BJU Press's philosophy is conservative and Christian (Protestant). Educationally, they seem to have balanced their curriculum with teaching methods that suit most learning styles, although much of the necessary information to properly teach children with various learning styles is contained in the teacher's editions rather than in student books.
BJU Press offers a mixture of softbound and hardbound student texts with separate teacher's editions. Most teacher's editions include reduced images of student textbook pages. Teacher's editions are available as either printed books or ebooks (in a proprietary format). Home educators sometimes try to work without them, but they usually contain answer keys and other essential material.
Throughout BJU Press's curriculum, student material is colorful and well presented. It also has strong Biblical teaching incorporated in a very effective manner, sometimes identified explicitly as Biblical Worldview Shaping.
BJU Press begins reading instruction in kindergarten. The phonics program is contained within Beginnings K5 and Phonics and Reading 1. Beginnings K5 provides all you need for kindergarten, aside from math and Bible instruction. The goal of the K5 program is exposure to beginning concepts without pressure. BJU Press's Reading 1 correlates with their Phonics and English 1 to continue with language arts instruction for first grade. While there are a variety of informal activities in the K-1 programs, they lean toward more formal learning than some more relaxed programs for homeschoolers.
BJU Press's math program strives to help students develop an understanding of math with manipulatives and thought-provoking word problems. At upper levels, BJU Press math encourages children to think and analyze through well-designed word problems. The math program requires more direct teaching than do many other math programs, especially for high school level, but it does a good job of teaching both concepts and skills.
BJU Press uses a slant printing/handwriting system very similar to ScottForesman's D'Nealian that is very popular with some homeschoolers and teachers.
Science books for first through fifth grades are more activity-oriented than traditional science texts. This makes them useful for children with different learning styles. BJU Press has done a good job of melding high-quality content with activities. (The elementary science series is among my Top Picks. You can read the review here.) Junior high science texts (Life Science and Earth Science) are good courses that will work well in the homeschool. Higher-level texts assume the classroom environment for lab work and are increasingly difficult to use. However, BJU Press lab DVDs and lab kits are appropriate for homeschool use.
The BJU Press Bible curriculum for junior and senior high school is well-written, purposeful, and easy to use.
Families with only one or two grade levels to teach generally find they can make use of BJU Press texts and teacher's editions more easily than families with more grade levels to teach. The problem of getting through the large amount of material in the teacher's editions sometimes causes families to use only the texts or workbooks, thereby eliminating essential parts of many courses. BJU Press is starting to publish Teacher Edition Companions for some courses that provide simplified lesson plans for homeschoolers. Teacher's edition's are still needed as answer keys, and sometimes for other lesson resources.
Many homeschooling families find BJU Press's video courses a huge help because they do the teaching for us. The newest versions of the video courses walk students through the lessons, not parroting the text, but drawing attention to key information and tying things together. Video instructors also direct students when to pause and read pages from a textbook or complete pages in an activity book.
