The Homeschool Handbook: For Choosing Curriculum the FAMILY Way is a 14-page e-book guidebook for parents who might be feeling overwhelmed in choosing a curriculum. Author, Susan Reed makes use of the FAMILY way (Faith, Assessments, Method, Income, Learning Styles, and Your State Requirements) as tools and considerations to help parents choose curriculum.

This handbook is best geared towards parents who are thinking about homeschooling their children. It introduces terminologies such as Classical Homeschooling, Copy Work, Learning Styles, among other terms, which experienced homeschooling parents might already be familiar with.

It is a good basic guidebook; however, it does not offer a lot of fresh content especially if one has extensively researched homeschooling. A different slant to explaining it in the short e-book might be more helpful to a new homeschooling parent. Or the author could have included firsthand experiences to give it a more personalized approach.

The “Methods” chapter is helpful in that it provided clear definitions of homeschooling parlance such as Living Books and that it categorized which curriculum providers fall under which homeschool methods. This way, the new homeschooling parent would already have an idea of what suppliers have been tried and tested by the homeschooling community.

I recommend this e-book to busy parents who are thinking about educating their children at home and are suddenly barraged with curriculum concerns especially after coming from the public or private school where the curriculum is already provided. It is a good basic tool to use to sift through the many choices available in the market.

-Product review by Katherine Tanyu, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, August 2020