It seems like both a lifetime ago and only yesterday that my first daughter came into the world. And here we are – she’s almost seven. Per our state, we have to start homeschooling at age 6. This means that 2023 was our first official year of homeschooling. It’s gone mostly well, and we have learned a lot. Mostly about how my oldest kiddo learns and what fits our family best. I’ve found a lot of great resources and podcasts in the process, too.
Going into homeschooling, I thought I would want a big-box curriculum. Since I grew up in a family full of teachers, a big-box curriculum felt comfortable to me. School at home – a predominant game of my childhood, was something I knew well. Having been in the school game for a while, I knew wanted something secular and it needed to be literature-based. My kiddo is a more serious kid, and so I felt like the school-at-home thing would work for her, too.
Another thing that was particularly important to me was that the curriculum be secular. Religion fascinates me, but we aren’t a religious family. A secular, literature-based curriculum proved a lot harder to find than I originally anticipated. But we did, indeed, find one – Bookshark.
What is Bookshark?
Bookshark is an all-in-one, open-and-go curriculum designed for secular homeschoolers. All-in-one means it covers all your subjects – math, science, history, geography, language arts, and handwriting. It comes with a plethora of books and supplies and even includes a planner to help you coherently get through all the material by the end of the year.
Bookshark also offers a more piecemeal approach and unit studies. Since I haven’t tried them, this post is going to be about the all-in-one curriculum.
What did I like about Bookshark?
Let’s start with the positives, shall we?
First, I loved the Bookshark planner. One place I struggle in homeschooling is planning all the material. This piece of homeschooling alone has the potential to send me into decision fatigue before I even get started. Everything was very well organized – Bookshark has divided all their lessons into weeks and supplied their customers with a massive (3-4″ thick) binder for storing all the lesson plans. Ultimately, we didn’t use the binder and opted to break everything down into file folders (#homeschoolhack), but the organization still proved helpful.
Bookshark also includes a fun little tote bag. I love a canvas tote bag, and it’s been hugely helpful for carting materials for school-on-the-road days. It’s big enough to carry a few books and toys, but small enough that it isn’t gaudy.
The Math-U-See manipulatives are extremely clever. I love that they have both individual blocks and grouped blocks. It makes adding 7 and 7 much easier than counting out each one. They’re also color-coded and plastic, which helps with visual recognition and cleanliness (let’s be real – life can be gross).
Bookshark’s history and geography books are probably not what you’d think of when “history and geography” first come to mind. There are some books (like Living Long Ago), that are very much on par with what you’d expect. But most of the books are social studies – chapter books that allow space for discussion on social issues. The people at Bookshark give discussion questions in their instructor’s guide – so they don’t leave you flying blind. We are currently working our way through these books and enjoying them immensely. I could see us buying a history set in the future for this reason.
What didn’t I like about Bookshark?
Bookshark is, in a word, intense. What initially drew me to it was also what turned me away. With three small kids at the time (2-4-6), I felt like we could never get through all the materials. The reading alone (Explode the Code) felt so intense that we were wiped out by the end of it. We opted for Math-U-See, and while I did find the manipulatives helpful in creating a strong understanding of numeracy, I found the level to be redundant and boring. Science relied heavily on worksheets. Additionally, I didn’t feel like we were consuming books in their entirety, and the literature that was provided was more non-fiction, than inspiring stories. It reminded me of a more highly colored, smaller textbook than a literature-based curriculum.
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