Keepers at Home

Keepers at Home is a badge-earning character and skills club for girls, published by the Mennonite-adjacent Keepers of the Faith ministry. It is not an academic curriculum; it is a parallel program that sits beside one.

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

At a glance

Method	Subject specialist / character club / hands-on skills
Worldview	Christian-evangelical (plain-dress, family-directed, conservative Protestant)
Grades	Roughly ages 5-18 (program is activity-based, not grade-graded)
Formats	Print handbook, club-based, optional hands-on kits
Cost tier	Budget
Parent intensity	4
ESA-common	No
Accredited	No
Established	1994 per the publisher's program history page
Website	keepersofthefaith.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	2	Not designed as academic; skill-competency depth is real but narrow
Ease of teaching	3	Handbook lists activities clearly; execution requires a parent who can sew, bake, garden
Content quality	4	Activity lists are specific, sequenced, and tested across three decades of club use
Flexibility	4	Families can complete all, most, or a few badges; pace is entirely parent-controlled
Value for money	4	A handbook plus consumables runs well under $60 for a full year of projects
Worldview scope	2	Explicitly Christian and complementarian in framing; not a neutral life-skills program
Visual/design	2	Plain two-color print production; functional rather than illustrated
Support resources	3	Club leader guides, regional events, and a companion program for boys (Contenders of the Faith)

Who the publisher is

Keepers of the Faith is a ministry publisher based in Stinesville, Indiana, founded in 1994 by the Crawford family to support plain-dress, family-directed Christian home life. The organization publishes the Keepers at Home program for girls and the Contenders of the Faith program for boys, along with wholesome fiction reprints and homemaking books. It sits theologically between mainstream conservative evangelical publishing and the Anabaptist / plain-community sphere, and its customer base skews heavily toward families in that overlap.

The Keepers at Home program itself traces to a desire to rebuild the mid-century girls' club format (Pioneer Girls, Missionettes, Girl Guides) on explicitly biblical rather than mainline-denominational or secular foundations. The program has run continuously since 1994 and maintains a network of local clubs across the United States and Canada; club leaders register through the ministry and receive leader guides, patches, and ceremony scripts. Exact club counts are not published, but the ministry lists nationwide events and conference presence consistent with a program in steady rather than expanding use.

Keepers at Home is not affiliated with, licensed to, or reviewed by any secular scouting body or accreditor. It is an in-house ministry product sold directly to families and to clubs. Cathy Duffy's directory includes Keepers at Home in its electives and home economics category, which is where most homeschool observers place it.

The core pedagogy

The program is organized around nine skill categories: cooking, sewing and needlework, gardening, handiwork and crafts, nature study, music, personal development, home skills, and Christian character. Each category contains dozens of specific activities at graduated difficulty, and a girl earns a badge when she completes the required number within that category. The Keepers at Home Handbook lists the activities; the Additional Keepers volumes expand the catalog.

The pedagogical logic is competency-based and concrete. A girl does not study sewing in the abstract; she sews a pillowcase, a simple apron, a skirt. She does not study nature in the abstract; she identifies fifteen birds, presses a leaf collection, keeps a nature journal for a month. The parent or club leader verifies completion and signs the handbook; the ministry sells corresponding cloth badges that are affixed to a sash or vest. There are no tests, no grade levels, and no scope-and-sequence in the academic sense. Progression is by badge accumulation rather than by year.

Signature mechanics: (1) Ninefold skill taxonomy, the category structure is fixed, and every activity maps to one of the nine. (2) Badge verification at the family level, unlike Scouts, no outside examiner signs off. The parent or club leader certifies. (3) Christian character as a standalone category, scripture memorization, biographical study of Christian women, and stewardship projects sit alongside the domestic skills rather than laced through them. (4) Club structure optional, families can run the entire program privately at home, which distinguishes Keepers from programs requiring a troop.

A day in the life

A nine-year-old working on her Keepers sash at home typically spends thirty to forty-five minutes on a specific activity several afternoons a week, after core academics. A Tuesday might be cooking: she and a parent select a recipe from the handbook's beginner list (a pan of cornbread, say), measure and mix, bake, and record the completed activity in the handbook. Thursday might be sewing: a hand-stitched pincushion from a scrap of cotton, with a parent demonstrating the running stitch. Saturday might be a longer gardening block: planting the spring lettuce row, watering, recording germination dates. Once every few weeks a category threshold is crossed, the badge is earned, and the parent signs.

A girl in a local Keepers club adds a monthly or bi-weekly group meeting, generally two hours, where several activities are done in parallel and badges are awarded ceremonially. Clubs often combine Keepers girls with younger siblings doing a simpler version, and many host fathers-and-daughters or mothers-and-daughters themed meetings. Parent time at the family level runs four to six hours a week when the program is actively used.

What they do exceptionally well

Concrete skill building, honestly described. Most character programs market values. Keepers actually teaches a girl to make a white sauce, hem a garment, and recognize three kinds of oak. The activity lists are specific enough that a parent can verify whether the skill is present, which most character-formation products cannot say.

Integration with plain and conservative homes. For families whose adult women do in fact sew, garden, preserve food, and keep detailed home records, Keepers is not aspirational, it is the curriculum version of what the household already does. The program works especially well in Mennonite-adjacent, conservative Baptist, and agrarian homesteading homes because the skills taught are skills the parent already possesses.

Low financial barrier. The handbook is the entire program. Everything else, thread, flour, seeds, scripture, the family sources as needed. There is no subscription, no annual renewal, and no required kit.

What they do poorly

Not an academic program. Keepers at Home is marketed as a supplement, and that is the correct category. It does not teach reading, math, history, or science. Families who expect character programs to fill academic slots will find this one narrow. The nature study and music categories touch adjacent academic territory, but only lightly.

Assumes a skilled parent. The handbook tells a girl to sew a pillowcase. It does not teach the parent who doesn't sew how to teach one. Parents without the underlying homemaking skills either learn alongside the child (workable but slow) or lean on a club leader. Families without either support will struggle.

Theological narrowness by design. The Christian character category draws from a specifically conservative-Protestant reading list, scripture memory passages, biographies of women like Elisabeth Elliot and Amy Carmichael, and writings from plain-community authors. Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, LDS, and secular families who want a neutral life-skills program will find the character component unusable without substitution. The ministry does not present the program as neutral and does not claim it is.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Keepers at Home if: your family is conservative Protestant, Anabaptist, or plain-community and wants a girls' counterpart to a scouting-style program without secular framing; the adult women in your home possess the skills being taught; you want a badge system your daughter can work toward independently; your academic program is already set and you want a character and skills layer; you live near or can start a local Keepers club.

• Skip Keepers at Home if: you want a secular, pluralistic, or scout-affiliated character program (look at American Heritage Girls or Trail Life for comparable single-sex Christian programs with broader evangelical framing, or at Girl Scouts for secular); your family's adult women don't sew, garden, or cook from scratch and you want the program to teach you too (a life-skills book will serve better); you want an academic component (Keepers is not academic); your theology is Catholic, Orthodox, LDS, Jewish, or secular and you want a character framework that matches.

Cost honest assessment

The core Keepers at Home Handbook retails at approximately $20 per the publisher's store as of April 2026. The Additional Keepers at Home volumes (Volumes 1 and 2) run roughly $15-20 each and are optional. Badges sell individually at about $2 each, with a full sash or vest running $15-25 depending on style. A family starting the program with the handbook, a vest, and the first year of badges earned can expect to spend $40-80 in year one and considerably less thereafter.

Compared to American Heritage Girls (annual membership roughly $30 plus uniform and supplies, often $150-300 in year one per the AHG membership page) or Girl Scouts (similar range, varying by council), Keepers at Home is the cheapest entry in the girls' character-club category by a wide margin. The tradeoff is the absence of a larger organizational structure, no national camporees, no insurance, no standardized leader training. Families buy the handbook and run the program themselves.

ESA eligibility notes

Keepers at Home is not commonly approved on state ESA marketplaces, for two converging reasons: most ESA programs categorize character and enrichment clubs as extracurricular rather than core curriculum, and religious-material restrictions in some states apply to explicitly denominational programs. Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account program and Florida's Step Up For Students offer broader enrichment eligibility than most; families in those states should confirm directly with the program administrator before ordering. Keepers of the Faith does not list an ESA ordering workflow on its website as of April 2026. Out-of-pocket purchase is the default.

Alternatives

• American Heritage Girls, a family would choose AHG over Keepers because AHG offers a national troop network, insurance coverage, standardized leader training, and broader-evangelical (rather than plain-community) framing.
• Little Keepers at Home, the same publisher's simplified version for ages 4-7, useful for families who want to start earlier.
• Plain and Precious Things homemaking courses, a family would choose these over Keepers for more structured adult-led teaching of the underlying skills, with Keepers used as the activity framework.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Keepers of the Faith store pages for the Keepers at Home Handbook and Additional Keepers volumes, the Contenders of the Faith companion program listing, and the publisher's about-us page. We cross-referenced the program against Cathy Duffy Reviews' electives directory and against the American Heritage Girls and Trail Life program pages for comparison. Prices and program details verified April 2026.