Teaching Textbooks: A Complete and Honest Review for Homeschool Families

TeachingTextbooks has built one of the most devoted followings in homeschool math — and for good reason. It promises something that every busy homeschool parent wants: a math curriculum that teaches your child, grades their work, and requires minimal daily involvement on your part. After reviewing the program thoroughly, including its philosophy, content quality, pricing, and real-world performance for different types of learners, here is an honest, comprehensive assessment.

The Teaching Textbooks Story

Teaching Textbooks was created by Greg and Shawn Sabouri, two brothers who recognized a specific and widespread problem in homeschool math education: parents were being asked to teach math concepts they did not fully understand themselves, often producing anxiety in both parent and child. Their solution was an audio-visual curriculum where a friendly, patient tutor explains every concept on screen, walks through every example, and provides immediate feedback on every problem — eliminating the need for parental math expertise.

The program launched as a CD-ROM based curriculum in the early 2000s and has evolved significantly over the years. The current version, Teaching Textbooks 3.0, is entirely cloud-based and accessible through any browser or through dedicated apps for iOS and Android devices. The transition to digital has made the program more accessible and more flexible than ever.

How Teaching Textbooks Works

Each Teaching Textbooks lesson follows a consistent, predictable structure that students quickly internalize. The lesson opens with a video segment in which the on-screen tutor introduces the new concept, works through multiple examples with clear, step-by-step explanation, and anticipates common areas of confusion. The tutor's style is deliberately conversational and encouraging — designed to feel like a patient, knowledgeable friend rather than a formal instructor.

After the video instruction, students complete a set of practice problems. Each problem is graded automatically as it is submitted, with immediate feedback. When a student gets a problem wrong, Teaching Textbooks provides a hint and allows another attempt before showing the full solution. This immediate correction model means that errors are addressed in the moment rather than discovered days later when a parent finally grades the work.

The parent dashboard is one of Teaching Textbooks' most valuable features. Parents can see, at a glance, how much time each child has spent working, which lessons have been completed, which problems were answered incorrectly, and how overall grades are trending. The dashboard requires no daily monitoring — most parents check it once or twice a week to verify that work is being completed.

  💡 Teaching Textbooks offers free sample lessons at every grade level before you subscribe. Always use these samples before purchasing — your child will either connect with the teaching style immediately or they won't, and ten minutes of sample lessons will tell you everything you need to know. 

Grade Level Coverage and Curriculum Scope

Teaching Textbooks covers mathematics from Grade 3 through Pre-Calculus. There is no offering for Kindergarten through Grade 2 — the program assumes students have basic number sense and is designed for children who are ready for structured, independent math instruction beginning around age 8.

The grade-level offerings include Math 3, Math 4, Math 5, Math 6, Math 7, Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, and Pre-Calculus. The sequence is comprehensive and covers all concepts typically required for college admission across all standard mathematics pathways.

Teaching Textbooks does not currently offer a Calculus course, which means STEM-bound students who need Calculus in high school will need to supplement with another program — typically DIVE Math or a community college dual enrollment course — for the final year or two of high school mathematics.

The Independence Factor

The defining feature of Teaching Textbooks — the quality that drives its devoted following — is the genuine independence it provides for students in Grade 3 and above. A motivated third grader can realistically log into Teaching Textbooks, watch the lesson video, complete the practice problems, and receive graded results without any parental involvement in the actual lesson.

This is not theoretical independence. It is practical, daily independence that saves homeschool parents an enormous amount of time and eliminates one of the most common pain points in homeschool math: the daily grading burden. Parents who switch to TeachingTextbooks from parent-intensive curricula frequently describe the time savings as one of the most significant quality-of-life improvements in their homeschool.

For families where a parent works part-time or full-time outside the home, or for families with multiple children at different grade levels competing for parental attention, the independence Teaching Textbooks provides is not just convenient — it is essential.

Teaching Philosophy and Approach

Teaching Textbooks uses a spiral approach to mathematics — new concepts are introduced, practiced, and then revisited regularly as the curriculum progresses. This is in contrast to a mastery approach, where students stay on a concept until they have fully mastered it before moving on. The spiral approach means that students encounter concepts multiple times over the course of a year, with each encounter building slightly on the previous one.

The spiral approach works well for most learners and ensures that students are not expected to achieve complete mastery of a concept in a single encounter. However, it can be a poor fit for students who need to fully master one concept before moving to the next — those students may benefit more from a mastery-based program like Math-U-See.

The pace of Teaching Textbooks is moderate — intentionally accessible rather than aggressively accelerating. This is both a strength and a limitation. It makes the program approachable for a wide range of learners, including those with math anxiety, but it may not provide sufficient challenge for mathematically advanced students who are ready to move faster.

Pricing and Value Assessment

Teaching Textbooks uses a subscription model, with pricing set at approximately $30 per month per student for most levels, or around $120 to $200 for an annual subscription depending on current promotional pricing. Unlike a traditional textbook purchase, there is no physical product to resell — when the subscription ends, access ends.

For a single-child family, the annual cost of Teaching Textbooks is competitive with other quality math programs. The time savings in grading and daily teaching involvement provide real value that partially offsets the subscription cost. For families with two children, the cost doubles. For families with three or more children each needing their own subscription, the annual math budget becomes significant.

Families with multiple children who are primarily motivated by the self-directed, auto-graded features of Teaching Textbooks may find that CTCMath — which offers a family subscription covering all children at all grade levels for approximately $120 per year — provides better overall value. However, CTCMath and Teaching Textbooks have meaningfully different teaching styles, and the per-student comparison does not capture the difference in educational experience.

  💡 The Teaching Textbooks free trial is genuinely generous — it allows access to multiple lessons at no cost. If you are considering the program for a student with math anxiety, let them try five or six sample lessons before you subscribe. The warm, encouraging tone of the instruction is the program's most powerful feature for anxious learners. 

Teaching Textbooks for Different Types of Learners

Teaching Textbooks works particularly well for certain types of students and less well for others. Understanding which category your child falls into will help you make the right decision before spending money on a subscription.

Teaching Textbooks is an excellent fit for self-motivated learners who can manage their own work schedule, for students who learn effectively from video instruction, for children who experience math anxiety and benefit from a warm and patient teaching approach, and for students whose parents feel less confident in their own mathematical knowledge and want a curriculum that does the teaching independently.

Teaching Textbooks is a less ideal fit for students who prefer paper-based learning, for mathematically advanced students who need a faster pace, for children who require hands-on, concrete mathematical experiences before working abstractly, and for families with many children who will find the per-student subscription cost prohibitive.

  ✅  PROS

•        Genuinely self-directed for students in Grade 3 and above

•        Warm, patient, encouraging teaching style reduces math anxiety

•        Automatic grading eliminates one of homeschool's biggest daily tasks

•        Parent dashboard provides clear progress visibility with minimal monitoring

•        Accessible on any device — browser, iOS, or Android

•        Free sample lessons available before purchasing

•        Covers Grade 3 through Pre-Calculus in a single cohesive sequence

  ❌  CONS

•        Subscription cost adds up — especially for families with multiple children

•        No Calculus offering — STEM students need supplementation

•        Spiral approach may not suit students who need mastery pacing

•        Slower pace may not challenge mathematically advanced students

•        Entirely screen-based — no physical workbooks, nothing to resell

•        No Grade K through 2 offering

  VERDICT: Teaching Textbooks is worth it for families who need genuine math independence and have one or two children using the program. The auto-grading, the encouraging instruction, and the time it saves parents are real and meaningful benefits. Try the free samples first — always.