For my first review for The School House Review Crew, I was given the Yearly Membership to SchoolhouseTeachers.com. As soon as I logged on to this website, I was instantly amazed {and overwhelmed} with the massive amount of curriculum available! Every subject you can possibly think of is available for every grade level, preschool through 12th grade. Just to name a few of the more interesting ones: Women Through History {middle school}, Early Explorers: USA {elementary}, Drawing with Realism {middle school}, and American Folklore {middle school}. There are so many courses that it made my head spin! I spent a good while browsing through the vast variety of subjects and electives, trying to chose which ones my kids would enjoy the most.
I finally decided that Mercie {2nd grade} would take an Elementary Art Class, and Eli {5th grade} would take the Tinker's Club course.
The Elementary Art Class begins with a 12-week unit called "Twelve Great Artists". There is a short biography of each artist with an example of their work and instructions on how to complete your own masterpiece using the same technique! We just read the lesson from the computer screen, looked at a few examples of each artists work via a Google image search, and then worked on that technique. It took maybe 30 minutes for each lesson.
Mercie learned about Michelangelo the first week. We read how he painted the Sistine Chapel upside down. I taped a sheet of paper under our table and Mercie had to paint while lying down. She laughed at how silly her painting looked and how her arm was hurting!
The next week, she read about Picasso. I cut out different colored shapes and she had to arrange them on her paper as a picture. She made several - one was flowers, one was a living room. She also learned about Van Gogh and finger-painted!
We plan to continue with the Twelve Great Artists, as it is a lot of fun.
Eli worked on the Tinkering Club course, which is 8 monthly invention challenges. This is right up his ally! We did several challenges over the course of a few weeks, and he plans to finish all 8!
Each challenge has an introduction to what they will be building, instructions and pictures for building, and problem-solving questions and ideas. Each of these lessons probably takes around an hour, once a month {or more often, if you desire}.
Eli really enjoyed these challenges. He built a car with working wheels, a flying saucer, and a catapult.
Most of the subjects {like "Art" or "Math"} have many different choices for each grade level.
Here is a list of all the main subjects SchoolhouseTeachers has to offer:
- Art
- Bible
- Computer and Technology
- Drama and Speech
- Electives
- Foreign Languages
- History, Geography and Social Studies
- Language Arts
- Math
- Music
- Nutrition, Health and Fitness
- Science
- Architecture {Introduction}
- Career Exploration
- Filmmaking
- Hands-On Architecture
- Logic
- Media Socialization
- Money 101
- Photography
- Photography Challenge
- Social Justice
- Starting a Micro-Business for Teens
- Wildlife Adventures
This website is so full and diverse, you could use this for you entire homeschool curriculum. All of the basics are here, as well as tons of extras! I am sure my family will be using SchoolhouseTeachers.com continuously throughout the year. There are so many courses that my kids have expressed interest in and many that I know would benefit them.
Even if you already have your main curriculum, you could use this for electives. They offer four foreign language courses: French, Hebrew, Latvian and Spanish. This is definitely something I am looking into for my 7th grader. {And you can't buy a Foreign Language program as cheap as you can buy a Yearly Membership right now!} They also have Music courses, Computer and Technology courses, and Drama and Speech courses.
The pros and cons of this website:
PROS:
- easy to use
- all of the basic subjects
- daily grammar, math, writing assignments
- tons of electives
- can use as many or as few courses as you desire
- can use with your entire family
- includes planners for mom
- lots of videos and resources
- printable pages
- video courses
CONS:
- sometimes too many options can be confusing
- may spend too much time on this website
- some courses are video courses {you may not want to use too much data}
- not every course has printable worksheets
{I really had to think to come up with some cons!}
And the best part? A full Yearly Membership for your entire family is only $139! You receive access to nearly 200 classes, plus a Media Library with over 10,000 videos! And, SchoolhouseTeachers is offering you a 50% coupon code {CREWFOLLOWER} if you join by 1/31/2016! Trust me, the content of this site is worth way more than the subscription fee!
Check out what the rest of the School House Review Crew has to say:
Awesome review, Megan! I wanted to let you know that you have been nominated for the Liebster Award! Congratulations! Here are the details: http://raisingsamuels.blogspot.com/2014/11/liebster-award-winner.html
ReplyDeleteWe did the SAME art project under chairs. My kids both agree with your daughter about their arms and how hard it was to make their pictures look good. That was a great lesson.
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