Category: Switched On Schoolhouse

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

It’s hard to believe 2010 is over, and tomorrow brings in 2011.  And regardless of your calendar of homeschooling, a new year usually has homeschoolers pouring over their options of curriculum for the next grade level.

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

Most students will have to complete a half credit of American Literature sometime during their four years of high school.

In the first lesson of the Switched-On Schoolhouse American Literature course the student begins with an introduction to the course. 

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.

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 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

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

On one of my earlier posts where I was sharing how a typical lesson in Switched-On Schoolhouse works, one of my readers left a comment saying “Looks like diagramming sentences is out now thanks to computers!”.

And I would have agreed with her, until

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

The beauty of homeschooling is that we can meet our children’s learning needs in a way that makes them look forward to school, not dread it.

English/Language Arts is a subject that has been