Abeka Vs. Masterbooks | Pros and Cons

to tell you the differences between a becca curriculum and master books curriculum that i have found and the advantages disadvantages to both i'm hoping that with this video you can figure out which one is best for your family because they both are really good they're just different so let's get at it so with a becca it's been around forever a becca is a christian-based curriculum that if you go with it and you want to go all in with a becca every resource you can think of is going to be there you can buy the whole kit it would come with teachers manuals so if you need to know exactly what to say it says it in the book it'll give you what to prepare for that day different activities you can do and it's very thorough then you can have different workbooks and it'll tell you exactly what you need so this is level three it does match with grade three common core standards that as far as what i have found so the scope and sequence is there if you want to check that out for yourself i am a an educator and so i have looked through the common core standards and think that a becca even exceeds some of those common core standards so if that's important to you a becca is a really good way to go and you can stay on grade level so this is recommended for grade three if it's level three and a becca comes with test booklets so you can help your child this is for the first grade so you can do workbooks then test booklets there are leveled readers so if you just want to buy the set of leveled readers for that grade level go through all of that and what's great about a becca you don't have to buy the whole kit you can pick and choose which is what i have always done i've been given different resources in the past um i'll show you another one these phonics cards there's so much available and and the good thing about rebecca is it will explain exactly what to do in the lesson plans so that's nice if that's something that you need as a teacher um but what i have done in the past and what got me started on a becca is when i was teaching my my kindergartner um kindergarten last year and teaching him how to read i just picked out the becca workbooks and they were fantastic very good um useful stuff it wasn't busy work and it wasn't too much work and i really liked it so and he's a great reader now so then when it came to this year i decided to go ahead and do a becca workbooks for each child that i have that's in school right now a first grader and a third grader and the workbooks are great um you probably do need a little more guidance with the lesson plans um and maybe not just use the workbooks if you're getting into higher levels like the math is math is not my my strong suit it's more language arts so i would need this to go through to know that i'm teaching my third grader what she needs to know and how to teach it to go along with those worksheets so essentially i've been using workbooks as a guide and as worksheets but let me tell you why this isn't working for me why a becca is not working so i am like i said i'm a former public school teacher i love picking my own stuff creating my own units and pulling stuff from teachers pay teachers so you know if we're learning about place value i'm going to be pulling different games i have we're doing place value right now and so i've got a whole bucket of stuff you know that we're working on a becca takes a lot of time so for my teaching style it's the worksheets there's too much on the page we can't even get to it i wind up going through beforehand and saying only do these three problems only do this here and that takes extra time on my part it's not a terrible thing but there is a lot to if you're going to do all of it there it's a lot so you can pick and choose with a becca and you can take a workbook and and circle what you'd actually like your kid to do so for example with maybe this page i probably wouldn't give my child the entire page for one sit down it just gets to be a little much hopefully you can see that it's just it's just a little much and it's a little bit overwhelming for me so i think that it might be overwhelming for my kids too so i've been hearing a lot of really good things about master books and we had done master books for my first child when she was in kindergarten we did the level one and we liked it it's really sweet and what what it does is it gives you at the beginning of the week a story to read so let me know i'm going to use the the second grade to show you so you get a story to read and it tells you exactly says what lesson you're on and then it tells you which lesson so it says what day of the school year you're in but then this is lesson one and it always not always it a lot of times it refers back to the story that you read so it all makes sense with each other it's just not it's not just random but i feel like the pages are are really fun my kids like to do it it doesn't stress them out and it's not too much work so that when we do one page in here all my son has to do for this day is this page there's not five you know different pages to work on and with rebecca there are multiple workbooks multiple things this is all there is and then i can find my own resources to supplement that and that is the way i like to teach so that's why i like master books and it's it's very simple so if you're looking for something affordable this i believe is the way to go because you don't need a lesson plan book for this now if you need lesson plans maybe a becca or something else that's an open and go kind of thing would work but this is very self-explanatory i'm able to know exactly what my kid is doing we work on it together and um it's just it's just simple and it's beautiful in that way so it's affordable these books are maybe 30 a piece but you don't have to buy a bunch of extra stuff with this curriculum so as far as leveled readers go you know you can look up different book lists read aloud revival.com has book lists for you available and i can link that below you can go to the library and get things letting your kids choose their own books i really like that and with a becca i we're not really into leveled readers that are written by a company because i want my kids to pick books that are real books so that they are in that habit so this really just depends on what your teaching style is your personality how much you're wanting to spend and i think those things will help you decide what you would like to do so let me show you two this is the math for level two oh i love i love the illustrations in this book there are teacher things that i can read to help me know how to teach so it's not like it leaves you with no lesson plan it tells you what you need to be teaching your child but it's just very simple so when he's learning subtraction this is what he'll read a story about and it's the same story all the way through of these children that are homeschooled and learning along with you so it's beautiful very charlotte mason based and i love that i do want to mention that i believe that as far as common core standards go master books might be one grade level behind and i'm totally okay with that if you want your child who's in first grade to still be reviewing a lot of those kindergarten concepts that's that's fine and that's the beauty of homeschool you can your kid doesn't have to be at a certain place like really work on those things they need strengthened and then they can move along but i have a first grader and a third grader and i did buy a level ahead so my first grader has the second grade math and language arts and my third grader has the fourth grade or level level four of the um master books in language arts for her but honestly with math because we're not i'm not as strong in that and i feel like i needed a little bit more review for that we went with the level three and that's been working out great so that is what i recommend these websites have their scope and sequences on the website so you can figure out what is best for your kid and i really hope that this helps i will say too that we are sticking with the becca spelling program i really do like that i don't have a teacher's guide for these but we will look at the words for the week we spend a day working on the pages there's only two pages to do we write our spelling words in shaving cream we do all kinds of activities with spelling and i do like having a list and knowing what to do and but master books has spelling too it just doesn't talk about it for a whole week it's just one day as far as what i have seen and in our experience but you could probably go and do that for a whole week if you want but i do like the ebecca spelling we also have the abeka science and you don't have to have a science book but i liked for my third grader to be a little bit more public school like with having a science textbook and a science workbook that has quizzes tests worksheets so what's great about all of this is you can pick and choose what works best for your family you can use a little bit of a becca a little bit of master books a little bit of whatever and really fit it to your child so i hope that this helps you i love master books i hope that we can use that for the rest of our time because it's really fun and beautiful but like i said rebecca has its advantages too i hope you have a great day hit subscribe if this video was helpful give it a big thumbs up tell your friends about it and i will see you next time bye

Channel: Love Them Well Homeschool

Views: 5,424

Rating: 4.963964 out of 5

Keywords: Abeka, Maseterbooks, Abeka Versus Masterbooks, Abeka Curriculum, Masterbooks Curriculum, Homeschool Curriculum, Homeschool

Id: z62QGsgZ5-8

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020