“What curriculum do you use to homeschool your children?”
This is a question I often get asked by inquirers. Most have asked out of curiosity. Others asked about the curriculum we were using so they would know what curriculum to use to educate their children.
Others have asked, seeking genuine feedback from someone using the curriculum.
A few others just wondered what we were doing homeschooling our children and if they were getting “schooled.”
For whatever reason you are reading this post, I hope that what I’m sharing will shed some light on the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum, helping you make an informed decision.
I will share a bonus ninth point that I hope will also help understand the ACE curriculum.
I also intend to share 4 things we don’t like about the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum to give you a somewhat balanced review of Accelerated Christian Education as a curriculum.
Let’s get into what we like about the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum.
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ACE is Biblical
For the Christian parent who desires to see their child know God and relate personally with his Son Jesus Christ, a curriculum can be a tool that helps facilitate this process.
When a curriculum as a tool helps point a child to a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, enhances character growth and development, and reinforces what parents are already doing as they disciple their child or children, that’s a curriculum a parent would go for.
I love that everything the child learns has a biblical basis in the ACE curriculum.
A case in point is science. The foundation of science in the PACES is the creation story rather than theories about creation that are not based on the truth.
*A PACE is a small bite-sized booklet that a child works on and completes before progressing to the next booklet. A child will only progress after mastery of the subject matter. A PACE will usually take a child two to three weeks to complete. PACE is an acronym that stands for Packet of Accelerated Christian Education.
The parent or supervisor will often be reminded to look out for God-ordained opportunities to lead the child into a relationship with Jesus if the child is not yet born again. This happens in the form of prompts within the PACES strategically placed to help a parent lead a child to the Lord
Scripture is part of the curriculum. The curriculum is structured with scripture memory verses, Bible stories, and Biblical principles in the curriculum content. This helps the child to view everything they are learning from a Biblical perspective.
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ACE has a Strong Emphasis on Character Growth and Transformation
Apart from the fact that ACE is Biblical, this Curriculum helps a child work through sixty character qualities that embody the life of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
By the time a child completes a grade, they’ve had the opportunity to interact with each of these character qualities.
As a parent, I find it easier to accentuate the character quality a child is learning because the character quality is emphasized throughout a particular PACE.
The character quality is based on a particular verse the child memorizes as part of their education. This enhances a child’s interaction with God’s Word.
The Word of God is our life. Focusing on character growth and transformation in light of God’s Word assures as of lasting eternal results in the life of the child.
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Children Learn from very Early to Work Independently
One of the strengths of the ACE Curriculum is teaching children to set goals every day.
The curriculum comes with a Goal Card. The student fills in the number of pages they intend to complete on a given day.
Your child then works towards completing these goals. When they complete their goals, they cross them out as soon as they are done.
I’ve seen this goal-setting work in other areas of my children’s lives.
They will set goals to complete chores. They’ll even set financial goals with the little money they earn.
I attribute this goal-setting trend to the fact that they’re accustomed to setting goals as they learn. This helps a parent reinforce this goal-setting skill in the their child .
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Continuity of Learning Each Day Even in the Absence of the supervisor/ Parent
Picking from where I left off in the goal-setting aspect of the ACE Curriculum, I’ve found that a child learns to work independently as I indicated earlier.
If the parent or supervisor must attend to a pressing issue, a child can still work even when the parent is not present.
This, however, doesn’t include Preschool to Grade 1. These are foundational years where they are learning to read and write. They need a parent or supervisor’s full attention.
I’ll talk about these foundational years with ACE in a future blog.
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Their Vocation Inclination Begins Taking Shape as they go through the Curriculum
I belong to a generation in our country where we were encouraged to work hard and excel to qualify for certain careers because of the monetary value attached to these careers.
This trend hasn’t stopped as career masters in schools advise children on their career choices based on the lucrative value of a given career choice.
The ACE Curriculum came as a breath of fresh air in helping us pursue insightful conversations with our children on vocation and career choices.
The curriculum incorporates stories of men and women who chose to do the will of God, choosing careers that aligned with God’s will over their lives.
I think of missionary stories such as those of Hudson Taylor, and Adoniram Judson, the story of the 5 martyrs murdered in the jungles of Ecuador – Through Gates of Splendor, and many other stories they read for their literature.
These stories form triggers for conversations that help children begin to think and reflect on their vocation and career choices in the future.
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The child Learns at their Pace.
No two children are the same. They are each created by God uniquely with varying personalities and gifts.
Subjecting them to similar settings and environments and expecting them to perform the same can be a little daunting not just for the child and the parent.
ACE Curriculum has been designed for each child to learn at their pace.
They progress individually as they master the content. The supervisor offers the child personalized help, not group help, whenever a child needs assistance understanding a particular concept.
When working with the curriculum from the home environment, your child is spared the competitive spirit in a school classroom setting that can be toxic for a child who is a little slow in understanding a concept, or who grasps the concept differently from the other children.
With the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum, the child works at their pace without undue pressure.
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A Solid Foundation for Learning to Read and Write
Before I had my children, I never thought I could teach a preschool class. I had plausible reasons why I couldn’t teach. Among these reasons was that I felt I was not “gifted” in handling little children.
When I started my children on the ACE Curriculum’s Preschool, I was amazed at the rewarding experience. They were reading well 15 months later.
ACE’s Preschool Curriculum has such a fine foundation for helping a child get ready to learn to read and write.
The emphasis on a child learning and mastering the phonetic sounds in an exciting creative interactive way made the process a beautiful learning experience for my children and me.
Equipped with the necessary letter cards with the right phonetic sounds, other visual aids, and colorful PACES to enhance this, each child learned to read and write in a fun and engaging way.
I’d vouch for ACE’s foundational curriculum any day. I also loved that our children started at 5 years and not earlier.
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ACE Curriculum’s System of Rewarding Godly Character
THE ACE Curriculum rewards godly character to motivate a child to work towards growing in godly character.
ACE has a merit system whereby a child will receive what is called a merit every time they exhibit a godly character such as kindness, diligence, or going the extra mile in being responsible. Helping with chores they’ve not been assigned, for instance, is one such responsibility.
The parent can then decide what to do with the merits earned, ensuring they translate the merits to something a child will truly appreciate as a reward for the effort of growing in character.
Now to the bonus point.
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I have Learned a lot from the ACE Curriculum as an Educator
My husband acknowledges to date that my handwriting has undergone a metamorphosis of sorts lol!
When we first married, he had difficulty understanding what I had written. On several occasions, he would bring what I had written for me to read to him a word he was struggling to decipher.
Helping my children construct their letters correctly as they followed the instructions in the ACE curriculum helped me learn to write letters correctly. This positively affected how I write letters and words.
My husband says my handwriting is top-notch. (I’m grateful to God) I attribute this to the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum.
Additionally, I am in a ministry setting where I often teach God’s Word, I have learned to summarize the creation story, something I would struggle to do. I learned how to do this from the ACE curriculum as I educated my children using the curriculum.
I could talk of so much I have learned and continue to learn but this might be the subject of a whole blog!
Let me not finish without sharing at least 3 things we didn’t like about the ACE Curriculum to give a somewhat balanced review of the curriculum.
The system is rather costly now that it is foreign to our country.
The shipping costs and the fact that we don’t get them directly but work with the curriculum’s representative on our continent causes the ACE curriculum costs to go up.
The PACES are also not reusable.
Once you’ve received the curriculum from your curriculum provider and have issued the PACEs to your student, the student works in the PACEs. Once a child has completed the PACEs, they cannot be used again. You must purchase new PACEs for the next child.
Because it is a foreign curriculum, the context is quite different from ours.
The examples are not easy to relate to.
The frequent reference to the four seasons, for instance, presents a concept that is quite foreign to us who live in the tropics.
In my country, we don’t have a postman who comes to drop mail in the mailbox on the street outside your home. When such an example is referenced, it necessitates research to know how such a system works.
Finally, children will often work with prewritten PACES. They mostly fill in the answers. The educator or supervisor needs to be very deliberate to teach the child to express themselves in writing.
When our daughter began writing essays, I remember helping her learn to express herself rather than in the few words she would write.
She was used to writing only what was required in her PACE work. She had to learn to stretch her vocabulary in writing to write a fairly detailed piece of work when writing an essay.
I hope this review will help you make a more informed decision when choosing a Christian curriculum for your child.