commonsensepress.com

What It Is

Common Sense Press is a curriculum publisher that has served homeschooling families since 1989, with a core focus on being “Simple to teach, Easy to learn.” Its products are mainly homeschool curricula, teacher books, student books, and ebooks for grades 1–12, covering language arts, science, history, math, and enrichment learning. Its flagship program is Learning Language Arts Through Literature.

Core Courses and Formats

Based on the site content, its language arts curriculum emphasizes “learning language arts through literature,” integrating reading, writing, spelling, grammar, vocabulary, handwriting, and phonics into the same lesson rather than splitting them into separate, isolated workbooks. Grades 1–8 are designed around a 36-week school year and come with teacher books and student activity books. The high school Gold Book series focuses more on literary understanding, expression, and critical response. Wordsmith provides writing instruction for grades 4–12, while Common Sense Science supports multi-level settings such as families, co-ops, and science clubs, and includes vocabulary, research prompts, 3D graphic organizers, and experiments using common household materials.

Pricing and Purchasing

The pages do not list specific individual product prices, but affordability is emphasized several times. Confirmed discounts include 15% off the first order for email subscribers and around 50% off Imperfect Books. The official site also recommends purchasing through distributors such as Rainbow Resource Center or Christianbook to save money. Ebooks can be printed as PDFs for family use.

Pros and Cons

Its strengths are a mature curriculum system, minimal prep, open-and-go usability, and a clearly scripted design that suits busy homeschooling parents. Resources such as regular review and assessment, sample lessons, skills assessments, and scope and sequence materials are also practical. The teaching background is disclosed in detail, with authors including people with education backgrounds, public school teachers, English PhDs, and experienced homeschoolers. Its limitations are that it is not an interactive online course and does not show formal certificates or accreditation. The curriculum is also primarily based on English and the U.S. homeschooling context. In addition, although LLATL is described as generally neutral, it includes a small amount of Bible, hymn, and Christian biography content, so non-religious families should review it in advance.

Who It’s For and Access from China

It is suitable for homeschooling users who want to independently organize English language arts, literature reading, and writing instruction, as well as schools or study groups that need supplemental materials. For users in China, it is better suited as a reference for native-level English reading and writing materials. The review text does not provide information on website access from mainland China, so its accessibility is unknown.