Advanced Homeschool Curriculum for Ages 8 to 14 The Promontory Academy

A Complete Program,
Not a Workbook.
Real Problems.
Real Academics.
Real Thinking.

Four subjects, one real problem. Your student doesn't cover the material here. They use it, on things that actually happened, until they can defend what they think.

Every week works mathematics, science, social studies, and English on a problem worth thinking about, aligned to universally recognized academic standards.

THE DILEMMA

Worksheets your student finishes in silence and forgets by Tuesday. Boxed curriculum that fills the day teaching the shape of an answer instead of the thinking behind it. You did not take this on so your kid could fill in blanks faster than the kids down the road. And then there is Sunday night, twelve tabs open, hunting for one thing that will hold a bright twelve-year-old for an hour. That time is unpaid, and it never ends.

ONE REAL PROBLEM. A WHOLE WEEK OF WORK.

In 1854 a London doctor stopped a cholera outbreak by mapping deaths street by street until the pattern pointed at a single water pump. That is what a week here looks like. Your student reads the evidence, builds the case on paper, and runs the arithmetic that decides whether the claim survives. Another week it is ocean systems. Another it is the marks a civilization leaves behind long after it is gone. Reading, writing, humanities, social studies, and mathematics all sit inside the one problem, because that is where the thinking actually gets built.

TWO DIVISIONS. FIVE RUNGS. ONE PAGE.
HOW HARD IT GETS IS UP TO YOUR STUDENT

Two divisions, Lower and Upper. What separates them is how much a student has to hold at once, not how many syllables the words carry. Hard vocabulary only slows a reader down. Complexity pulls them forward, so the language stays clear and the demand climbs inside the task. Every task page runs five rungs, from a question that almost anyone can answer to one that asks for a decision made under real uncertainty. A strong eleven-year-old and a coasting fourteen-year-old can work the same page on the same morning at different heights, and both leave with something. Match by what your student can carry, not by how old they are.

WHY WE BUILT IT THIS WAY

This isn't a hunch. E.D. Hirsch on why reading comprehension runs on background knowledge, Daniel Willingham on why you cannot think carefully about material you do not hold, and Barbara Oakley on retrieval and recall all point the same direction: understanding is built out of what a student carries, not what they look up. That finding is the foundation these units are built on.

But this did not start in external research. It started in classrooms. Thirty-three years of them, on four continents, in settings of every style and stripe. Long enough to watch thousands of bright kids, uninspired kids, knowledge-hungry kids, get handed work that was beneath them, and to see what happened on those special days they were handed something that wasn't. That is where all of this came from. Not from a framework, not from a market gap. From a conviction, built one classroom at a time, about what students are actually capable of when somebody finally asks, and on what teachers must do to rebuild what has been lost.

Built on direct experience and five years of deep introspection. Then the research backing arrived. And it agreed.

TPA. What an advanced homeschool curriculum should have looked like all along.

Open the day. Your student takes it from there.
That's the prep.

Each unit is a complete, richly illustrated week of full-color pages. Read from a screen, write by hand. Inside every one:

A day-by-day structure that carries the week: introduce, extend, complicate, deepen, then a final day that pulls it all together. Nothing to sequence, nothing to decide the night before.
Reading, writing, mathematics, science and the humanities woven into one connected week, not five separate subjects that never speak to each other.
Every task tiered across five levels of challenge, so the same page serves a cautious student and one who wants the hardest thing on it. Two students of different ages can work it at the same table.
The mathematics worked out at the back, step by step, so a student can check their own answer and find where the reasoning broke. Finding your own mistake is the lesson.
A built-in points system, tallied right on the page, that gives your student a clear sense of progress and gives you something simple to look at without grading anything.
Free printable response sheets, so your student writes by hand and you have a clean page to photograph when it is time for feedback.
Buy it once and it's yours. No subscription, no login, no platform sitting between your student and the work.

One week. One problem. Every subject pulling in the same direction.

Most curricula teach in lanes. Nobody thinks in lanes.

Table of Arc 1: six weeks, the problem each turns on, and what history, science and mathematics do in each.

What Arrives:

Weeks 1 and 2 of Arc 1, in both divisions. Four complete units, not two. Your student can sit in Lower Division for mathematics and Upper Division for reading in the same week, which is the whole point of shipping both.
Oxygen Math, bound into every unit. Twelve pages a week with the working shown step by step at the back, so a wrong answer becomes something a student can trace rather than something they have to be told.
The printable response sheets. Pen and paper. One for the reading and writing work, one for the mathematics, in each division.
For Best Results. Read this one first. Why the work is done by hand, what the notebook is for, and who this program suits.
How This Works at Home. What a week contains, how the five levels of challenge work, how to run Day 5 with two people or one, and what to do when you are not in the room.
What Good Looks Like. Ten pairs of real answers to real tasks from these weeks, weak beside strong, with a line on exactly what changed. This is how you tell whether the work is finished without grading anything.
The Feedback Pack. Paste-ready prompt blocks for the AI of your choice, one per level of challenge, built to say what is missing and refuse to do the work.
How an Arc Ends. What the sixth week is for. The Defense of Learning and the Brain Bowl, and why both exist.
The Alignment Summary. Two pages you can hand to anyone who asks you to account for the year: what the program is anchored to, where a learner sits, and how the work is judged.

Enough reading. Find the first toehold.
$29 to explore the trailhead.

Get the Two Weeks. $29 USD

Immediate download to your email

This program is rigorous, and it does not look like what most families have used before. So we ask everyone to run it for two weeks before committing to more. That is the $29, and it is the only thing on sale here.

Parents who like what they see receive a private link and a single-use code for the rest of Arc 1, which is $121. That brings the full arc to $150.

An academic year is six arcs of six weeks. Each arc is $150, so a full year is $900. Nothing renews on its own and nothing is charged until you decide to take the next arc.

Two complete weeks, both divisions, and everything a family needs to run them. Nothing withheld, nothing watermarked, nothing on a timer.

Why we charge for a sample. Because it is not a sample. It is two full weeks in both divisions, the guides, the response sheets, and the mathematics with its worked key. That is the entire model in your hands, and handing it out for free is not something we can do.

Why it is final. You receive everything immediately and in full, so there is nothing to give back. We would rather say that plainly now than surprise you with it later. A small price with a clear line under it keeps this honest for everybody.

What happens if you like what you find and wish to keep going. The $29 comes off the cost of Arc 1. The remaining four weeks are $121, which is exactly the $150 you would have paid on day one for the full arc. Starting cautiously costs you nothing.

One honest word about the youngest students.

Lower Division suits roughly ages 8 to 11, and an eight or nine year old will find it hard. That is deliberate, but you should know it going in. A younger student here needs to be reading solidly and on their own already. The five levels of challenge mean the work is reachable at the lower rungs, and a strong young reader can climb from there. A student still fighting through a paragraph will struggle, and no amount of tiering fixes that.

If your student is still fighting through a paragraph, wait a year. The material is not going anywhere, and it will land far better when they are ready.

And a word for the parents who plan to sit down and work through it alongside their student. We built this for you as well. The problems are real ones, chosen because they are worth an adult's attention, and most parents find they are learning something too. If you are running the week together rather than handing it over, the guides tell you what each day is for and what a finished answer looks like, so you are never guessing.

If you have a bright, hungry reader in front of you, you may have just found their academic home through age fourteen. Give us a trial run and see what you think.

Meeting your local home education requirements

Home education law is set where you live, and the responsibility for meeting it sits with you. Requirements vary widely from one country, state or province to the next. Some authorities want a notice of intent. Some want an annual assessment or a portfolio review. Some ask for evidence of instruction in named subjects, and some ask for almost nothing at all. Check what applies where you are. We cannot do that part for you.

What we can do is make the evidence easy to produce. TPA generates it as a matter of course:

The units themselves, which name the subjects, the disciplines, and the question the week turns on, right there on the cover.
Your student's work, by hand, dated and labeled by day, in one notebook. Most reviewers want exactly this and rarely get it in such good order.
Rubric-driven feedback, written against each level of challenge rather than reduced to a letter grade, which tells a reviewer far more than a number.
The Alignment Summary, included from the very first purchase. Two pages laying out what the program is anchored to, how the stages work, and how the work is judged, in language an evaluator can read in five minutes.

We do not label students by grade. Schools and authorities do. The Alignment Summary exists so that conversation happens in their language rather than ours, and so you are not the one left translating.

Parents rarely have trouble with this. The material is built to make the conversation short, and if your reviewer asks for something specific, write to us and we will help you put it together.