Category: Homeschool

I write the Switched-On Schoolhouse Series twice a month to share our family’s experience using this software based curriculum in our home.

Today in my Switched-On Schoolhouse post, I want to share with you some of what the curriculum holds, specifically to English I, but from speaking with friends, the structure is similar in other grade levels as well.

I write the Switched-On Schoolhouse Series twice a month to share our family’s experience using this software based curriculum in our home.

Choosing or changing curriculum for your homeschool can often leave you second guessing on whether you’re making the right choice. 

I truly believe there is no perfect curriculum out there.  Whether it be in the public school, private school or the choices you have for homeschooling.

That’s why it’s best to gather as much information as you can, and know how your children learn, before diving into a purchase you might not be happy with.  This is one of the reasons why Alpha Omega Publishing, has enlisted some homeschool bloggers to talk about their experiences with the curriculums they produce.  Not just from one post or review, but over a course of many months of using it.

Gift Guide Pick

Probably the most captivating thing about the Egyptian culture was their tombs and their mummies.  When studying ancient civilizations, there never seems to be a problem with kids focusing their attention when mummies are involved!

Mummy Mazes: A Monumental Book by Elizabeth Carpenter, ($11.95, Workman Publishing) has kids joining Professor Archie Ologist as he leads them from the Colossi of Memnon into the heart of long-lost tombs, from the Great Pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx, to Egyptian constellations and the Door to Forever.

I write the Switched-On Schoolhouse Series twice a month to share our family’s experience using this software based curriculum in our home.

Some students get overwhelmed when they see a large assignment on the pages before them.  When Amber sees the study guides in her Geography and Chemistry texts, she often gets discouraged because the vocabulary and questions cover two or three pages.  She plods along slowly and by the end of the assignment she has lost whatever initial interest she may have had in doing a good job of answering the questions.

I write the Switched-On Schoolhouse Series twice a month to share our family’s experience using this software based curriculum in our home.

Homeschool parents know that curriculum is expensive.  Text book publishers try and revise their curriculum every couple of years, but even so, if you’ve invested in a set of books for your oldest child, you anticipate using it for your subsequent children as well.  If you have three or four children though, the books can be quite outdated by the time those children get around to studying with them.

I write the Switched-On Schoolhouse Series twice a month to share our family’s experience using this software based curriculum in our home.

If you spend much time using electronic devices, the internet or social networks of any kind, you know that ‘skinning’ is a pretty popular thing. 

For those of you I just lost, let me translate.  When you ‘skin’ a device, browser or social platform, you’re adding a personalized background image to overlay or underlay.  Making it an enjoyable place for you to visit, something visually appealing to your sense of sight.

When kids can personalize their ‘space’ it makes them

I recently was given a chance to review TenMarks, an online math program for kids.  TenMarks is a math program that helps students refresh, learn, and master math concepts – in their own time, at their own pace.  Each child receives a personalized curriculum to help them master the concepts quickly.  4 worksheets are assigned each week, each with 10 questions.  One of the great tools that TenMarks has that I like seeing in an online program is: that hints and video lessons are available as help with step by step solutions to the concepts.  A couple of other things that I really like about the program are:

Good Books, the publisher who created the phenomenally successful series of Fix-It and Forget It cookbooks, introduces the first-ever kids’ slow cooker cookbook.  Fix-It and Forget-It Kids’ Cookbook:  50 Favorite Recipes to Make in a Slow Cooker by Phyllis Pellman Good.

Each recipe in Fix-It and Forget-It Kids’ Cookbook includes a full-color photo of the finished dish and gives clear step-by-step instructions.  The book also includes a page on “Learning to Know Your Slow Cooker,” a conversion chart, cooking abbreviations, safety tips, a glossary and a “My Cookbook Diary” section.

Jeff Computers has launched version 5.0 of its StudyX customizable software which is designed to help students of all ages learn facts faster and retain them longer, hopefully having more fun in the process and make studying less tedious.

StudyX includes a variety of ways for the student to engage in studying their course material, including:

• Study Games – Maze, Tunnel, Ping Pong, Math Practice and Multiplayer Trivia which works well in a classroom setting
• Autopilot Study Option – Pops-up questions while students perform other computer tasks
• Flash Cards – That can be done on screen, or printed for offline use

I write the Switched-On Schoolhouse Series twice a month to share our family’s experience using this software based curriculum in our home.

I think a preconception of software curriculum is that it can’t be all encompassing, because how does a student do things like projects, when all their work is done on a computer?

That is a presumption I had before we started using Switched-On Schoolhouse, when in actuality not everything is done on the computer.  Switched-On Schoolhouse, liberates the student from a textbook, notebooks and pencils, but school work and study take place in other environments as well.

For instance in Amber’s FACS course, she is currently working on a