Homeschool Curriculum Reviews: Teaching Textbooks

One of my favorite homeschool math curricula for middle and high school students is Teaching Textbooks. If you are homeschooling a child in these grades and are looking for a great homeschool math curriculum, keep reading for my honest, straightforward review.

A Few Notes on My Experience with Teaching Textbooks.

As you can see, I recommend Teaching Textbooks homeschool math program for children in middle school and high school. They do offer their curriculum for lower grades as well. I believe they start at 3rd grade. So, why don’t I recommend their lower grades? I never used them. I found the Teaching Textbooks math curriculum late in our homeschool journey. My youngest 2 children were the ones that used it the most, and they started in pre-algebra. I did not have any children use it for any of the lower courses, therefore, I cannot personally comment on them.

I would also like to mention that I have a shorter review about Teaching Textbooks in a previous blog post here.

My Favorite Things About The Teaching Textbooks Curriculum

There are many aspects of the Teaching Textbooks curriculum that are great for both the parent or teacher and the student. I will review the benefits for both in this section.

How Teaching Textbooks Benefits the Student

It teaches children real math that they will use in every day life. Of course that is not all it does especially in higher levels, but they will be able to see how it applies to them in real life situations.

Children are able to just log in and start their lessons at any time and place on most devices. Unless they are struggling in a certain area, they can just log into the program and watch their lessons and do their work all by themselves. The Teaching Textbooks program teaches all the lessons to your child via video. Your child will log in, watch a video, and complete the assigned problems. Teaching Textbooks allows 2 tries for each problem before revealing the answer and the step-by-step solution to solve the problem correctly.

When students are allowed to work independently, most of the time they tend to get more done. This is because they do not have to wait for mom or dad to teach them the lesson or to grade the assignments. The child is able to move at their own pace.

How Teaching Textbooks Benefits the Parent

This is where Teaching Textbooks is such a blessing! One of the best things about this homeschool math curriculum is the self grading aspect. I remember having weeks and weeks of assignments piled up from all my children. They kept moving along in their assignments without knowing if anything was being done wrong. This was obviously before teaching textbooks. And this was obviously not ideal.

Parents have access to the grade book where they can see all the assignments that their child has completed and the grade for each. Parents can also adjust grades. Why would you want to do this? I will give you an example. One of my children was very particular about their assignments. Any time they got a problem wrong, they would work it until they figured out what they did wrong and could solve it correctly. I would then go into the grade book and mark those problems as correct. As mentioned previously, Teaching Textbooks allows for 2 wrong answers before showing the correct one. My child would have used up both before solving the problem on his own. This is why I would go in and change the grade book. I believe as a homeschoolers we have the ability to do things in different ways. Why not give your child more than 2 chances to get the right answer, and give them credit for it!

You do not have to teach any math to your child with Teaching Textbooks. As mentioned above, your child will watch all of their lessons right inside the program. This saves you quite a bit of time during your homeschool day. Of course, this is as long as your child doesn’t have any learning disabilities or such.

One Reason Teaching Textbooks Stands Out Among Homeschool Math Programs

Teaching Textbooks has a support helpline! If your child is struggling, needs help, or has questions about their math, they can pick up the phone and call someone at Teaching Textbooks and get real help. How awesome is that! I am not sure if this was available when my children were using Teaching Textbooks. If it was, I did not know about it, so this is not a part of the program I can give a comment on. However, I can only imagine what a blessing this would be for a homeschool parent, especially one that is not strong in math.

My Personal Experience With Teaching Textbooks

As I mentioned, I did not find out about Teaching Textbooks until later in my homeschooling years. I had 2 children that used Teaching Textbooks as my older 2 had either finished school or were already settled in what they were using.

Both children did fine with Teaching Textbooks, and I feel that it would have been even better for my daughter if I knew there was a helpline or if it had existed at that time. I would say she was an average math student. She didn’t necessarily like math, she more or less just tried to get through it. My youngest son, on the other hand, was very strong in math. He really loved Teaching Textbooks. He loved that he could just go and get his work done without needing me to do anything. This allowed him to move through at his own pace and even continue throughout the summer to get ahead. He knew he was going to dual enroll in college and had to take a college entrance exam. He wanted to make sure he got Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and some geometry in before taking the test.

This is the one child that used Teaching Textbooks exclusively from Pre-algebra through Algebra 2. He received a perfect score on the math portion of his college entrance exam at the end of his sophomore year of high school. He even commented that the way Teaching Textbooks taught him is why he was able to accomplish a perfect score. The counselor at the college who was helping him schedule classes said that she didn’t remember ever seeing anyone get a perfect score on the math portion of the entrance exam. That says it all right there!

I am not saying that every student will have the same result. My daughter that also used Teaching Textbooks never went to college. However, she does have a very techy job working with computers and satellites. What I am saying is that Teaching Textbooks is a great program. It is definitely worth trying no matter what kind of learner you have. It can help you child learn to work independently, and learn to communicate with others if they need help and call the helpline.

The Negative Aspect of Teaching Textbooks

There really is no negative aspect of Teaching Textbooks. LOL! There is one thing to note, though. If you need to keep records of your child’s work, as you always should, then you do need to know that it’s not that easy with a program that is totally online. You will have access to the grade book, of course, but if you want to keep actual samples of their work on top of their grades, you will need to decide ahead of time what you will do. If you purchase a physical workbook, this will not be an issue. You can have your child work a few pages throughout the year in the workbook to keep as samples.

If you are not using a workbook then you may want to take screenshots from your device or you could possibly use the snip it feature on a computer. Either way you want to make sure you have a way to keep those sample pages especially if your state requires you to keep them.

Other than that, I have no reservations about Teaching Textbooks. It is an amazing program!

How To Try Teaching Textbooks For Free right here

Click right here to try 3 months of Teaching Textbooks for free. I would suggest taking their placement tests first to ensure you are selecting the right level to try. Teaching Textbooks lets your child try the first 15 lessons for free!

If you decide to go with the Teaching Textbooks curriculum and would like to purchase a physical copy of the workbooks you can do that here. The workbooks go along with the online curriculum, so they are an additional charge. They are very thick books which is why they cost right around $50.

I hope this homeschool curriculum review of Teaching Textbooks was helpful to you!

Please email me with any questions or message me on facebook.

Mary@whatabouthomeschooling.com

~”…and the sweetness of the lips increaseth learning.” Prov. 16:21

Wishing you all the best!

~Mary