(MODG) Mother of Divine Grace: Why we chose it

Inside: Why our family chose Mother of Divine Grace and why it might be a good fit for you too!

From the beginning of our homeschool journey (about 5 years ago) we’ve been using a rather eclectic mix of homeschool methods and materials.

Read more: 2015-2016 Homeschool Curriculum to get an idea of what curriculum we used at the beginning of this year.

I’ve tried to pull a little of the “best” from each methodology, all while trying to maintain my sanity, which can be a hard juggling act.

In fact, most of the time, I felt that there was no balance.  One thing always seemed to give way. 

If I felt exhausted and overworked, I figured that meant our homeschool was doing well.  If I had some personal breathing space, I thought my homeschooling efforts were probably not enough.

I began to look for ways to bring more simplicity and continuity into our homeschool.  Could I trade in my doubts of never-doing-enough for a bold confidence in our homeschooling plan?

As always, I brought my concerns to Husband.  I’m so blessed to have him so involved in our homeschool journey! 

Over Christmas break, we took some time to pray and flesh out our thoughts, concerns, and ideas (a totally normal part of our evenings together). 

We fleshed out our homeschooling options:

A.  Enroll in a homeschool program (Seton, Mother of Divine Grace, Kolbe Academy to name a few).

B.  Use the materials of a boxed homeschool program without enrollment.

C.  Continue on the “Eclectic Pick-and-choose Homeschooling Method.”

We chose option B.

Why not Option A – Enrollment?

I like the idea of enrolling, but that is not currently in our budget.  I mean, it could be, but I don’t see it as a necessary expenditure. 

With the exponential growth of homeschooling, accreditation is less important for college entrance. 

At this point in our homeschooling journey, our oldest being only a 3rd grader, I saw no need to add another step of handing in grades and papers. (It may be helpful in the future for grading writing assignments, but not at this point.)

We’ll revisit the option of enrollment as our children reach high school age.  It sure would be nice if someone ELSE worried about crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s on transcripts.

Why not continue with Option C – Eclectic Pick-and-choose?

There were several reasons Option C wasn’t working, namely:  time, energy, and mama anxiety.

It took a lot of energy to start from square one and pick and choose materials for each and every subject every year for ONE child. 

Besides choosing curriculum, I also needed to flesh out our schedule and the flow to our homeschool day/week/year.  What would it be like when I had FOUR children school age?

Being a strong-starter-slow-finisher-wanna-be perfectionist meant I was likely to change course or curriculum whenever the wind blew from a different direction.  Would our curriculum switches lead to educational gaps?

While I have an AMAZINGLY supportive husband (homeschooled himself), most of the decisions about homeschooling methods and materials falls on MY shoulders.  Maybe I’m just not confident enough, but I worried a lot about our homeschool. 

Was I doing enough? 

Was our methodology the right one? 

I was ready to follow something that was tried and true and didn’t involve reinventing the wheel every school year.

Going with Option B:  use a boxed curriculum without enrolling

This left us with Option B and other choices to consider. What was out there in the Catholic homeschooling program world?

Option 1- Seton

Option 2 – Mother of Divine Grace School

Option 3 – Kolbe Academy

Option 4 – Catholic Heritage Curriculum

Option 5 – Angelicum Academy

Option 6 – St. Thomas Aquinas Academy

Option 7 – Our Lady of Victory

In reality, we considered only a few of these options. 

We were familiar with Seton (Husband received his homeschool diploma from them), Mother of Divine Grace School, and Catholic Heritage Curriculum.  The others we were not familiar with at all so we didn’t consider them in our discussion.

Side note: I am not at all saying you must switch to a box curriculum or that it is the best way to homeschool. 

I know so many confident, successful homeschoolers who do a great job picking and choosing their materials.  Part of homeschooling well is knowing your own personality type, and my personality type just was not comfortable with that method. 

Do what suits you and not what others are doing.  I offer our family’s decision as solely food for thought on your homeschooling journey.

Why not Seton?

Our first thought was Seton.  Husband was successfully homeschooled (second grade and on) using Seton.  In our opinion, he has a good education. 

We had even used some of their materials…for awhile… I hated them.

Know that I have a lot of respect for Seton, so I am NOT judging you if you use their materials.  BUT they just weren’t for us. 

• Strict textbook learning
• Lots of busywork
• Few living books

I knew I wanted living books to be the cornerstone of my children’s education.

I liked the fact that Seton is accredited and if we wanted to we could enroll our children during high school, but I just could not make myself like their program. 

I couldn’t push past my dislike for Seton.  It’s what Husband’s family had used twenty years ago and my brother-and-sister-in-law used now.  It seemed all the rigorous and respectable homeschoolers used it and that it is the gold standard in Catholic homeschooling.

I knew doing Seton just because everyone else says it is great was NOT a good reason for our family to take that direction.  That reason alone was not going to keep me going with a curriculum I hated in the middle of the February doldrums.

I also knew that Seton isn’t as flexible in allowing substitutions.

Seton was out.

UPDATE (2020): While I am not a fan of the Seton homeschool program as a whole, we now use several of their workbook series in our homeschool. Much has changed since this posts writing and I now see the value of textbook learning for some subjects. We like their English, Handwriting, and Spelling workbooks and use them every year.

What about CHC?

Next up was CHC (Catholic Heritage Curriculum).  I had used some of their material and liked them a great deal. 

While I like the gentle approach to learning that CHC takes, I wanted a curriculum that got more and more rigorous as our children worked their way up the elementary ladder. 

While CHC offers some guidance in outlining your high school studies, it does not offer a program itself.

CHC was also hacked off our list.

Note: The one program we have found from CHC that we thoroughly enjoy is their First Communion prep Preparing to Receive Jesus.

Why Mother of Divine Grace (MODG)?

At this point, we got stuck. 

Husband and I had delved into this homeschooling conversation one night after the kids were tucked in (part of our daily ritual) and had gotten as far as “We want something structured and laid out..but what is there beyond Seton?”

The next day found us traveling to visit my in-laws.  By God’s Providence, homeschooling came up.  They were switching programs from Seton to Mother of Divine Grace (MODG). 

Mother of Divine Grace!  I’d totally forgotten about it!  It was like a gigantic weight was lifted as soon as my sister-in-law mentioned it and God was definitely giving me some grace in her words!

I browsed the materials my sister-in-law had already purchased.  There was:

• Syllabus with day-by-day lesson plans
• Lots of real books
• Memory work
• Poetry
• Arts

I found all those true and beautiful things I really wanted in my children’s education. 

That night Husband and I poked around the MODG website.   I was thrilled and wanted to order right then, but decided to think and pray on it for awhile.  A week later, I was still just as excited about this program.

We ordered the MODG syllabus, a new math program, and all the materials.  The next week, we dove head first onto our new homeschooling path.

We’ve been using MODG now for several months and I thought you may find it helpful to see what we are enjoying about the curriculum.

Things I’m loving about MODG:

The Syllabus

Even though I know developing a lesson plan isn’t that hard using your own materials, there is something so nice about having everything laid out in one place. 

Before the beginning of the week, I take some time to develop a weekly checklist using the MODG syllabus and stick it in our student binders. 

Day by day lesson plans are available for purchase, but we stick with just the syllabus since we modify Mother of Divine Grace a little.

The Materials

I have so far really liked the materials that MODG suggests.  The energy I would have spent on searching for and choosing materials I can now use to refine MODG.

Refining MODG means:

• Streamlining for multiple ages
• Poetry teas
• Nature study
• Liturgical celebrations

It’s Catholic

This is pretty obvious! This is the main reason we are homeschooling is to give our children a solid education grounded in the Catholic faith. 

I love that the main religion text is the Baltimore Catechism. We had already been using the Baltimore Catechism in our homeschool and I had come to love this firm foundation in the faith. 

READ MORE: Baltimore Catechism: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using it in your Catholic Homeschool (with printable teaching schedule)

The Option to Enroll

I love that, should I want to, we could continue using the same materials and enroll my children in an accredited school.  This is something we will re-access every year.

Review of Mother of Divine Grace

For now, this is what is working for our family.  Switching to MODG doesn’t mean our family’s homeschool is completely on autopilot, but it does lighten my load considerably! 

I still put plenty of energy into our school, but I stress a lot less knowing we’re using a solid program.

To some, a boxed curriculum may be a burden, but for me, it has been such a breath of fresh air!

UPDATE (2020): Our homeschool has gone back to a more eclectic style since posting this. We used MODG pretty faithfully for one year.

I am grateful for the time we spent with Mother of Divine Grace. It helped me learn about a well rounded homeschool and set us on the right path in terms of the rigor and what I could expect from my children.

I’ve been at homeschooling long enough now to be more confident in my choices and also know what works best for our family. We are able to maintain a rigorous homeschool with little planning by being smart about our curriculum choices.

You can read more in my Mother of Divine Grace update.

Other Mother of Divine Grace posts:

Mother of Divine Grace Review: Why We Still Love It

Streamlining a Box Curriculum for Multiple Ages

Working the MODG Syllabus

Student Binder: Helpful Homeschool Habit

Mother of Divine Grace Update

Do you use a boxed curriculum?  I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Other homeschool posts you might like:

Homeschool Preschool Your Way

10 Must Do’s in your Catholic Preschool

An Intentional Booklist for your {Catholic} Child

Must Reads for Young Catholics