love2learn.net

DYOCC is quite a bit different from the other books on Catholic Homeschooling. Instead of simply discussing homeschooling, as the other books do, Mrs. Berquist outlines an entire homeschool curriculum you can use with your children or adjust to your liking. She includes suggestions for putting together your own curriculum and a grade by grade outline which includes recommended texts, sample weekly schedules, a number of study guides, lists of important dates and people, poetry suggestions and extensive lists of appropriate literature and history stories. I found her introduction very helpful in fine-tuning my educational goals for my children. Even parents who are happily using another curriculum will find this book a very valuable source of supplemental resources and tips for making homeschooling more interesting and more successful. Some homeschoolers consider her to be much stronger in the history, literature and religion areas and a little weaker on Science and Math. To learn more about the classical liberal arts curriculum as described in her book, you can also read Dorothy Sayers' "The Lost Tools of Learning."