When you buy new homeschool curriculum, how do you know what you should buy? This all depends on how we understand what an education is anyway. “…Education doesn’t need to be reformed — it needs to be transformed. The key to this transformation is not to standardize education, but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering individual talents of each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions.” Sir Ken Robinson, author of The Element What better place to learn than a home environment? And if this is education, then the hunt for the perfect curriculum will not be required. And in my experience, finding that perfect curriculum won’t happen. It will be as elusive as the Rosetta Stone. (Wait, we saw the Rosetta Stonein a London museum in 2012.) Okay, it’ll be as elusive as my attempt to write this simile. So how do we decide how to buy new homeschool curriculum? Much curriculum exists, but a perfect curriculum does not. One can learn snippets of information from… * textbooks,* Wikipedia,* biographies and memoirs,* experiments and observation,* apprenticeship positions and play,* and solitude and within big large groups. But a perfect curriculum, you’re not going to find it. Download the Homeschool Mama Reading List 1. First of all, what IS curriculum? Perhaps that question is goofy to you: if is, you may move on and ignore it. But for those who ask, what constitutes curriculum? Anything someone learns from. Which, as you know, can be a whole lotta possibilities: * I see it in a Wii system when my child learns hand-eye coordination playing Wii tennis.* I see it in a tennis racket when my child learns the game in real time.* I see it in a chess board when my child learns strategy.* I see it in a book, obviously.* I see it in an Usborne-internet linked book, a historical narrative like To Kill a Mockingbird or Jan Hudson’s book, Sweetgrass, a fun poetry book by Shel Silverstein, a chemistry textbook, graphic novels, an atlas, or any book whatsoever, yes, whatsoever.* I see it in my child’s Mac laptop when my daughter edits and creates videos for her YouTube channel.* I see it in the daily use of a math workbooks, using a calculator for play, using measuring cups in the kitchen, or doing word problems calculating tax and tip at a restaurant.* I see it in a can of paint when my child decides to paint over her childhood favourite-fuchsia walls for a teenage white.* I see it in a measuring tape, hammer, and circular saw when my son and his dad build a goat barn.* I see it in games, like Professor Noggins, Scrabble, Pictionary, Scattegories, Monopoly, Chutes & Ladders, math dice, or any of the one bazillion games we have in our family room.* I see it in the arts and crafts closet when a child learns to draw with Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad or the girls start their ...