Home school books, how do I decide?

These are things I have before I start.

1. I already know my teaching style.
2. I already know my children's learning style.
3. I know what kind of homeschooler I want to be when I grow up (Classical, Eclectic, Traditional, Unschooler, and what mix of these I am).
4. I have an idea of my general goals for our school (sainthood, doesn't stand out too much, academic excellence, satisfied with a reasonable effort, religious focus, well prepared for a trade.... and what mix of these seemingly divergent goals we're shooting for).
5. I have an idea of my goals for each child for the upcoming year (one child may need a serious review of spelling, one may be eager for more challenging science, one may need to learn to read, one may need more social events, etc.)

If you don't already have the above somewhat fixed in your mind, you'll be better off sitting down with a few good books and getting some of it at least swirling around in your head. Since my head is already full of those things, and I'm full of other stuff that you might not want to be a witness to, I can move onto choosing books.

This is my process. I start somewhere in the middle of the year assessing what's working for us and changing what isn't with an eye to next year. Any thoughts, reviews, or druthers, I type or paste into my "Curriculum Wishlist" document. It started as a Word document, but it got too combobulated and I had to convert it to Excel. It's organized by child and by year I think I'll use that material.

My homeschool friends tell me I'm late to every event and early in my planning. Most don't start until after the school year has ended. I'm just a party-girl who likes my summers free! Sometime in the late winter or spring, I start a master list of In-my-wildest-dreams-I-could-afford-all-these-books. I make sure each main subject is represented. I may have 3 language arts curriculae on the list and still have to decide between them.

All spring long, as I'm paring down my book list (it usually starts out at about $5000 if I bought it all and I get it down to about 20% of that by the end of the spring for the 4 kids). I get lots of reviews & suggestions from :

• Oro Et Laboro http://p105.ezboard.com/boroetlaboro . It's a Catholic message board you ask to join.
• The Well Trained Mind K-8 Curriculum Message Board http://www.welltrainedmind.com/activeboards.php,
• Amazon reviews at http://www.amazon.com
• Homeschool Reviews http://homeschoolreviews.com/default.aspx to make my decisions.

As I allow reality to hit, I start deleting books off my list to pare it down.

1. The first question I ask myself is if this would be a good fit for the child I'm buying it for. (The item has already appealed to me and my teaching style to get on the list, but I guess that would be the first-first question.)
2. The second question is how would I use this item? As a supplement? As a spine? How many spine/supplements do I really need for one subject?
3. The last question I ask myself is do I really have time in my school day to actually USE the item (We book-a-holics have to really buckle down to ask this question). Sometimes, I have to write out the kids' schedule to answer this question. Example: If I only want them to do foreign language for 30 minutes / day, do they have time to do the main curriculum I bought plus this foreign language readers?

I don't usually discard items based on price. I may have a cap that it's only worth $xx to me, but I don't delete it off my list because it costs so much from the publisher. That's what the next post is about...

Once I have my (mostly) finalized list, I buy as much curriculum used as I can. See the January 2007 post, "Where can I find used curriculum online?"