An unsolicited and honest review of Gather' Round Homeschool Curriculum (2023)

Affiliate links may have been used in this post. FREE offers are often time sensitive and may only be time limited.

I have been teaching at home for 16 years now and have tried many different curriculums. When a new product comes out - all shiny and new (like Gather Round Homeschool), sometimes I jump too quickly and make a wrong choice, resulting in lots of bookshelves filled with unused homeschool books.

I'm also discovering that my children have very different learning styles, and while one loved homeschooling, our youngest is begging to go to public school. For our daughter's sixth grade homeschool curriculum, we decided to use itCollect round homeschoolby Rebecca Spooner of Homeschool On. This review isNot a sponsored or solicited review and I paid for it(great prize and all!). Read on to find out what I think after using it for a month.

UPDATE: If you want to hear what I think after using Gather Round Homeschoolfor a whole school year, read "Is Gather Round Really Enough?„

Collect round homeschool

If you are reading this post, you have probably already searchedCollect Round Homeschool Ratings. This review may differ from other reviews becauseI put a lot of time into it without ANY compensation from Gather Round Homeschool.It can sometimes be difficult to tell if a review is an honest review when it's sponsored. I always look for "verified purchase" on Amazon reviews, so I totally get it.

How does Gather Round Homeschool work?

You may be wondering"Was ist Gather Round Homeschool?"Gather Round Homeschool takes a one-size-fits-all approach andcan be used with all your kids at the same time.

The idea is to gather around the dining tablefamily school.If you have several children that you homeschool, this is probably something that appeals to you.

How does it look like?

I'm a sucker for pretty syllabuses and boy is that pretty. The graphics in the teacher guide and student books are excellent and beautifully designed.

If you know me, you know that I don't use or like teacher guides for most things. I promise it's not what you think it is, so be sure to read my comments below to understandwhy I like the Gather Round Homeschool teacher guide.

Is Gather Round Homeschool Worth the Price?

If you're like most homeschool moms, you stumbled across this reviewhelp you decide if this curriculum is worth the price.

I won't lie, it's expensive. I don't think I've ever spent that much on the homeschooling curriculum in my life, but I only have two kids and they're eight years apart; Our oldest graduated from our homeschool in 2018. I also wondered if it was too much, but in the end I decided to use it for sixth grade.

Gather a round of Homeschool Review

After stumbling across a sample of the Gather Round Homeschool Africa unit and looking at it about a dozen times on my computer, I printed out the sample week to use with my 5th grade daughter. We needed a breather in our homeschool because we often clashed and I thought this would be a good time to try something new. I used the middle school exercise book with her so I could get a good feel for what 6th grade would be like.

After our trial week was over, we were hooked. My daughter had that twinkle in her eye about studying again. I was looking forward to "teaching" her Gather Round homeschool. That says a lot. I bought the complete Africa unit and used it for the last month of our homeschool year.

Collect round homeschool

Let's take a look at what Gather Round Homeschool is so you can determine if it could work for your family.

What subjects does Gather Round Homeschool cover?

Gather Round Homeschool is designed to be all you need to teach your children in grades K-12 all subjects except math. That may very well be true for some families, but not so much for mine; There are some things we will add. I will explain more below.

We've only completed the Africa unit at this point, but as far as I know all the units are laid out in essentially the same format.The first year consists of ten units of 20 hours each.I don't know about your homeschool, but we don't complete 200 classes in a homeschool year, so our goal is to complete 8 units for 6th grade. You are scheduled to explore a different theme each month, which I enjoyed.

A year units in terms of the package is 10 for the entire school year.

There arefive units based on continentsthat will be hard in geography andfive units based more on science-related topics.They all weave in the same themes with a focus on the theme of unity. You can use them in any order, which I think is a huge plus!

Giving my daughter a choice in which order we complete each unit is a definite plus for her and makes her feel like she has more control over what she learns.

Gather the first year homeschool units:

1. North American Birds
2. Asia
3. Space
4. Europa
5. oceans
6. Africa
7. Geography
8. North America
9. Human body
10. South America

Since we already completed the Africa unit, I had her pick 8 units that she wanted to do in 6th grade. She chose to skip North American Birds, which makes me pretty sad.

What we thought of the Gather Round Homeschool Africa session:

Visually, this is the most appealing syllabus I have used to date. As I mentioned above, the graphics are stunning. It is very easy to use and you can just open it and get started.

If you know anything about my homeschool teaching style, you'll remember that I'm HUGE about open-and-go curriculum, which is why we created oursDaily skill building series, which I plan to continue using alongside Gather Round Homeschool.

We learned a lot doing the session on Africa. I discovered that I would love to visit this beautiful continent one day. I also learned that I like African music - it totally reminded me of Disney's Animal Kingdom. The animals we spotted were simply stunning; I had never heard of some!

We learned a lot about African history, some of it was heartbreaking. We rode some rabbit trails, watched YouTube videos of Victoria Falls and went on virtual safaris.

We found some videos of animals and penguins in Africa (yes I said penguins!) and I freaked out about itGiraffe Manor in Kenya.

Did you know that Queen's Freddie Mercury was born in Zanzibar and that Zanzibar looks super amazing with lush resorts? Neither do I! As you can see we loved our African learning adventure.

Gather round homeschool subjects

If you are new to the unit study method of homeschooling, you may be wondering what subjects Gather Round Homeschool covers. Let's check!

What subjects does Gather Round Homeschool cover?

So to the individual topics. I used the middle school student notebook so please keep that in mind as you read my review.

There are five different student books, all available in one digital download (one price, you get them all!). If you are purchasing printed student books, you must select the level individually at the same price.

Here are the student notebook levels included in the digital download, all for one price; great if you have multiple kids in different classes.

• early readers
• early elementary school
• upper elementary level
• middle school
• secondary school

I took a picture of some interiorsNotebooks for middle school studentsso you can get an idea of ​​what it looks like. For full examples of Earth Sciences, Africa, and a Canada mini-unit, see theGather ‘Round-Website.

Every day in the Africa unit, I read an overview of the country from the teacher's manual. weinscribed a giant mapwith the country name and each country we have previously learned about.

By the end of the session, we were both able to memorize every country we had learned about in Africa (19 countries were covered in the session). Unfortunately we didn't remember the locations of most other countries.

After the introduction we will read about a specific landmark/place as well as animals, food, history and culture found in each country we have studied.

The Teacher's Guide contains the main text for the above topics, as well as beautiful, full-color graphics and expansion ideas. Sometimes we went on our own side adventures and other times we followed the suggestions. But we were always amazed by what we discovered!

Take a look inside some Gather Round Homeschool teacher guides (you can tooview full exampleson a few different devices).

After reading through the sections, the teacher guide breaks down what each student will be doing in their notebooks by grade level.You don't need to collect anything; it's all in the student notebook.

Collect round homeschoolis really all inclusive.The text is included. The notebooks are included. No need to search for supplies. That sealed the deal for me!

Collect homeschool round broken down

Learn a little more about what each subject looks like in Gather Round Homeschool.

geography/social studies

The geography notebook section includes basic map work like labeling the countries and capitals, coloring the flag, and writing down some interesting facts about a specific topic.

I think we would have liked this notebook page better if my daughter had written down all the facts that she found interesting, rather than the specific topic suggested. It's only a featured box, though, so it's really no big deal.

Science

The African unit focuses on animals for science. You can use the text you read from the teacher's manual to fill in most of the information about the animal's diet, life cycle, habitat, facts, etc. However, we decided to do more research and searched videos and images online to learn more.

Did you know that there are over a dozen animals ONLY in Africa? Yes, super interesting to learn about these beautiful creatures. In the scientific part you will also learn something about habitats.

art of language

Okay guys, this is where I'm very dubious on the language arts partall inclusive. we are aLight grammarfamily and I am very focused on teaching my kids great grammar skills. Because of this, I felt the language arts part was missing.

The included student notebook pages were so under my daughter's abilities that I just threw them away. That sounds harsh, but I'm not the hard work type and she learned about sentence structure years ago.

Complementary Language Arts

As we look forward to a relaxing homeschool year with Gather 'Round and I feel my daughter's grammar skills are well above what is taught in this syllabus, we will be using itDaily gramsfor daily review rather than fullLight grammarCurriculum. Combined with the writing and research she will be doing with Gather 'Round, I have a feeling it will be enough for her.

Well, your family may be different and the language arts part might work perfectly for you. If you do the language arts notebook pages and read through and correct the research papers, have your students take notes (my daughter took notes while I was reading the text), and take the time to work on spelling mistakes, you may be good to go. I leave that to you.

The spelling included was a word here and there and nothing I would consider spellingCurriculum.Still, we love using itDaily Skill Building: Vocabulary and Spellingfor convenience (one page per day) and will continue to use it alongside Gather 'Round.

Bible

We really enjoyed the missionary stories (classified as social studies), but just copying and pondering the Bible is not enough for us as a biblical "curriculum." This year we useUnspent Bible Studiesas well as our devotions.

Story

I discovered I LOVE history after using itThe Secret of Historyyears ago. It's super fascinating to me and I enjoy learning about every aspect of it. My youngest daughter, not so much. No matter what we used, she never really enjoyed learning about history.

With that, we both found the extra history included in the student notebookmiddle schoolbeing terribly boring in the Africa unit. It taught in disjointed sections on World War I and World War II. It doesn't flow chronologically in my opinion or it doesn't fit together well at all.

We've covered a lot of history in our homeschooling years, so I plan to do some additional research on history topics that we find interesting and that relate to the unit we're learning for sixth grade. I don't want to have to add another full curriculum; I'm trying to simplify here!

Thoughts on the other units

Since I started this post, I have received my Gather Round Homeschool syllabus box with the units we want to complete for sixth grade:

• Asia
• Space
• Europa
• oceans
• Africa
• Geography
• North America
• Human body
• South America

I have to say - WOW! I'm really looking forward to this homeschool year. I was very happy to see that some of the units didn't have boring history classes like we experienced in the Africa unit.

For example, the space unit covers interesting history topics such as Galileo Galilei, Vincent van Gogh, ancient astronomy, Andrew Carnegie and more, including some economics lessons in social studies.

Gather final thoughts about homeschool

• We're excited to be using Gather Round for 6th grade this year. We will adddaily grams,Daily Skill Building: Vocabulary and Spelling,andUnspent Bible Studiesas well as a math syllabus that is not included.we are atextbooksFamily because I need a math teacher!
• I love that it really is like thatall inclusive. I don't have to buy a dozen books and we can go to the library to look for extras we havewillread.
• It's just beautiful, seriously.
• If you have several children, it is more cost-effective and you can do everything together!
• If you only have one child like me, I recommend buying the printed books. Even shipping it was less than printing.
• If you need anythingfavorable printing proposalsBoxthis post.

How much is Gather Round Homeschool?

It has a hefty price tag of $499.50 for a full year (10 units), but remember it can be used with all your kids in K-12. The printed units are purchased individually but are currently (8/20) unavailable due to an influx of orders (so glad I bought mine early).

When you compare the prices to other all-in-one curricula available and factor in the need to purchase additional books etc with different programs, I think this is a reasonable expense.

If we love our homeschool year as much as we love Africa unit, it's sure to be money well spent. If you have multiple children it may be more cost effective since you are not purchasing for individual grade levels.

There is aGather a round of Facebook communitywhich you can join and watch before taking the plunge. You can alsoDownload a full week of Africa and Earth Sciencesto see if this curriculum would be right for your family.

Collect frequently asked questions about the round syllabus

As you delve into the Gather Round Homeschool curriculum, you may have a few questions. Here are some frequently asked questions about Gather Round.

Is Gather Round Homeschool Mormon?

Gather Round is a faith-based Christian homeschool curriculum. It's not Mormon and I can read all about itcreedon your website.

Ist Gather Round Charlotte Mason?

GR writer and creator Rebecca Spooner suggests that it's a Charlotte Mason-style family curriculum. For die-hard CM devotees, you probably wouldn't classify this as a Charlotte Mason curriculum. I think it's more of a unit study style curriculum with a Charlotte Mason flair.

Is Gather Round Homeschool Canadian?

The Gather Round family and business are based in Canada, but I would not classify this curriculum as a Canadian curriculum. There is aMini unit on indigenous peoples, this is a Canadian entity.

Is the collection round free?

The Gather Round Homeschool Curriculum is NOT free, but you can download some free samples. This curriculum is costly, as you read above.

How do you gather around homeschool?

It was different for our family than others because I used Gather Round with only one child. I suppose if you have several children, they all sit around the table and take turns reading the text aloud, and then the children work independently on their notebooks.

There are some groups that band together as a co-op to use this in a group setting. That would be fun!

Update 2022: Additional units now available

There is nowtwo years fully completed unitsAvailable. The third year is published monthly, beginning in August.

Year One Gather Round Units:

• North American Birds
• Asia
• Space
• Europa
• oceans
• Africa
• Geography
• North America
• Human body
• South America

Second Year Assembly Round Units:

• Antarctica
• Australia and Oceania
• Artist
• Ancient Civilizations
• inventions and ideas
• Transport
• Botanical
• career and craft
• Creepy crawly things
• agriculture and food

Year 3 Gather Round units (available for release in 2022):

• August: Living Off The Country (Homesteading, Canning, Dehydration)
• September: Dinosaurs (focusing on Creation)
• December: Psychology and the Mind (behaviour, cognition, dreams, development, the brain and more)
• January: Entrepreneurship (mathematics, economics)
• March: Vikings
• Ende April: Real Life Chemistry
• Late May: Middle Ages
• Late June: National Parks of North America (Camping, Survival, Ecosystems, Animals)
• End of July: sports and sports

Finally

If you're looking for a core curriculum for your whole family and enjoy using unit studies, Gather Round Homeschool could be a game changer for you. It's the perfect way to combine younger and older children into a learning experience for the whole family. You can bounce around based on your kids' interests and even do extra mini-units along the way.