Switched-On Schoolhouse Series: Let’s Talk About Projects

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 project within her unit, that requires her to make a recipe for a meal and to bake cookies.  Quite obviously that means she will need to be in the kitchen getting her hands and some dishes dirty (and hopefully cleaning them up too!).  Once she’s completed the physical task, she types up a project report using the Switched-On Schoolhouse software, which I then can see using MS Word or Note Pad and grade accordingly.

Like all of the assignments in Switched-On Schoolhouse, the projects can be assigned for a specific date.  So if projects are something that you want to do together as a family, and you have more than one child using Switched-On Schoolhouse curriculum, you can set it up to do all the projects your kids are working on at one time.  (Perhaps it’s FACS for one, Language Arts for another, or a science experiment or health project).

This is a positive way to approach projects if you have multiple students, as “many hands make light work”, and the younger children can benefit from learning hands on while the older siblings can help the younger ones in a leadership role.

If you’re interested in learning more on Switched-On Schoolhouse or would like a discount on a purchase of curriculum, click through on the button in my right hand sidebar, and you’ll be taken to the publishers site.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received the products mentioned above for free for review purposes from Alpha and Omega Publishing. I was not required to write a positive review and this product may not have the same results for all people, please do additional research of your own when purchasing products mentioned in reviews. The opinions I have expressed are my own.