Last school year, I was just like you. I was trying to find a homeschool curriculum that would work for all three of my kids and I didn’t know what curriculum to choose. I literally looked over hundreds of curriculums and read thousands of reviews, but I still felt lost. Then I found Masterbooks, a homeschool curriculum that has hundreds of raving reviews, and I had thought I found the ‘one’.
But no matter how much I loved Masterbooks after ordering the curriculum, halfway through the year, I realized I had made a mistake ordering Masterbooks. As much as I wanted to love it, I just didn’t. If you are considering the Masterbooks curriculum this post will detail what I didn’t love about it and share why I decided to move on to a new curriculum this school year.
Why We Choose Masterbooks in the First Place
When I want to learn about something, I do the most logical thing I know, I join a Facebook group about that topic. And, that just so happens to be where I first learned about the Masterbooks curriculum. From there, I went on to look at their books and curriculums and everything sounded great. The reviews were good. The prices were affordable and the curriculum looked good.
After consulting with Michael, we had a few concerns but decided their 1-page a day curriculum would be best for our children. So, we ordered the books and when they arrived, everything looked good and we thought we had made the right choice.
What We Didn’t Like About the Masterbooks Curriculum
Fast-forward to a few months later and we realized we hated the Masterbooks curriculum! We found ourselves scrambling for new books halfway through the year and we regret even using Masterbooks. Ultimately, these were the reasons we choose not to go with Masterbooks again.
Too Easy
While my kids have their struggles in certain areas, the Masterbooks curriculum was too easy for all of them. Their curriculum is based on children doing one-page a day and there is absolutely NO additional books or pages for kids to practice a new skill in.
Most of the curriculum is repetitive, which can be good, but lacks some very important skillsets that children in each age group should be learning.
The Stories Aren’t Helpful
One thing I really hated about Masterbooks is when my 5th grader was learning a new skill and the stories that was supposed to go with the skill was nothing that could help. I ended up finding better teaching guides on YouTube than in their books.
In fact, unless your child uses Masterbooks from Kindergarten on, the stories are hard to even understand because they are supposed to build-on each year.
The Curriculum Does Not Set a Child Up for Success
When I purchased the Masterbook curriculum, I prepared myself for some easy learning in the beginning. But what I didn’t prepare myself for was the insane amount of repetition on things that should have been learned the previous years.
For example, instead of my 1st grade daughter learning important math skills, most of the Masterbook’s Math curriculum was just her writing her numbers, over and over. It was included so much that if I decided to skip it, my daughter would have practically skipped most of the 1st grade math book.
By the time we decided to stop using the Masterbook curriculum, we realized our children had not been doing so many essential skills, nor did the curriculum even include those skills. This year Michael and I have done a lot more researching to choose a curriculum that has EVERYTHING my children need to be successful including; test, assessments, and additional learning.
While the Masterbooks curriculum wasn’t for us, this post is not intended to bash a parent for using it. And, I will admit there were certain things I loved about the curriculum, but I just really want to be transparent with my readers and explain why we are no longer using curriculum after I posted why I loved it last year.
Do you homeschool, what curriculum do you use? I’d love for you to share why you love it in the comments below.
Last Updated on 4 years ago by Crystal Carder
I’m currently using masterbooks but facing many of the questions you mentioned. And I’m planning to switch to another curriculum. I’m very curious what curriculum you switched to and if you like it.
We switched to BJU Press this year and we LOVE it! It is very colorful and my kids love to do it. Not sure what grades you are homeschooling but we love it for the elementary grades. Good luck to you on your homeschooling journey.
I simply hated Masterbooks and missed the deadline to return the books. After I flipped through them at home I realized that I was not interested and a lot of it was repetitive in science. I am not on facebook so I am not selling what I bought. I figured it was a loss of funds for my school budget 2 years ago.. My daughter just asked to try to do the book that has bible stuff. I forgot what it is called because I was not impressed. More Than Words? My husband let her look and try some of it. I have two other books that I have not been touched. We have been homeschooling since 2016 and I honestly just mix and match books/workbooks. I explore a lot from christianbooks and thriftbooks online and don’t have any regrets now. I think that even the Highlights workbooks had more substance than Masterbooks. I really don’t get the attraction to it. It feels almost like a club that some homeschool parents belong in.
I agree. I read so many good reviews about Masterbooks so when I ordered them I was surprised at how much they lacked. We bought supplemental books for the kids halfway through the year and there was so much that Masterbooks didn’t even cover in each subject. If we would have stuck with them, I think my kids would have fell behind. In all honesty, the only subject that I liked with Masterbooks was the American Story books but just the teaching guide. The student books were terrible.
I agree. We tried MB a few years ago and my kids forgot things they already knew because the books were so slow. I’m homeschooling my sister’s kids right now and I am remembering how many basic skills are missing. I always want to love MB, but I don’t. (I do like some of their science!)
We are in the same boat this year. The stories being useless and finding mistakes in the curriculum constantly really get under my skin. Excellence should be something they strive for. Also how they are threatened by any comments parents make on there page that offer tools “not masterbooks”. How is thissupportive or even reality. A mom asked about a new good book for her to read and I was reprimanded for sharing a book that was “ not Masterbooks” but by a Christian author. I switched my sons math halfway through the year or more like 3/4 through the year and he kept saying why didn’t Masterbooks teach me this. This is great!
I’ve heard from so many other parents who’ve had this same exact experience. I was part of that group once and had to remove myself because of the comments like those. It’s so sad when a page that should be a supportive homeschool page becomes like that. I would love to hear what curriculum you switched to because we had the exact same thing happen when we left Masterbooks and we literally only bought those cheap curriculum books from Amazon and there was so much stuff that we realized Masterbooks didn’t even cover.