 Calvert Curriculum Review
Calvert is a brick and mortar school located in Baltimore, Maryland that offers a standard pre packaged curriculum for homeschooling families. It supplies you with the needed tools to teach all of the standard subjects. You may find cases and places where enrichments are asked for but these are not necessary to the content. Each pre packaged course is a stand alone. You can get the math separate from your graded course or as a part of your course. With this option you are free to individualize the course. For instance you may have a third grader who is above or below grade level in math. In this case you get the third grade standard course but ask for math specific to your child's abilities. Also you can forgo their math course all together if you have one you prefer to use. Not only are you supplied with all the necessary textbooks but Calvert also provides you with paper for writing and drawing, crayons, colored pencils, index cards and other basic supplies as well as a storage box to keep all of these items in. They also have a service called ATS, Advisory Teaching Service where you can send in your tests every 40 lessons and a few of your child's school work papers for them to review. With this service they keep records for you and give your child grades based upon performance. Calvert also has placement testing services if you are unsure as to where your child would place. They will usually place students lower than where you may think the child should be. This is good because Calvert is writing intensive and if your child does not write well then everything else would be easy and the writing would be the challenge. This is especially the case in grades 4 on up. Calvert lessons are all pre planned and written out in the lesson manual. There used to be one core manual per grade but due to recent changes they have turned the single core manual into two parts, Part A and Part B, so the course is divided in half with each half having its own manual. Mathematics has its own manual whether you buy it with the standard course or not. I like the set up of the manual as it outlines what work is to be done for the day. At the top of the lesson page it has a checklist that tells you what books you will be using for the day. This checklist also has space for you to check off each item as you cover it. There is a note section down the left-hand side of each page that allows you to note what changes you have made or any other information you may want to put as it was included in the lesson. I use my note section to list the books or topics we cover in Islamic Studies for example or Qur'an Studies. For me it is like a record keeping book. I even put grades in it sometimes. As I stated earlier this curriculum contains all of the standard subjects so you do not need to add anything to the curriculum, but there may be things you will want to eliminate. In third grade Greek mythology is taught and tested. I do not use the ATS service which is where you turn in tests and school work so I just eliminated that. I do not how it will work if one chose to use the ATS service. Poetry is a part of every grade and studied more in depth in grades 5 on up. I am teaching grade 6 and so far I have not come across any poem I find offensive. In fourth grade they use a classic book of theirs called A Child's History of the World. This book was eliminated because of the content. It was really a story book not a history book and it spoke about the Prophet (SallAllahu alaihi wa sallam) in a derogatory manner. Fourth grade also had a few other books I eliminated because they were tales and I was unsure just how many of the characters were real and honestly I just was not interested in my kids being too into those people. There is a book of similar type in third grade but it is used for free reading. Those books contain stories such as Robinhood, King Arthur, and the likes of them. Because I did not use ATS I was easily able to eliminate them but as I said I do not know how it would work if you do go with ATS. Other downsides to this curriculum are that it is expensive and reusing is difficult. Prices range from $285 for Pre-Kindergarten to $930 for 8th grade. They do have a payment plan and they also have financial aid. The financial aid covers up to 40% of the cost of your curriculum. These courses are not completely reusable. You are in agreement with Calvert that you will not reuse, resell, lend, or give away the lesson manuals. With that in mind either you buy a new grade every time your child needs it or they ask that you destroy/throw away the manual after you are done with it. In summary
Pros: *It comes with a lesson manual and the answers to everything except the green tests *The day's lessons are completely laid out *It is scripted to a mild degree, tells you what to introduce what to say how to say it *You have teacher support even if you do not go with the ATS service *No planning on your part except in places where you may need to preplan something such as phonics sliders in K, mystery substance in 3 and 4, certain experiments in 6 these are some examples *It comes with a list of all the needed science materials and they can be found rather easily, at WalMart or places like it *All your supplies are in the box including erasers and pencils, paper clips, flash cards writing paper, notebooks etc… Cons: *Expensive *Cannot be totally reused for the second child per your agreement with Calvert *Has something’s we would totally throw out such as mythology in 3rd grade You can take a look at www.calvertschool.org Umm Mukhtaar Mina | 
