Secular Homeschool Curriculum: The Real Options

Secular homeschooling — teaching at home with non-religious materials — is far better supplied than it was a decade ago, and the curriculum comes in two useful flavors: explicitly secular programs written from a mainstream academic standpoint (evolution and deep time in the science, religions taught as history), and neutral programs that simply don’t take a position either way — most math, most handwriting, most grammar. Practically, that means you only have to shop carefully in three subjects: science, history, and any all-in-one that bundles them. Everything else, you can buy on quality alone. Below is the market as it actually stands, described factually, with no argument about who should use what.

House policy, stated plainly: this site covers secular and faith-based curricula as market options and endorses neither. I was taught with a mix of both, and the programs I remember were the ones that fit the kid, not the ones that matched a worldview.

Secular, neutral, and “faith-optional” are three different things

The words get used interchangeably in Facebook groups and they shouldn’t be.

Secular — written from a mainstream academic frame. Science teaches evolution, an old earth, and the standard scientific consensus; history treats religions as historical subjects. Pandia Press, Torchlight, Build Your Library, Oak Meadow.
Neutral — no religious content and no explicit position, usually because the subject doesn’t require one. Most maths, spelling, handwriting, and logic programs live here. A neutral program is not the same as a secular one, and in science that distinction matters.
Faith-optional — a publisher that sells the same materials with or without religious components. Timberdoodle’s kits, for instance, are offered in both a Christian and a non-religious edition at each grade level.

Knowing which of the three you’re looking at saves the most common secular-shopper frustration: buying a “neutral” science program and discovering it simply avoids the topics you wanted taught.

The secular all-in-ones worth knowing

If you want one box that covers most subjects, these are the names that come up repeatedly, and they differ more in flavor than in quality:

Oak Meadow — secular, Waldorf-inspired, K–12, founded in the 1970s. Heavy on nature, art, narrative, and hands-on work; gentler and less workbook-driven than most. Unusually, they also run an accredited distance-learning school for families who want teacher support and transcripts, which the book-only curriculum doesn’t include.
BookShark — the secular, literature-based option, built on a four-day, 36-week schedule with instructor guides that lay out the week for you. Everything arrives in one box: readers, read-alouds, history, language arts, science, with math options alongside. If you liked the idea of a literature-based program but not the religious content, this is the one people mean.
Build Your Library — secular literature-based with Charlotte Mason and classical influences, sold as downloadable guides rather than boxes, spanning a wide range of levels. Cheaper and more DIY: you source most books through the library.
Torchlight — secular, discussion-driven, built around diverse modern literature, and unusually explicit about where it stands: the publisher describes “a distinctively secular approach with Humanist underpinnings” supporting “the Golden Rule, kindness, exploration, questioning, and scientific thinking.” Levels run Pre-K through Level 5, with Constellation literature studies extending into Level 6 and beyond. Its range is shorter than Build Your Library’s, so check that your child’s level exists before you plan a year around it.
Blossom & Root — secular, nature- and arts-forward, “inspired by both Charlotte Mason and Waldorf philosophies.” Sold as downloads rather than boxes, running from Early Years Vol. 1 and 2 through a kindergarten level and Levels 1–7. Strongest in the early years, and the usual answer when someone asks for a gentle non-workbook start.

Full program-by-program comparison, including the faith-based boxes, sits in all-in-one homeschool programs compared.

That page is the one to use when you are choosing between formats — boxed literature set versus hands-on kit versus online platform — because it compares the faith-based and secular options side by side on structure. This page is the one to use when worldview is the filter you are shopping on.

Secular classical, which people are told doesn’t exist

It does, and the confusion is understandable: most of the well-known classical publishers are explicitly Christian classical, so families who want the trivium without the theology are often told to build it themselves.

The reference text is The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise, which lays out a classical sequence from preschool through high school and is written to be usable by religious and non-religious families alike. It is a planning manual rather than a curriculum — it tells you what a classical education contains and in what order, and then names programs for each slot. If you have been circling classical education for a year without committing, this is the book that ends the circling, and it turns up secondhand constantly.

For the teaching itself, Well-Trained Mind Academy runs live online middle and high school classes on the same model, explicitly for “families pursuing a classical education without a religious affiliation.” It is a fully accredited learning services provider through the Middle States Association Commissions on Elementary and Secondary Schools, and its core high school courses are NCAA-approved — which matters if a transcript is going to be read by an admissions office or an athletics eligibility centre. You take individual courses rather than a whole grade, so it works as an outsourcing tool for the subjects you cannot or would rather not teach.

Below high school, the classical-shaped secular options are mostly assembled: Pandia Press for history and science, a mainstream Latin or logic program, and a writing sequence. Build Your Library carries classical influences alongside its Charlotte Mason ones and is the closest thing to a secular classical box for the elementary years.

Secular preschool and kindergarten

The early years are the easiest part of the secular market, because almost nothing at this age carries a worldview in the first place. Two named starting points rather than a list: Blossom & Root’s Early Years volumes, which run below their kindergarten level and are nature-and-story shaped, and Torchlight’s Pre-K level, which is more discussion-driven and reading-heavy. Both are downloads, both are cheap by curriculum standards, and either can be dropped for a term without consequence.

The honest caveat is the one this site makes everywhere: at three and four the curriculum matters far less than the reading aloud, and buying one is optional. That argument is made in full in do you need a preschool curriculum, and nothing about being secular changes it.

Online and accredited secular programs

“Secular homeschool programs” often means something narrower than curriculum — a platform that delivers the lessons, or a school that issues the record. Three shapes, and the distinction between them is the one that catches people out:

Time4Learning — self-paced online lessons across preschool to twelfth grade, with the parent planning and supervising. Note what it says about itself: it is a curriculum, not an accredited school, and “As a homeschooling parent, you will be issuing your child’s diploma.” The company runs a separate accredited virtual school for families who want teacher-led instruction instead.
Miacademy — a full K–8 online curriculum built around video, interactive practice and assessments, with MiaPrep continuing the same approach for grades 7–12. Subscription-priced, gamified, and skewed younger than Time4Learning in feel.
Accredited providers — Well-Trained Mind Academy above, and Oak Meadow’s distance-learning school, where the enrollment rather than the books is what you are buying.

The practical rule: a curriculum leaves the records in your hands, and an enrolled school produces them for you. Whether either counts as homeschooling where you live is a question for your state’s rules rather than for the publisher’s marketing page, and worth confirming with your state organization before you enroll rather than after.

Science is why most people go looking

Science is the subject where “neutral” quietly fails a secular family, so it’s worth choosing first.

Pandia Press REAL Science Odyssey — the long-standing secular homeschool science spine, hands-on and incremental, with levels across life, earth and space, chemistry, and physics. The same publisher’s History Odyssey and History Quest are the secular history counterparts.
Elemental Science — classical-method science sequences by stage, written to be usable by families across the worldview spectrum.
Mystery Science and Generation Genius — video-and-activity science aligned to mainstream standards, subscription-based. Not a full curriculum on their own for older grades, but they solve “I don’t want to teach science” honestly.

The test to apply before buying, whatever the label: pull the sample for the unit on earth history or life science and read it. Two pages tells you more than any review, including this one.

History without a worldview problem

Curiosity Chronicles runs a dialogue format — two characters walking a student through the period — for roughly first through seventh grade, and it’s the current favorite in secular circles. Pandia Press covers the same ground more traditionally.

One caution about the most-recommended alternative: The Story of the World is widely used by secular families and treats religious narratives as historical accounts within the story of the ancient world. Plenty of secular families are comfortable with that framing; some are not. Read the first chapter of volume one before you buy the set.

Math, language arts, and the rest: buy on fit

Here the worldview question mostly evaporates, and the choosing method is the same one in how to choose homeschool curriculum — the child first, then the teacher, then the format.

Math: Math Mammoth (worktext, mastery, inexpensive PDFs), Singapore-style programs, RightStart, Beast Academy from Art of Problem Solving (comic-format, deliberately hard), and the mainstream classroom publishers. All are usable by any family.
Reading and phonics: essentially all mainstream phonics programs are neutral. The sequence matters far more than the brand, and no phonics program on the market will surprise you with a worldview.
Grammar, spelling, handwriting: neutral almost without exception. Check sample sentences if you’re sensitive to sourcing, and otherwise ignore the question.

What secular families pay for

The one real cost difference: the free-PDF end of the market skews faith-based. Several religious publishers give whole language-arts levels away as downloads, and secular families don’t have an equivalent at that scale — so a secular year is often a bit more cash and a bit less printing. It’s a modest gap, not a chasm, and library-heavy programs like Build Your Library close most of it. The budget bands are in what homeschooling really costs.

Finding secular community, which is the harder half

Curriculum is the solved problem. Community is the one families actually write to ask about, because a great many local co-ops are church-hosted and carry a statement of faith, and in some counties that is most of what exists.

Three routes that work. National secular organizations: SEA Homeschoolers — Secular, Eclectic, Academic — runs the largest of these, describing a community of roughly 100,000 families with free online conferences and a quarterly magazine, and its curriculum guidance is a useful second opinion on everything above. Inclusive local groups: many areas now have a park-day or hiking group organized specifically as non-religious or “all welcome,” which is usually a plainer signal than the group’s name. Activity-first groups: 4-H, scouting alternatives, library programs, sports leagues, theatre and music, none of which ask what curriculum you use. The second-generation version of this advice is that the co-op question and the curriculum question are separate, and answering the second one well does not require solving the first.

One more thing worth saying plainly, since it is the subtext of most secular-curriculum searches: a faith-based group is not automatically closed to you, and plenty of secular families are long-standing members of one. Read the membership agreement before you assume either way.

If you love a faith-based program’s format

This happens constantly and there’s no crime in it. Three honest options: buy it and skip or discuss the passages you don’t want (workable in language arts, tiresome in science); buy the same publisher’s non-religious edition where one exists; or take the format you liked — the scripted lesson, the four-day week, the literature spine — and find the secular program built the same way. Format is usually what you actually fell for.

FAQ: secular homeschooling

What’s the difference between secular and neutral curriculum?

Secular curriculum is written from a mainstream academic standpoint — evolution and an old earth in science, religion covered as history — while neutral curriculum simply contains no religious content because the subject doesn’t call for it. Most math and language arts is neutral; science and history are where the difference bites.

Is there a complete secular all-in-one?

Yes — Oak Meadow, BookShark, Build Your Library, Torchlight, and Blossom & Root all sell multi-subject packages. Levels, formats, and how much of the day they fill vary a lot, so compare the weekly schedule and the parent workload before the book list.

Can I use a Christian program and just skip the religious parts?

Many families do, especially in language arts where the content is easy to swap. It’s harder in science, where the worldview is structural rather than decorative — you’d be editing the actual instruction, not skipping a verse.

Is secular curriculum more expensive?

Slightly, on average, mostly because the largest free-download offerings come from faith-based publishers. Library-based programs and PDF math close most of the gap.

Is there a secular classical option?

Yes. The Well-Trained Mind is the planning text, written for religious and non-religious families alike, and Well-Trained Mind Academy teaches the model online for middle and high school with no religious affiliation. Below that level most families assemble it — Pandia Press, a Latin or logic program, and a writing sequence.

What about secular preschool curriculum?

Blossom & Root’s Early Years volumes and Torchlight’s Pre-K level are the two named starting points, both sold as downloads. At three and four, though, this is the age where buying anything is genuinely optional.

Where do I check a program’s stance before buying?

The publisher’s own sample pages and scope-and-sequence, in that order — not a review site’s label. Independent review directories are useful for shortlists, but only the samples tell you how a program handles the topics you care about.