Come, Follow Me

Come, Follow Me is the official home-centered, church-supported gospel study curriculum of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is not a homeschool curriculum in the conventional sense, it is a scripture and gospel-study program used by LDS families alongside academic coursework, and it is reviewed here because millions of LDS homeschool families treat it as the spine of their religious education.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Literature-based (scripture-based), discussion-driven, home-centered
Worldview	LDS (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
Grades	PreK-12 (family study scales across ages)
Formats	Print manual, digital via the Gospel Library app
Cost tier	Free
Parent intensity	3 (family study requires active parent facilitation)
ESA-common	No (religious scripture study; typically outside ESA-eligible categories)
Accredited	No (religious curriculum, not a school)
Established	2019 as the current home-centered program
Website	churchofjesuschrist.org

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	3	Designed for gospel study rather than academic measurement; scripture coverage is systematic
Ease of teaching	4	Manual supplies weekly pondering questions, activities, and scripture blocks ready for family study
Content quality	4	Produced by the LDS Church's curriculum department with consistent editorial standards
Flexibility	4	Rotating four-year scripture cycle; families scale depth to children's ages and availability
Value for money	5	Print manuals are distributed free through wards; digital access is free on the Gospel Library app
Worldview scope	1	Specifically LDS; not intended for cross-worldview use
Visual/design	4	Clean, modern layout; rich imagery in digital versions
Support resources	5	Gospel Library app, podcasts, companion children's books, and weekly auxiliary lessons integrated across the church's program

Who the publisher is

Come, Follow Me is published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as the LDS Church, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. The current iteration of the curriculum was announced at the Church's October 2018 General Conference by President Russell M. Nelson and introduced church-wide in January 2019 as a home-centered, church-supported learning model. The institutional context is important: this is not a commercial publisher competing for market share, but the official curriculum produced by a worldwide religious body with approximately 17 million members according to the Church's most recent statistical report.

The curriculum is developed by the Church's Priesthood and Family Department, which oversees instructional materials across the global LDS membership. The content is written, translated into more than fifty languages, and distributed free to every ward (local congregation) in the Church. Print manuals are shipped to wards and distributed to families at no cost; digital versions are available in the free Gospel Library mobile app. Because the scale of distribution is global and the production is centralized, the editorial consistency across the curriculum's many components is high.

Come, Follow Me is explicitly the curriculum of the LDS Church. It presumes Latter-day Saint doctrine, uses the LDS Standard Works (the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price), and teaches scripture through the interpretive framework of the Restoration. It is not designed for cross-tradition use and would require extensive substitution by families outside the LDS tradition.

The core pedagogy

Come, Follow Me is built on a four-year rotating scripture cycle. In 2022 the curriculum studied the Old Testament; 2023, the New Testament; 2024, the Book of Mormon; 2025, the Doctrine and Covenants and Church history; 2026 returns to the Old Testament. The cycle repeats on a four-year loop, which means a child who begins the curriculum at age four will study each scriptural volume three times before graduating from high school, first as a young child, again in middle grades, and again as a young adult.

Each week of the year covers a defined scripture block, typically three to ten chapters, with the expectation that families read the block together, discuss the pondering questions printed in the manual, and apply the principles across the week. The weekly structure is integrated across the full Church program: adults and teens study the same block in Sunday School, children study age-adjusted versions of the same block in Primary, and families close the loop at home. This integration is the defining pedagogical choice. Unlike curricula where home study and church study are parallel tracks, Come, Follow Me treats the home as the primary site of gospel learning and the ward as the reinforcing community.

Signature mechanics: (1) Home-centered, church-supported framing. The weekly rhythm places parents as primary teachers and the congregation as a support network rather than the reverse. (2) Age-scaled family study. A single weekly section supplies discussion questions, activities, and scripture blocks at multiple cognitive levels, so a family studying Genesis 1-2 can engage a four-year-old, a ten-year-old, and a fifteen-year-old in the same conversation with different prompts. (3) Gospel Library integration. The free Gospel Library app bundles the manual, the scriptures, conference talks, videos, and audio recordings into a single study environment; family members of any age can follow along digitally. (4) Companion children's resources. A separate Old Testament Stories children's book is distributed free for ages three through eleven, and illustrated weekly activity pages scaffold early-reader engagement.

A day in the life

A family of five using Come, Follow Me in 2026 (Old Testament year) begins each week by reading the week's assigned scripture block, say, Genesis 6-11 covering Noah and the Tower of Babel. Some families read the block together in a single sitting Sunday evening; others spread it across the week with morning or evening scripture reading. Daily touchpoints tend to be short: a parent reads a verse aloud at breakfast, asks the children one of the manual's pondering questions, and moves on. A weekly family home evening (traditionally Monday) often anchors a longer family-study session of thirty to forty-five minutes, using the manual's suggested activities, perhaps building a miniature ark out of cardboard to discuss Noah's obedience, or reviewing illustrated story pages from the children's Stories book with younger siblings.

On Sunday, the same scripture block is taught in the ward's Sunday School (adult and teen classes) and in Primary (children under twelve), which reinforces the home study with peer discussion and adult teaching. For homeschool families, the practical effect is that religious education operates as a parallel track to academic subjects, occupying roughly twenty to sixty minutes daily depending on the child's age and the family's rhythm, with heavier investment on Sundays and family home evenings. The curriculum itself is not structured as a daily lesson-plan grid; the pacing is up to the family.

What they do exceptionally well

Integration across home, church, and generations. The single strongest design feature is that Come, Follow Me assumes an ecosystem rather than a standalone family-study product. When a child attends Primary on Sunday, the songs, the lesson, and the Sharing Time all reference the same scripture block the family studied at home. This coherence is rare in religious curriculum and is the reason many LDS families describe the program as the scaffolding around which their family week is organized.

Age-scalable family study. The manual supplies prompts at multiple levels of depth for each week's scripture block, and the companion children's book handles the youngest learners. A family with children spanning ages three through seventeen can genuinely study together without requiring a separate track per child. For large LDS homeschool families, this is a practical advantage over Bible curricula that require grade-level bins.

Free distribution at global scale. The manuals are printed and shipped by the Church at no cost to families, and the digital version in Gospel Library is free worldwide. A Latter-day Saint family in any country with LDS congregational presence has equal access to the curriculum. In a homeschool publishing landscape where scripture study curricula commonly run $30-$150 per year, Come, Follow Me's free distribution is a meaningful economic feature.

The Gospel Library app as a study environment. The Gospel Library app bundles the manual, the scriptures (with footnotes and cross-references), archived General Conference addresses, videos, and notes into a single searchable environment. Families using the digital version can highlight, annotate, and share passages across family devices. The app is polished, fast, and available on iOS, Android, and the web.

What they do poorly

Not a standalone homeschool curriculum. The most common misunderstanding among non-LDS readers is that Come, Follow Me is a full-school religious curriculum comparable to, say, Abeka's Bible track or a Catholic Home School program's religion track. It is not. Come, Follow Me is a scripture and gospel study program. It does not include worldview-integrated reading, math, science, history, or language arts. LDS homeschool families pair Come, Follow Me with separate academic curriculum, often secular programs (Saxon Math, Oak Meadow, The Good and the Beautiful's LDS-founded academic lines), and treat Come, Follow Me as the religious-formation spine that runs parallel to school hours.

The four-year cycle means uneven coverage per age. A child who begins Come, Follow Me at age seven will study each scriptural volume once before middle school, again in high school, and that's the loop. Depth increases with maturity, but families who want a grade-by-grade systematic theology or doctrinal sequence (the kind a Lutheran or Catholic catechesis program provides) will find the cyclical scripture-block design less systematic. The curriculum is catechetical by implication rather than by explicit doctrine-block sequencing.

Pacing assumptions favor a Sunday-anchored family. The curriculum's weekly rhythm assumes families attend their ward's meetings on Sunday, hear the same scripture block taught in Primary or Sunday School, and use the home study as reinforcement. Families who cannot attend ward meetings regularly, due to distance, schedule conflicts, or other constraints, lose a meaningful portion of the curriculum's reinforcement structure. Home-only use works, but loses the ecosystem effect.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Come, Follow Me if: you are a Latter-day Saint family seeking the Church's official home-study curriculum; you want a curriculum integrated with your ward's weekly teaching; you are studying scripture as a family across multiple ages simultaneously; you value free distribution and digital app access; you want a religious-formation spine to run alongside academic homeschool coursework.

• Skip Come, Follow Me if: you are not a member of the LDS Church (the curriculum presumes LDS doctrinal framing and the LDS Standard Works); you want a full academic curriculum (Come, Follow Me is scripture study, not school); you want a grade-graded systematic doctrinal sequence (the four-year cycle is not age-graded); you want a curriculum developed outside the LDS institutional publishing context.

Cost honest assessment

Come, Follow Me is free. Print manuals are distributed through LDS wards at no cost to families, and digital versions are available free on the Gospel Library app as of April 2026. The companion Old Testament Stories children's book is distributed free to ages three through eleven. Families wanting additional copies of the manual beyond what their ward distributes can order at cost from the Church's distribution services.

Compared to alternatives, Come, Follow Me is at the extreme free end. Grapevine Studies Bible curricula run $20-$50 per study; Ambleside Online's Bible plan is free but is Protestant in framing and assumes a different scriptural canon; Notgrass History's From Adam to Us runs approximately $100 for the one-year Old Testament-integrated history unit as of April 2026.

The all-in cost for an LDS homeschool family using Come, Follow Me as their religious spine is effectively zero, with optional spending on supplemental materials (scripture journals, children's activity books, illustrated Bibles) that families choose based on preference rather than necessity.

ESA eligibility notes

Religious scripture study programs are generally outside the eligible categories of most state ESA marketplaces, which typically fund core academic curriculum rather than religious formation. Because Come, Follow Me is free, ESA eligibility is not a practical concern, there is no invoice to submit. Families in states with broader ESA definitions (Arizona, Florida, Utah) who want to count gospel-study time toward enrichment hours should verify with their state program administrator. Because the LDS Church distributes the curriculum free through congregational channels, there is no vendor-reimbursement workflow to engage with.

Alternatives

• Seminary & Institute Manuals, an LDS family with high-school aged youth would pair or substitute Come, Follow Me with the Church's Seminary and Institute curricula, which provide more systematic scripture-study progression for teens and young adults.
• Grapevine Studies, a family outside the LDS tradition would not choose Come, Follow Me at all; Grapevine's stick-figure-narrative Bible curricula are a commonly recommended alternative for Protestant or nondenominational families seeking a comparable all-ages family Bible study rhythm.
• Ambleside Online Bible. Ambleside's free Bible reading plan is a Charlotte Mason style Protestant alternative for non-LDS families seeking a cost-free home-study scripture rhythm.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Come, Follow Me manual pages, the Gospel Library app, the Church's statistical report, the 2018 introduction of the home-centered program, and the companion Old Testament Stories children's materials. All materials and access details verified April 2026.