We started with Calvert over 15 years ago. My husband picked up the brochure and declared, "This is what you should use!" He had relatives in Baltimore where the day school is located and he knew that would temper his family's reaction to our decision to homeschool. I bit my tongue and agreed because I wanted to homeschool so much that I would use any curriculum. It turned out to be a fabulous choice for our family. I love, love, love the teacher's manual and as far as I know, it is still unsurpassed in simplicity and completeness. You can literally open the book and go. As our family has ended up making more cross country moves than expected, that has been a highly prized quality. Not every text that Calvert uses is the greatest. As with sany complete curriculum, you will like some subjects better than others. However, we truly enjoy many of the special Calvert texts such as A Child's History of the World. And the sum total of all of it is much more than the parts. Over the years, my children (and I) have received rich, full educations using Calvert. My favorite grades are 3rd and 4th. Wth my younger children, I became more relaxed and so I simply taught them to read and did lots of activities with them and then started at 3rd grade at about 7 and took it at their pace. If you need accountability and extra help, you can use the optional Teacher Advisory Service. Calvert is a secular curriculum that is by no means anti-religious. It does have evolutionary themes in its science and history. We found it helpful to teach our children how to discern these and did not find it a real problem. This is a major topic of discussion on the Christian Calvert Users list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CalvertChristianHSers/