WinterPromise Curriculum

WinterPromise Publishing

WinterPromise has developed a surprisingly broad curriculum for preschool through high school levels over the past few years. It’s a themed curriculum, similar to a unit study but with a few differences. WinterPromise predominantly uses the Charlotte Mason approach to education, but much of the learning occurs around themes as in unit studies. It allows for use of the occasional text or workbook (such as Easy Grammar) as well as your choice of math programs. It incorporates technology such as interactive computer programs, DVDs, and CDs. Like unit studies, WinterPromise incorporates lots of hands-on activities and projects. It’s also a multi-level program to some extent so that you can often teach students working at more than one level in the same curriculum.

Similar to Sonlight in one way, you select your core curriculum package—which might be themed around either history or science. The core programs, their themes, and their grade levels are:

- Journeys of Imagination, an introduction to children’s literature (ages 2-4)
- I’m Ready to Learn, readiness for math, language, science, etc. (ages 3-4) [These first two programs might be used simultaneously over one or two years.]
- Animals and Their Worlds, animals and science theme (PreK-2)
- Children Around the World, culture and geography (grades 1-5) [Has wonderful sections that help children understand the poverty and danger in which many children live. Strong Christian perspective encourages prayer for other countries and cultures.]
- The American Story 1, early American history (grades 1-3 with add-on packages for grades 4-6)
- The American Story 2, Civil War through the 20 th century (grades 2-4 with add-on packages for grades 4-6)
- Adventures in the Sea & Sky, both history and science themes (grades 4-6) [A brief historical overview through the history of sea, air, and space travel that incorporates the science for each area.]
- Quest for the Ancient World, ancient history (grades 4-12) [Comes with two guidebooks with schedules for either grades 4-6 or junior/senior high. Some resources are used at both levels, but you select packages for one level or the other for other resources.]
- Quest for the Middle Ages, history and science themes (grades 4-12, but best for junior/senior high) [Similar to Quest for the Ancient World in selection of resources, but there are also optional, integrated science programs for each level.]
- Quest for Royals & Revolution, the period of exploration and colonization (grades 7-12)
- (Modern World will be the final program in the cycle, but it’s not available yet.)

Then you also select language arts and a science curriculum (if the core theme isn’t from science) from coordinating packages published by WinterPromise. They also sell Math Mammoth arithmetic courses for grades 1 through 3 and Saxon Math for kindergarten through Algebra 2, although no math program is incorporated into the rest of the curriculum as an essential item.

The key item in each curriculum package is a guidebook. Each guidebook provides basic instruction on how to use the materials in the package; detailed, daily lesson plans, a supply list, and additional lesson plans/schedules for older students who will complete some of their work independently (when appropriate to the level of the guidebook). Guidebook pages are three-hole punched for insertion in a binder. They are printed on only one side for a unique reason. WinterPromise’s language arts lesson plan guides have similar pages that coordinate with the core curriculum lessons. Language arts guidebook pages are three-hole punched on the right side of each page so each page can be inserted into your teacher binder directly facing the corresponding schedule in the core curriculum. A nifty idea even though it does take a little bit of time for you to assemble your teacher binder at the beginning. Guidebooks are your planning and your record keeping books. Simply check off assignments as completed. If you want to assign grades, you could enter them in your guidebook, but you might want to keep a separate grade book so it’s easier to tally grades.

Guidebooks are very easy to use. They are designed to make WinterPromise a curriculum with very minimal teacher preparation work. Each guidebook directs you in the use of quite a number of books and resources that come with each curriculum package.

For example, The American Story 1 package for the early grades includes the guidebook, 15 “history” books that are biographies or brief topical history books written for children, 10 “adventure reading” books that tie into the historical theme (e.g., Ben and Me and Little House on the Prairie), 2 Bible study books, 4 activity resource books, and 9 more books on a “focus theme” of Native Americans. You need to purchase the Children’s Encyclopedia of American History separately because it is also used with American Story 2.

While American Story 1 was written for students in grades 1 through 3, WinterPromise has created extension packages for students in grades 4 through 6 so you can keep a broader age span of children working in essentially the same program. This separate package has it’s own independent study schedules plus 17 books that are written for the slightly older audience. The extra books also target study of the Constitution, something not covered in the younger level package.

WinterPromise core curriculum packages also each include their own “Make-Your-Own” book. These unique publications have a variety of activity sheets for students to use for creating their own notebooks. A separate Timelines in History book consists of heavy cardstock pages, punched for a binder. Students use these pages to create their own timelines using either figures sold by WinterPromise, Homeschool in the Woods, or others. Notebook pages from "Make-Your-Own" books, written to correlate with American History 1 and levels above it, can be inserted between timeline pages if you so choose.

Bible study is included in all core packages, usually, but not always, coordinating with the core program theme. Resources and perspective are Protestant. The Christian (Protestant) worldview carries through the entire WinterPromise curriculum even though most of the books are secular. The publisher notes in the lesson plans when there might be potential problems for Christians such as evolutionary assumptions.

WinterPromise is designed for a 36-week school year. Schedules are set up for four days per week. The fifth day might be used for field trips, extended activities, reading, or tackling some of the ideas in the curriculum that you don’t have time for the rest of the week. It doesn’t seem likely that families could actually get through all of the read-aloud books and activities that come in each package, so you will sometimes have to be selective. While there is lot of reading since this is a literature-based program, WinterPromise also incorporates lots of hands-on and active learning activities. WinterPromise has made it a bit easier to select among the numerous activities by coding them as to how easy or difficult they are and how much prep time is needed.

Activities vary depending upon the grade levels addressed. More hands-on, arts-and-crafts type activities are included for younger students while older students are given more research and writing projects. Older students still have plenty of hands-on work such as experiments, active investigations, and practical applications.

While preparation time is minimal aside from some of the more challenging projects, parents/teachers spend a great deal of time actually using the program with their children, especially at younger levels. Most of the books for younger students are read-alouds, and some are read-alouds at upper levels. In keeping with Charlotte Mason methods, children do narration, create notebooks, and participate in activities, all with more or less parental assistance.

WinterPromise language arts programs are comprehensive, covering phonics, readings, vocabulary, spelling, handwriting, grammar, composition, and communication, each at the appropriate levels. These programs include some workbooks like Explode the Code, SpellWell, Wordly Wise, and Easy Grammar. But they also include activity books and sets of real books to be used as readers. Reader packages are selected to coordinate with themes of the core packages. Language arts programs are available for PreK through high school, but only three of the four programs for high school level are available at this time. As I mentioned previously, guidebooks for language arts have the same type of four-day lesson plan schedules that make it easy to use and coordinate all the resources, but they do require more parental participation than something like an A Beka language arts worktext and reading program.

The three WinterPromise science programs are intended to supplement the core programs that already have varying amounts of science included. The first program, The World Around Me, introduces children in grades K-2 to basic science topics such as nature, water, light, color, and the night sky. Reading and activities should take only 2 to 4 hours per week.

Shoot & Sprout, Buzz & Bite targets grades 1-4 with a study of plants and bugs. Rock Around the Earth for grades 3-6 is a introduction to geology and earth science. These last two programs should take only between 2 and 5 hours per week to complete.

All science programs include guidebooks and a number of books, always including some with hands-on activities. The last two programs add an ant factory and rocks and minerals kits respectively.

By now, you might be envisioning quite a stack of books for each year, and that is certainly an accurate picture of this curriculum—lots of books and lots of reading to do. But the selected books, especially for younger levels, are often colorful and appealing, and most are real books rather than texts or workbooks. Many of these books are ones you would love to have in your family library.

You might have also noticed that there’s no mention of tests and answer keys. While answer keys come with SpellWell books (in language arts programs) and are optional for a few other workbooks, there are no tests and answer keys for the core programs. Instead, children are writing, narrating, creating notebooks—demonstrating their knowledge through their activities. Parents are also working closely with their children and can easily spot when I child does or does not understand a concept. Nevertheless, WinterPromise guides suggest using games (directions included) if you want to quiz children on retention of information.

The curriculum intentionally does not align with state standards. Like most unit studies, topics are studied fewer times but at greater depth than occurs in standard textbooks. Ultimately, children are likely to cover all of the required topics, but they are also likely to retain more since learning methods are much more appealing.

The publisher’s website has explanations, sample pages, a discussion board and other information that will help you better understand the curriculum before purchasing.