The Rev. David and Mrs Shona Murray describe their experience with A Beka Books and home schooling.

I came across A Beka Book 18 months ago. At the time I was looking for quality educational material with a sound Christian basis and good structure. I have now used this curriculum with both my children for 1 year and am pleased with it.
Basically, the A Beka Book curriculum has been devised by professional Christian teachers and administrators in the USA. It contains day-by-day lesson plans for an entire year.
This covers a comprehensive range of subjects including: phonics, writing skills, numeracy, art and music in the earlier years to science subjects, mathematics, history, languages etc. in the later years. It begins at age three with fun educational nursery material and goes up to age eighteen. Thousands of Christian schools across the world successfully use the A Beka Book curriculums, which are based on sound scholarship, common sense, and the Word of God. A Beka Book is an affiliate of Pensacola Christian College.

Strengths of A Beka Book.
It is unashamedly Biblical and traditional in its approach.
It is very colourful and interesting material for both the pupil and the teacher.
It allows you to teach more than one child at different levels without too much difficulty.
Some subjects can be done together, and with the others you can teach one child while the other gets on with written work.
It can be ordered and paid for on-line with an excellent service provided.

Draw backs of A Beka Book.
A picture of Jesus may occasionally appear in some of the material. However where this occurs it is easily edited out by the parent.
The Bible section of the course is in parts Arminian in its teaching. However other aspects, especially studies in the Old Testament are tremendous with a huge amount of high quality materials. So, caution and selecting out is recommended here. Personally, I prefer to use other alternatives rather than A Beka Book for Bible.
In numeracy, American terminology is used in some areas e.g. Dollars and Cents or Pounds and Ounces. However, this is not a major obstacle, as generally the aim is to teach numeracy skills such as adding etc. I supplement with the Decimal equivalents. Also, the reality is that a good working knowledge of both is a useful tool in our modern world.

Ordering Materials.
Contact:
1) On-line www.abeka.org
2) Telephone 850 478 8933
3) Mail A Beka Book Inc., P.O. Box 19100, Pensacola, Florida 32523-9100, U.S.A.

I have found ordering on-line to be the most efficient way. Total cost per child per year is approximately £250. This includes teachers manuals, pupil materials and visual aids etc.
If you have the catalogue sent or down-loaded to you from the internet it is worth having your whole order ready prior to going on-line. Air mail delivery takes about 2 weeks while surface mail takes about 2-3 months (Although we received our material in 6 weeks. Ed.). The latter is considerably cheaper, so it is worthwhile choosing and ordering material 6 months in advance and receiving it by surface mail. The insurance option is recommended, although so far we have not had a mishap. It is more cost efficient to place one whole order than bits and pieces throughout the year which can work out very expensive.

Finally.
I am thankful to the Lord to have come across A Beka Book. It lays a lot of emphasis on the school day being orderly and structured. Each day’s work is scheduled to finish around lunch time, allowing time in the day for domestic duties. It is also flexible and allows you to go at an individual child’s own pace.
It is one option for a system of Home Education and one that I would certainly recommend.