2025-2026 Curriculum Review: Without Doors
We have now finished our eighth official year of homeschooling (or tenth, if you count a couple years of preschool), which is hard to believe! Time is flying, and I'm more grateful than ever to have spent these years teaching our children.
This year, we homeschooled a 7th grader, a 5th grader, a 3rd grader, and a 1st grader. In South Carolina, we are required to homeschool for 180 days and cover reading, writing, math, science, and social studies, so that’s what we used as an outline for our year.
We typically do school four days a week and use Friday for field trips, piano lessons, catching up, or spending time with each other and neighbors. This approach has worked well for us! We plan some vacations ahead of time, but we also take spontaneous days off when we need them. Having that flexibility has been a gift.
This year, for the first time since we started homeschooling, we decided to take a real summer break instead of schooling year-round! It has been a wonderful change for us.
I’d love to share what worked for us this year, and what was challenging. I hope this helps you, whether you’re just exploring the idea of homeschool or planning your year next year!
How My Husband and I Share Homeschool Responsibilities
My husband and I run our small business, Brighter Day Press, from home, which allows us to split homeschooling responsibilities equally. While one of us is teaching, the other is working. I usually take the lead in choosing the curriculum and organizing our plans, but we typically follow the same daily schedule. We simply use a bookmark to mark where we left off and pick up from there. The only difference is in our read-aloud books; each of us chooses our own book to read aloud. This is a unique set-up—in fact, we don't know any other families who split homeschooling responsibilities equally like we do—but it has worked well for us for the last couple years!
My Honest Review of Without Doors: United Kingdom
This past school year, our family used Without Doors: United Kingdom as the backbone of our homeschool, and overall, we had a wonderful experience with it. Many of you have asked for my thoughts, so here are a few things we especially loved, along with one area where we chose to do something a little differently.
Use code WHITNEY10 for a discount on any Without Doors curriculum.
What We Loved
- It's truly family-friendly. One of my favorite things about Without Doors: United Kingdom is how beautifully it brings a family together around rich books. We especially loved reading books like Our Island Story aloud as a family. The book choices in this curriculum led to wonderful conversations and gave us a common foundation as we learned together. As a mom teaching children of different ages, I appreciate having so much that we could enjoy together rather than feeling like I am constantly juggling completely separate lesson plans. Family-style is the way to go! Also included in the curriculum are additional picture book and chapter book recommendations for various ages, so we had plenty to choose from. We discovered several new-to-us gems on these lists!
- It embraces Charlotte Mason without feeling rigid. Our family leans heavily toward the Charlotte Mason philosophy, but we're not purists. I appreciated that Without Doors captures so much of what I love—living books, narration, beautiful ideas—without making me feel like I have to follow every Charlotte Mason principle perfectly. It felt like there was plenty of freedom to adapt it to fit our own family.
- It feels doable. This was probably one of the biggest reasons it worked so well for us. At this stage of life, I'm simply not in a season where I can consistently pull off elaborate crafts, projects, and hands-on activities every week. Without Doors keeps the focus on excellent books and meaningful learning without requiring lots of extra preparation. That doesn't mean your family couldn't add those things if you enjoy them! It just means they aren't required to have a rich homeschool day. For our current season, that was an enormous gift.
- I love the weekly menu approach. Rather than assigning every subject to a specific day, Without Doors provides a weekly menu of lessons to complete. I know this style isn't for everyone. If you're brand new to homeschooling and feel most comfortable having every day planned for you, this format may feel a little overwhelming at first. But personally, I loved it. Some weeks, we accomplished more on Monday than Thursday. Some days, appointments interrupted our plans. The weekly menu gave me the flexibility to adapt our schedule without ever feeling like we had "fallen behind." It was one of my favorite features of the curriculum!
One Thing We Changed
The one area we personally chose to supplement was the Bible portion. While I appreciated having Scripture included, we wanted a more robust family Bible time, so we substituted our own morning routine instead.
Here's what that looked like for us:
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We worked through the New Testament together, chapter by chapter. Each morning we read from our Hosanna Revival NLT journaling Bible. It has wide margins for notes, and after our discussion, I often write down something one of the children noticed or said, along with the date. I already know this Bible will become one of our family's greatest treasures in the years ahead.
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We also sang two hymns together each day. We love using the Sing! Hymnal, and every so often, we'll read the story behind one of the hymns (in the back of the book). One of my favorite parts of our morning is hearing Liam accompany us on the piano.
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We spent a few minutes reviewing Scripture we've memorized over the years while also slowly learning new passages. This has been just as beneficial for me as it has been for the kids. Some of the passages we've memorized include 1 Corinthians 13, Psalm 23, Psalm 139, the Apostles' Creed, Psalm 1, and Psalm 121.
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If you're looking for a simple way to build a rich Morning Time into your homeschool, I'd also encourage you to take a look at our Morning Time guides. These are the guides we've used in our own family for years. They make Morning Time incredibly simple and open-and-go while still providing a rich feast of Scripture, poetry, art, music, and beautiful ideas in manageable portions.
Final Thoughts About Without Doors
Overall, I would absolutely recommend Without Doors. It's family-friendly, filled with excellent books, manageable to implement, and gave us one of our favorite homeschool years yet. We especially enjoyed the British history studies and learned far more than I expected!
One question I've been asked several times is whether it's academically challenging enough.
I think the answer really depends on what you're using alongside it. Without Doors is designed primarily as a family guide, and for that purpose, I think it does an excellent job. We paired it with individual math, language arts, and a few other independent subjects for each child (see below), and it created a homeschool year for us that felt both rich and sustainable.
I think Without Doors is an especially wonderful fit for families who love living books, have children of multiple ages, appreciate Charlotte Mason principles without wanting to follow them rigidly, and are looking for a curriculum that feels both rich and realistic.
Use code WHITNEY10 for a discount on any Without Doors curriculum.
Additional Homeschool Work We Do as a Family
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Each of our children participates in “Mail Monday,” which is simply writing a letter to a friend or family member every week. I’ve set up little baskets for each child that include everything they need to complete this task independently: personalized cards, envelopes, stamps, an address book, and even a wax sealing kit (here’s the actual stamp) if they’d like to add a beautiful touch. They really look forward to doing this and each have several penpals that they keep up with. It’s so fun and motivating for them to receive mail!
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On Thursdays, each of our children chooses a topic from our history lessons that week and writes about it in their narration notebooks. Our older two can do this independently, while I help dictate words and sentences to our younger two for their notebooks. They also illustrate these notebooks. You can learn more about narration notebooking here.
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To end our homeschool day, we watch World Watch News, which is a 10-minute world news program by Christian journalists. This has been so informative and engaging for our kids. We all love it! If you use this referral link, you can try it for 60 days for free!
Independent Work
I call these subjects “independent,” but I am still very present for most of these subjects (especially for our two youngest boys). I feel like a ping pong ball during much of our homeschool time, hopping from one child to the next, making sure all my children are getting what they need. It is a lot of work to manage multiple ages and various learning levels. But with a little planning and training, it’s totally possible. And it does get easier as your children grow and become more independent!
Independent Checklists
For each child, I’ve created an independent work checklist (that they have input on and really love!). Here’s the editable Canva link, in case you’d like to personalize some checklists for your kids, too! I print one checklist out for each child for each week. This has been a game changer for our homeschool and has really encouraged independence!
More recently, we've been using our new Skylight Calendar instead of checklists. This has also worked well!
For the timed items on the list (like 15 minutes of reading), we love using these visual timers for each of our kids. These are the best timers I’ve found: they don’t tick and you can turn the beep at the end off or on (and it isn’t too loud or startling). All of our kids enjoy seeing how much time they need to put into various subjects, and it’s helping establish good habits and time management for them.
7th grade for Liam
Liam has always been a voracious learner, and one I am always working to keep up with! In addition to what’s listed below, Liam reads for hours a day (without prompting from me). His favorite independent read from this year was The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.
Liam helped design his curriculum plan this year, and as you’ll notice in his choices below, many of the classes he is taking are online and self-paced. This fits him really well as he enjoys getting up early, doing his independent Bible study (which I talk more about here), getting dressed, then coming downstairs for breakfast and getting started on his independent work.
- Composition & Literature: In the state of South Carolina, 7th to 12th graders are required to take composition and literature, which is a change from previous years where he needed a more basic language arts curriculum. Liam took four writing classes by Jonathan Rogers through Compass Classroom and loved them. Each class is ¼ credit, which adds up to one full credit for the year (which can be put on a high school transcript). He highly recommends these classes!
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Math: Liam used Saxon 8/7 with Nicole the Math Lady for Pre-Algebra. This wasn’t his favorite choice, mainly because it felt like a lot of busy work even after he understood the concepts. However, he does feel prepared for Algebra 1, which he’ll be taking in-person next year.
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Foreign Language: Liam took a Compass Classroom class called Visual Latin I and absolutely loved it. I received quiz scores and updates through email, but the class is independent and self-paced. After that, he took Visual French 1 and this was probably his favorite class from the year. He’ll be taking French 2 in-person next year, and I really believe he’s ready!
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Creation Science: Liam wanted to go beyond the science we are doing as a family (nature study through Without Doors), so he added this online course through Compass Classroom. It wasn’t his favorite, mainly because the lectures are very lengthy. He hasn’t finished this course, and I’m not sure he will.
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Extra-curricular: Piano. Liam takes weekly in-person piano lessons and practices for a minimum of 45 minutes every day. He won a South Carolina state competition this year, which was such a highlight for him!
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Chess: Liam (and all of our kids) have been fascinated by chess this year. They use chess.com to practice, and all of them are part of a local chess club, which has been such a fun (and somewhat unexpected) activity for them!
5th grade for Lanie
Lanie has become a voracious reader this past year, and especially loves reading on her Kindle. You can read more about why we chose to get our older three kids Kindles for Christmas, and also find a list of her favorite books from the year!
- Language arts: Learning Language Arts through Literature (the Purple Book). We have used this curriculum for the last several years and it covers all the bases! We’ll continue with it next year. I do recommend getting both the student guide and the teacher’s guide. Both are necessary for all Learning Language Arts through Literature curriculum.
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Math: Apologia Math 5. This was a fantastic fit for Lanie! It’s colorful, engaging, uses real-world examples, and is mostly independent for her. I also recommend getting both the student guide and the teacher’s guide as both are necessary.
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Handwriting/Cursive Practice: We continued in this Handwriting Without Tears cursive book to get some more cursive practice. Lanie did great, and is finished with handwriting for now. She may try calligraphy next year!
- Typing: Lanie and Bear both used Typing.com. We have used the paid subscription for a while now because it’s ad-free. Lanie finished the program and is practicing her skills using NitroType.com.
- Extra-curricular: Hoffman Academy online piano lessons. Lanie took Hoffman Academy lessons a couple times a week and practiced for 15 minutes every day. I am so proud of her progress, and she is still loving it! We purchased the Premium program because it includes so many helpful add-ons (like theory worksheets) that are not included in the free program. You can use the code LEARN for 10% off! She is also really enjoying playing chess at our local chess club!
3rd grade for Bear
Bear grew leaps and bounds last year in homeschool and has become a voracious reader as well! I can barely keep up. He is so excited to learn, and it's a joy to teach him.
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Language arts: Learning Language Arts through Literature (the Yellow Book). We’re continuing to the next level of this curriculum next year!
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Handwriting: Learning Without Tears beginning cursive. He did great with this, and will continue with more cursive from Learning Without Tears next year.
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Math: Apologia Math 3. This was a great fit for him this year, so we’re continuing on!
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Extra-curricular: Hoffman Academy online piano lessons and chess club.
1st grade for Beck
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Reading: Beck is becoming a more proficient reader all the time, and our favorite curriculum we worked through (which I've used before) was 100 Gentle Lessons in Sight & Sound.
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Beck did the Handwriting Without Tears’ My Printing Book and hopes to start cursive next year. He has excellent handwriting, and I think he could easily handle it!
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Math: Apologia Math 1. This was a great fit for him! We plan to use the next level next year.
Homeschool Planner I Used
I used our 2025-2026 Homeschool Planner to record the work we’ve completed and honestly loved it! We now have 2026-2027 Homeschool Planners available. I hope you'll grab one!
I hope you feel inspired by these choices and maybe even less overwhelmed as you look for curriculum for your own family! Of course, homeschooling does take a lot of planning… but once you find great choices for your kids, it is such a joy to dive in!
Please note: As much as I would love to assist you in your own choices, I just don’t have the capacity to do so. I receive dozens of emails every time I post our curriculum plans asking about specific children and situations and what I would recommend. I’m so sorry I am unable to answer these. I encourage you to look through what we’ve used in the past from these posts to help guide you!
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What I’ve Learned in 5 Years of Homeschooling: This includes all of our curriculum choices for the first five years!
Final Encouragement
Choosing curriculum can be enjoyable and… daunting. There are just so many wonderful options! While we should definitely do our research, I believe there comes a point when we need to make a decision and rest in it. The Lord has called each of us to this journey and He will sustain us. He cares about our children’s growth and flourishing even more than we do! If you’re feeling stressed about the upcoming year, I encourage you to pray and ask God for the peace and clarity you need to make these decisions. He will provide!
God bless you and your homeschool this year. I am cheering you on!
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