At Terakoya, the education method greatly differed from the present and children generally learned how to read and write. Different textbooks were used for children of farmers and for children of merchants so that each could obtain the respective knowledge neccesary for farming or trading. The general name for the textbook used in terakoya was "ōraimono". The objective of these studies was to learn how to write a letter to someone, and the textbook was called "ōraimono", which means to learn texts that go back and forth.

Teikin-ōrai was one of "Ōraibutsu" textbooks often used to learn basic culture and calligraphy at terakoya (temple school). When it was first developed in the Muromachi period, it was used to educate children of aristocrats, samurai, and monks but it was said to have been most popular in the Edo period as a textbook for common people.
In addition, "Onotakamura Utajizukushi Taizen", which was developed in early Edo period to learn Kanji, was so popular that multiple editions were published throughout the Edo period. The textbook contained kanji characters with the same "radical" and "tsukuri" such as 椿, 榎, 楸, 柊, 桐, etc. and also contained was a song to learn and remember them by (haru tsubaki, natsu ha enoki ni aki hisagi, fuyu ha hiiragi onajiku hakiri).
Jinkōki" was famous as an introductory book for math. This was written by a mathematician who lived in Kyoto in the early Edo period named Yoshida Mitsuyoshi,and he introduced multiplication tables, the purchasing and sale of rice and timber, ways to exchange gold and silver and index calculation with charts.