packages do not supply math or a complete Language Arts curriculum, but they do have recommendations which they sell. This is actually a good thing because these are area’s that are very specific and need to be chosen based on kids needs.
2. I would like to be clear that we absolutely love the Language Arts course, Language Lessons for Today that MFW suggests and sells. These are Charlotte Mason based, and the kids love it. On the other hand, the recommended Writing Strands did not work for us, in fact we hated it. Writing Strands just felt like it was over simplifying things for us and didn’t click with my kids. We tried it years ago and couldn’t get through the first month with it. We used it again for most of the homeschool year recently for our third child and stuck it through almost to the end of the book. My son did become a better writer using this but it was very hard.
3. I do not believe the creators of the My Father’s World schedule had experience in homeschooling children in all 3 of the Discover (Preschool-3rd grade), Investigate (3-8th grade), and Declare (9th-12th grade) all at the same time. Then again, not many people-let alone curriculum specialists-do! I found their support in this area little limited. This is where the Facebook groups can come in handy though and I do believe MFW is still hands down the best I’ve seen for multi grade homeschooling. If you are teaching to kids in all the levels I will be creating a post soon with tips in this area.
4. Similar to above, I think MFW could spend a little more time, maybe even work with a few of their big family consumers and fine tune some of the book recommendations. For example it would be helpful if they would suggest only certain parts of some of the books for certain grade’s because although our 8th grade student could easily do all of the daily workload, the 5th grade child really struggled with everything in the 3-8th grade schedule, and it was so heavy for him that retention declined a bit. Since I had not taught the level before I didn’t know which books to skip for the 5th grader.
5. I’m not sure the curriculum is designed with ADHD kids in mind. It is slightly heavy, book wise for ADHD kids. Again, it can easily be adjusted to be an excellent fit for kids with ADHD and I think the FB groups would be helpful in this area. I’ll be covering this topic with tips I have soon.
6. Creation to the Greeks Cycle moved through slowly in some time periods like Egypt. I’ve seen some people dump the whole curriculum for this. In my opinion this is a little like throwing the baby out with the bathwater! One doesn’t have to spend as much time studying a specific unit as the schedule recommends if they feel like it’s moving too slowly.
7. In Exploration to 1850 it seemed like a book or two didn’t really need to be in the mix-and them being there was just redundant and weighed us down. I felt like the addition of them could have been a little more thought through.

Although My Father’s World does have these con’s for our family, we find that the pro’s far outweigh the con’s for us. I am a homeschool graduate, and have now been homeschooling my own children since 2009 and something I’ve learned is that although the wrong curriculum can be an awful burden and weigh you and your kids down year round, there are times when even the right curriculum has hard spots that you’ve just got to work hard to get through-or make a few simple adjustments and viola, you are through it.

It can take a little research and prayer to know the difference between the two.

What we Use Instead for Math & Language Arts

Instead of Writing Strands, we have used Wisdom Words from Weaver for teaching all of the children K-6, Easy Grammar by Wanda Phelps, and around grade 5-7 or 8 we love and recommend Jump In (another Cathy Duffy top pick).

Recently we have discovered The Good And The Beautiful Language Arts & Literature, and we completely fell in love with it. It works very nicely with My Father’s World since they both pull heavily from the Charlotte Mason living books/rich education philosophies. If you choose this you could probably omit Language Lessons for Today since it’s so similar to TG&TB (we are doing both).

For math, we do not use their recommendations because we found Math U See and Teaching Textbooks before we found My Father’s World (Singapore math) and they were a great fit for our kids. I will say SO MANY homeschoolers LOVE the math curriculum MFW suggests and sells, and I do know it is one of the great ones out there!

COMPLETE My Father’s World Homeschool Curriculum Review VIDEOS!

Although I can’t give you a hands on experience by inviting all of you to my home and letting you look through my books (like I do for locals) I will do my best to give you the next most helpful thing, I’ve created video’s for you showing you the curriculum. I’ve also created a day in the life, very real and raw peek into our homeschool day’s using it.

Final Word’s in COMPLETE My Father’s World Homeschool Curriculum Review

I hope this article has given you a better idea as to whether or not My Fathers World would be a fit for your homeschooling family’s specific needs! Come back next week because I’ll be sharing my tips for using the curriculum!

If you are still not sure, or if you are overwhelmed and wondering if this curriculum or another would be the best fit for you and your family, I’ve been there! Believe me, I know first hand how difficult it can be finding the right curriculum. Be sure to read my post Picking The Best Homeschool Style For Your Family. It includes a video that can make narrowing down the right curriculum for your family very easy!

Feel free to CONTACT ME if you have questions you think I may be able to help with!

Hey! Are you planning your next homeschool year? Be sure to read my post 25 Tips For How To Plan A Homeschool Year. And are you going to be schooling with a new baby or toddler? Be sure to read my post, How To Homeschool With A Baby

View all my HOMESCHOOLING POSTS HERE.

    

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