Winter Promise Homeschool Curriculum Review
by Rebecca Ison
Winter Promise Homeschool Curriculum Woes
This year, we decided to try curriculum from Winter Promise, a literature-based program. However, we were very disappointed. Our family has homeschooled for 15 yrs., and we have used this type of program before. (i.e. Beautiful Feet, etc.) The program itself seemed to be what fit our family at this time. I chose their Animals and Their World for my lower elementary guys (K4 and 2nd grade) and Sea and Sky for my upper elementary (5th and 7th). The program would have covered history, science, reading, bible and art for two grade levels. I'm always looking for ways to combine grades. The problem that I had was with the shipping and customer service. I ordered my curriculum the beginning of august. I realize that that is an extremely busy time of the year for any homeschool company. So I was prepared for the books to come in a little later than usual. However, none of my order came in a timely manner. Since it was literature based, it consisted of a lot of books. I would get a package in one week with two or three books. A couple of weeks later I would receive a package containing a couple more books. I emailed them using their email address from their website around the end of October, asking them when I could expect to receive the balance of my order, and received no response. As of Christmas, I was still missing six books. I have not been able to follow their curriculum guide, because we do not have the books when we have needed them. Over Christmas break, I decided to totally switch to another curriculum, because I lost my children's interest somewhere in all of the jumping around I had to do with the curriculum. I also realized that they had really learned very little this whole semester, so why was I wasting my time and effort? After the new year, I told a friend of mine (who is one of their representatives) how disappointed I was with the program, that I had emailed the company and had gotten no response, and that we were scrapping the program. She said that my email must have just gotten lost in the shuffle. She contacted the company, and they did call me. They explained how sorry that they were, that the company had grown very fast, that they had a hard time keeping up. I feel that they do have a good curriculum program, but they do not run the company very efficiently. I would be leary of ever recommending their company for that reason. If I decided to go with a literature based program again, I'd stick with a tried and true company like Beautiful Feet! Rebecca, I am so sorry you had such problems homeschooling this year and all of it because of a curriculum company's growing pains. Hopefully your complaint was a wake-up call for them and they developed a better system to fulfill their orders and improve their customer service. Would you like to leave a comment, or write your own review? Use the links below...
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