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Just this past December, our family began a Yearly Membership at SchoolhouseTeachers.com. Our family has been loving the courses we have tried, but there are so many more that we’re excited to try! We have chosen to use 3 courses so far, and I’m excited to tell you about them!
About the Curriculum
SchoolhouseTeachers.com is a complete online resource for homeschoolers, providing over 300 courses for all ages and grade levels in all subjects. With the Yearly Membership, you have unlimited access to every course on the website, on your own schedule. What I didn’t know until I really started exploring was that there is enough available to create an entire curriculum for an entire family for one low price: $139 yearly.
We access the website on a PC with Windows 10, using Google Chrome as our browser. It does require an internet connection. Some courses include videos, while many are printables that could be accessed once (if you use internet at a public library, for example). A printer is necessary for most of the courses, but not all. We use the annual subscription.
How We Use It
Currently, we are using French: Year One, and supplementing our world history with several resources from this site, including American History with Drive Thru History, and Native American History: Introduction. While my daughter is navigating all the way through the French course, we are using various resources from several lessons to complement our history study with multiple ages.
French: My 16 year-old daughter does this course completely on her own. She loves how easy the website and the course are to navigate. I basically showed her what was available, and she downloaded the materials and began learning on her own.
She began by downloading the lessons to her computer for all of Year 1. This includes pronunciation, culture, and the workbook. She also printed up the workbook pages and put them in a binder.
“There are 20 lessons in Year 1 French that are divided into 5 Étapes (Units).
Important: You need to download the lesson to your desktop. The audio will not work if opened in a web browser. Also, to hear the audio, make sure to open the lesson in Adobe Reader and not another PDF Reader such as Mac Preview or a Windows PDF Reader.”
This is what the Lesson screen looks like. You can see that it’s very easy for a student to hop on the computer and get started without confusing instructions.
This is what a lesson looks like. Each little speaker beside the French word is an audio recording of that word. My daughter can click on that as many times as she needs to in order to hear it and practice.
Further in the lesson, there are instructions for which (downloaded) activity to do next.
This was so easy! My daughter had downloaded everything she needed, printed the worksheets, and started learning before I even realized what was happening. It’s very user-friendly.
She told me that she’s loving how fast it moves. She’s learning to understand and speak in sentences in the second unit, which makes her feel very accomplished.
Each course is unique. So while French has downloads, printables, and audio files, other courses may have video lessons, teacher scripts, project lists, books lists, and more.
As I mentioned, we also have access to complete series’ of Drive Thru History with SchoolhouseTeachers.com. (If you’ve never watched these videos, you’re missing out, and so are your kids!) Even better, each episode has a study guide to follow up. ALL of my kids love Drive Thru History for the fast-paced, humorous, and very informative history presented in each episode. Finding these available as a complete course was a big bonus for me.
What We Love
There are several things we love about the annual membership to SchoolhouseTeachers.com. First, it’s very affordable. For less than $10 per month, we have unlimited access to everything on the site. There are over 300 courses in all subjects for all ages. That means all of my children could access several courses apiece for this one low price. Because of the many courses available, there is literally something for everyone.
Second, there is no time frame for classes. They fit your schedule, whatever that may be. My daughter does French lessons 2-4 days per week, and may do more than 1 per day if she’s extra-motivated. If she needs to slow down to study a a certain part more in-depth, she can do that, too. I pick and choose when I will use the additional History resources, depending on the day. If we choose to use just one or two lessons from different courses, that’s okay. I’m in charge.
While there are different online homeschool resources available out there, I am very pleased that SchoolhouseTeachers is not aligned with Common Core. I see the dangers in aligning with a central standard of curriculum, and try to stay away from such things. In our homeschool, we want to learn, not check off boxes. SchoolhouseTeachers makes that easy with its flexibility and ease of use for all grade levels.
Try It!
SchoolhouseTeachers.com just completely remodeled their website and it is AWESOME! And they recently added World Book to their library, basically doubling the content of the website.
Nicki Truesdell is a 2nd-generation homeschooler and mother to 5. She loves books, freedom, history and quilts, and blogs about all of these at nickitruesdell.com. She believes that homeschooling can be relaxed and that history is fun, and both can be done with minimal cost or stress, no matter your family’s circumstances. Nicki is a member of the Texas Home Educators Advisory Board and The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Review Crew. You can also find her on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
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