Using Why Believe? in Your Homeschool

Why Believe? is a free apologetics curriculum covering grades 3 through 12 in three tracks, 47 lessons in all. There is no account, no cost and nothing to buy. Because the three tracks cover the same topics at three reading levels, you can teach an eight-year-old, a twelve-year-old and a sixteen-year-old the same subject in the same week, each at their own level.

That last point is the one most families care about, so it comes first.

Teaching several ages in the same week

Each card below is one topic at three levels. Assign the Explorer lesson to your youngest, Foundations to your middle, Advanced to your oldest, then hold the discussion together at the dinner table. Everyone has read about the same thing, and everyone can contribute.

There are thirteen topics: a quarter if you take one a week, or a full year if you take one every three weeks and spend the other two on reading and writing.

Or take one track at a time

If your children are close in age, it is simpler to work straight through a single track.

• Explorer, grades 3-5. Thirteen lessons, each with three or four illustrations. One a week is a quarter. One every other week, with narration or a drawing in between, fills a semester.
• Foundations, grades 6-8. Nineteen lessons, each with key terms, a discussion box and two quizzes. One a week is a semester with room left over for review weeks.
• Advanced, grades 9-12. Fifteen lessons, shorter than the Foundations ones but considerably denser, with formal arguments set out step by step, embedded lectures, and two discussion boxes each. One a week is a semester.

Counting it toward high school credit

Honestly: the site by itself is not a credit, and you should not record it as one. Reading the whole Advanced track takes about three hours. A typical half credit is sixty to ninety hours of work.

What it is good for is the spine of a worldview or apologetics course. The lessons supply the structure and the arguments; the hours come from what you build around them. A workable half-credit semester looks like the fifteen Advanced lessons, two or three books from the recommended reading list, a written response to each unit, and one longer paper in which the student states an argument and answers the strongest objection to it.

Assessment without a teacher’s manual

There is no answer key to buy and no grading portal. What exists is built into the lessons:

• Every lesson has at least one quiz that explains the answer immediately, right or wrong.
• Every Foundations and Advanced lesson has a discussion box with questions written for exactly this purpose.
• Most lessons carry objection-and-response blocks, which make good writing prompts: have the student argue the objection first, then answer it.
• A reliable oral check for any lesson: ask the student to state the argument in their own words, then state the best objection to it. If they can only do the first, they have memorised rather than understood.

Six languages

Every lesson exists in English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, French and Portuguese, in the same order and at the same web addresses. Bilingual families and language students can read the same lesson side by side in two languages. Use the globe in the top corner to switch.

Teaching a class instead of a family?

There is a companion page for volunteers and Sunday school teachers: Using Why Believe? in Sunday School. It has a ready thirteen-week quarter and a plan for running a forty-minute class.

Everything here is free and always will be. If it helps your family, telling another family is the only thanks needed. Questions are welcome at the address in the footer.