BJU Press vs Abeka

hello everyone in this video I'm going to be comparing the teacher-led of Becca with the teacher-led BJ you press curriculum now I have already done a video a couple of years ago comparing a Becca Academy their video program with the BJ you press distance learning video program I will leave that video I will link that video down below but this one is just comparing the parent led1 the reason I decided to do this video was because I just switched curriculum for my kindergartner we were going to do a Becca k5 for everything we're just gonna do their set curriculum k5 Abeka and we started using it towards the end of last year and over the summer and I just realized it was not a good fit for me and it didn't meet the goals that I had for my kindergartner now I'm not saying it's a bad program at all it just was not a good fit for me so I thought I'd share kind of the difference between the two to maybe help you decide which one would be better for your family now I want to just say this because I know a lot of times people review curriculum and they haven't really used curriculum very much so I am NOT a beginner when it comes to using a Becca or BJ you I have used I've been homeschooling for 15 years if you're new to my channel I've been homeschooling 15 years I've already graduated my oldest she's in college and in the early years with my oldest I used a backup for several different subjects and I taught that myself I have also taught bju curriculum you know by myself I have used a Becca Academy their video program for some kids I have used BJ you press distance learning so I have used a lot of different aspects of both of these curriculums and I have to say that they're both excellent choices but I want to let you know some of the distinctions that I kind of remembered I guess this this summer as I was you know working with my up-and-coming kindergartener a little bit kind of easing into the new school year it just dawned on me again like okay this is why I Becca it doesn't work for me I knew this but I had forgotten I think sometimes as homeschool mom's wheat we always questioning ourselves and thinking maybe the other thing is better and that's kind of where I was like surely a Becca is gonna work it'll work but it didn't work for me so I just want to share three distinctions I'm sure that there are tons more distinctions but these are the three that really for me make the big difference between which one I would personally go with the first one is the teachers manual I find for me the Abeka teachers manual is confusing now I know other people who use the Becca and say the Becca teachers manual works so great for them and they it's easy to use and they love the way it's organized for me and the way my mind works it just looks like a bunch of words on a whole bunch of pieces of paper and I feel like I spit I was spending so much time for k5 weeding through and reading through all this stuff in the teachers manual highlighting in one color all of the things that I needed to pull out and gather highlighted in another color all the things that I needed to you know make note of to teach to my son and I was just I felt like I was spending way too much time preparing for something that I was hoping would just almost be pretty open and go and it just wasn't that way for me now again I encourage you go look at samples of a Becca's teachers manual look at samples of BG use teachers manual and see which one makes the most sense to you and clicks with you but for me when I opened up a Becca I just saw a ton of words and it was just overwhelming to me I felt like I spent way too much time trying to figure out what we were supposed to do and not really getting around actually doing it because I already spent too much time preparing and looking through it and all of that with the bju teachers manual I feel like I can just open that up and go there really isn't a whole lot of preparation that I have to do obviously I like to kind of look ahead at the beginning of each week to see if there's any kind of supplies I need to get or anything in particular that might take extra time that I can discover on that particular day well I know we'll have more time but for the most part with for me with bju I just opened it up and I just start going on that particular subject and I just find it a lot easier to know this is the supplies we need this is what I'm supposed to be teaching him these are optional activities these are questions I should be asking like it just fits the way my mind likes to organize things so I encourage you not just to look at the curriculum but to look at the teachers manual for any curriculum that you choose look at the teachers manual and think is this gonna be easy for me to follow and easy for me to be able to implement in my home and for me my mind works better with the BJ you press teachers manual so that is the first big difference that I have seen between Abeka mbj you the second big difference that I knew but I just thought maybe maybe I'm remembering incorrectly and that was the emphasis on rote memorization and critical thinking and for me I really want the bigger emphasis to be on critical thinking I want my kids to memorize things but I want even more so that they have critical thinking skills because for me I don't think it does all that much good if you have a whole bunch of facts memorized but you don't know how to think critically about them and to apply them to your life so when I was using the k5 Abeka and again remember I have used a Becca before I've used that curriculum to teach lots of different subjects to older kids and younger kids but it was just a reminder to me this past summer as we were using the Cape Rebeca curriculum that it just has such a big emphasis on rote memorization especially in those early years and there really was very little critical thinking on the other hand I feel like bju does a phenomenal job of helping our kids think critically while still memorizing facts but the emphasis is more on critical thinking and for me personally my kind of goal with my kids as you can tell is critical thinking for me that is more of a priority than the memorization now some of you might disagree and you might think no memorization is really important especially in elementary years and I'm not really worried about the critical thinking right now we'll get to that later and so if that's how you feel then A Beka might be a really great fit but for me Abeka was so much rote memorization and I just felt like there was no real even place to think critically or think about what you're doing it's just memorize memorize memorize I just went this is not meeting the goals that I have for my kindergartner or really fer you know it wouldn't be a goal for any of my kids and so that would be another reason why I went oh I really prefer bju for my family that teachers manuals easier and there is a lot more critical thinking in the BG you press curriculum the third difference that I have seen between the two programs has to do with the speed in which they move through introducing material and the academic level that they're teaching at now I think both of them provide an excellent academic rigorous academic education for our kids and so I would say either program you would do your kids would do well with in terms of getting a really good solid education what I have seen over the years of using the two different ones Becca and BJ you is that a Becca seems to be a great level ahead of what I would think a typical grade level student would need to be doing or required to do now it is hard it is so hard in home schooling because we really don't operate a lot by grades and our kids part of home schooling is recognizing that our kids are different they're unique they might be more at a 5th grade level for one thing and a 3rd grade level for another and we pick and choose and we make what works for you know we do what works best for our kids so I hate talking about grade levels but I need to talk about grade levels and I just felt like Abeka was all of their curriculum was more of a grade level above where I think the average student would need to be so for my kindergartner that is not what he needed he needed to be at a kindergarten level and I felt like the Abeka k5 did a really quick review of what I thought was typical kindergarten material and then I felt like went in to more first grade material that was just too challenging and assumed that my son had way too many had more knowledge and experience with different concepts than he had I like bju because I feel like they introduce concepts at a nice pace that is at grade level even I think sometimes they're even more rigorous than a lot of other curriculum - but I didn't feel like it was a whole grade level above where I think my student should be for a normal kid but then there really is no normal kid but you get what I'm saying right I I feel like BJ you just moves at the right pace there when they say 5th grade that would be probably a 5th grade curriculum if they say kindergarten I would think that is probably what the average kindergartner could learn so for my kindergartner he was not ready for you know 1st grade work he really needed a good foundation and basic kindergarten concepts and so I realized the Becca key fight is moving way too fast and expecting way to much of him then what he really needed and so again I just went okay BJ you is gonna be a much better fit for him because of that now again if you have a student who is really especially in the early years is really kind of ahead of normal grade level then maybe using a Becca and putting them in that you know their third grade and you put them in third grade they're gonna be more challenged because it's probably gonna be more fourth grade material but you could also use bju and just put them in agreed above their third grade you just having to do fourth grade and move up you know do the the grade level up so obviously if you have a third grader they don't need to be doing third grade level curriculum you can pick which one is best for your kid so for me just Abeka moved way too fast and it really was I thought not the grade level that they say is not what I think would be a tip that typical grade level so I would love to hear from you I would love to know have you used to back up have you used BJ you have you noticed these things as well because this is my experience this is what I kind of think after using the curriculum but maybe you guys have a different take maybe you have a different perspective on it so I would love to hear from you if you love a Becca and it's worked great for you let me know in the comments if you love BJ you let me know if you'd use both of them and you didn't like either of them or they both seem similar or let me know down in the comments because I'm making this video to help other homeschool moms and so after they want you watch this video read the comments and hear what other homeschool moms have to say so that you can get just a good idea of what's going to work best for your family but for me BJ you is definitely a better fit because one the teachers manual is so much easier for me to understand and to implement and just to open and go and and use in my home number - I really want critical thinking skills to be a priority and I'm not all that thrilled with just rote memorization so that's another reason why I really prefer beach at you and then I want to know that when I'm getting a grade level that that is kind of the standard grade level which is why I like bgu and I love that bju does so much good just review and making sure our kids know past concepts that they need to know before they build new concepts it just for me it just fits more with the way I want my kids to learn and to progress and to have just a nice easy you know transition from one concept to the next in each subject that they're doing but again I love to hear from you and your experience with these two programs and get your input as well because of course this is just my opinion and one of the great things about homeschooling is that we have so many options and what works for one person might not work for you so while bgu process works the best for me might not be the best fit for your family so I'd love to hear from all of you down in the comments below

Channel: Janelle Knutson

Views: 29,071

Rating: 4.8609409 out of 5

Keywords: abeka, bju, bju press, curriculum reviews, homeschool curriculum, homeschool, abeka vs bju, bju vs abeka

Id: Ob71GXdlXLg

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 05 2019