Mastery or spiral: decide this first
Mastery programs stay on a topic until the child can do it reliably. Spiral programs revisit topics repeatedly across the year. Neither is better in the abstract — but a child with gaps almost always does better on mastery, and a child who forgets over holidays does better on spiral.
Choosing this before you shortlist removes about eighty percent of the homeschool math curriculum options and most of the decision fatigue.
What makes a secular homeschool curriculum secular
A secular homeschool curriculum keeps content religiously neutral and teaches science, history and mathematics from mainstream academic consensus. In maths this mostly affects word problems, illustrations and framing rather than the mathematics itself, so check sample pages rather than assuming.
Five checks before you buy
Homeschool curriculum reviews describe how a program feels. These checks tell you whether it will work in your house.
- Is there a free placement test? Start at level, not at age
- How many minutes of parent teaching does a lesson need?
- Are answers explained, or only marked right or wrong?
- Can you buy one term before committing to the year?
- Does it align to a syllabus you may need later, such as IGCSE or a state standard?
Cheap and free options that hold up
Free homeschool curriculum in maths is genuinely strong: open textbooks, national syllabus documents, past papers and free practice platforms cover the full primary and lower-secondary sequence. The cost is your planning time, so most families buy one paid spine and use free resources for practice and revision.