You can really get to know the person behind the curriculum. I LOVE Emily’s book ‘the Secular Charlotte Mason Homeschool’ and I enjoy watching her YouTube videos. Emily sometimes mentions some discussion questions to ask, but the bulk is the narration approach. BYL offers narration cards in addition to the weekly copywork.Įmily prefers a more organic way of discussing the book, not a straight ‘read and answer’ the questions like some other literature programs I’ve seen. Group for those that combine both curriculumīuild your Library Language Arts approachīYL offers a Charlotte Mason inspired approach with weekly copywork and a vocabulary words from the literature you’re reading.Build your Library Facebook private group.

Torchlight Facebook private discussion group.These two curriculum offer private Facebook groups as well where you can ask many questions on how to use or review books on the lists etc. This post will go into details on how I combine the two, and please feel free to share your experiences in the comments. I’m very choosy with what I read, and certain levels offer different books. When I combine these two I focus on going through the literature, history spines and other books Because I love planning, I have no problems spending that extra time (let’s be real… weeks of time).īoth of these secular homeschool curriculum offerįor both of these you need to add in math, and additional Language Arts (such as phonics for younger kids, additional grammar and writing for older students).Įach offers an element of Language Arts, but you’ll likely want to add in more. We’re currently using the Torchlight Pre-K with our preschooler, but we do that very sporadically.īecause I felt like I couldn’t choose just one, I decided to combine what I liked out of both, and take out what I didn’t want to do. Please note that for levels 1, I actually preferred to follow the flow of Torchlightas my spine rather than BYL. You can read my review of Torchlight Level 1 here. Currently Torchlight offers pre-k to level 3. I loved the Socratic method and modern diverse literature from Torchlight, and I like the Charlotte Mason and Classical inspired ideas from Build your Library.Īfter purchasing both the levels 0/K, 1 and 2 from both of them, I’ve decided that they are both fantastic and I will continue to combine them for the foreseeable future. After going through the book lists, philosophy of each and yearly flow I couldn’t decide on which one to pick. They are very unique in their approach, book lists and what they offer.

What makes these two secular curriculum great?īYL and TL are both fantastic literature based, multi-age curriculum for secular homeschoolers. So why not just choose one of them? Isn’t it more work to spend the time and energy organizing and coordinating two curriculum? Let’s start with the why, then we’ll go into the how.

I also have levels k/0 to use for the 2020/2021 year. In 2019 we did level 1 and I’m currently combining level. I’ve been asked many times why and how I combine these two homeschool curriculum. Build your Library (BYL) and Torchlight (TL) are two fantastic secular curriculum.

Torchlight homeschool curriculum