She begins the book by having you determine your priorities, as in what is most important in your children's education. Then there is a quiz for you take to determine which method of homeschooling fits you the best, Charlotte Mason, Classical, Traditional, etc. When I took this quiz I learned that I am a Charlotte Mason, Classical, Unit Study, and Eclectic kinda gal. Very helpful, I know! Actually I scored pretty high in Charlotte Mason. I believe I have mentioned before that I like her ideas but find them hard to implement.
Once you have discovered what type of style you like, you can move on to find out what type of teacher you are. She gives descriptions in the book about the different types. They are Wiggly Willy, Perfect Paula, Competent Carl, and Sociable Sue. For that, I learned that I am a Perfect Paula, I like schedules and routines, I like to have everything planned out in advance, and I am more comfortable with a "cut and dry" type of curriculum. Can you see where Charlotte Mason might not fit?
Once you have discovered your teaching style, then you can go on and find out what your children are. Using the same descriptions, I learned that I am teaching a Perfect Paula and a Wiggly Willy. This may sound like its not an important thing to figure out, but really its super important! If I want to teach math to my Wiggly Willy while I am a Perfect Paula, if I teach him straight from a textbook, he will certainly not enjoy that and will probably not excel in math. On the other hand if I teach my Wiggle Willy math using a curriculum that integrates lots of manipulatives, he will be more successful because he can touch and feel his work as opposed to just having to write it all down and read from a textbook.
The rest of the book is a list of curricula, which learning style it most suits, amount of writing, whether it is grade level specific, amount of teacher involvement, and so on. So now that I know what my kids need, I can make a more informed decision about their curriculum. After the chart she gives a detailed description of every curriculum that is listed in the book and she includes websites, addresses and phone numbers of the companies. This is a great help, because then you don't have to do the digging yourself to find a particular company.
Let's go back to my math example, we currently use Math U See, so I went and looked it up in the chart and for my Perfect Paula its rated a 4 and for my Wiggly Willy its rated a 5. The scale goes 1-5 with 5 being the highest. Let's say that I was thinking about switching it up for next year, and I thought maybe Singapore would be nice to try. I looked that up on the chart and for my Perfect Paula, it would be fine, it's rated a 4. But for my Wiggly Willy it's only rated a 2, so that tells me that it would probably not be a good fit. You also need to remember that these are generalizations so not every Wiggly Willy will be great at hands on math or struggle with work books. I do take that into account as well when I am searching for things.
That is how I usually pick out which curriculum will work for us. Unfortunately her book doesn't have every single available thing out there, so there are many times that I will ask friends or in a Facebook group about a particular one.
Have you every used Cathy Duffy's book? What other ways have you used to pick a curriculum for your family? I would love to hear from you!!
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