Disclaimer: I received a FREE copy of this product through the HOMESCHOOL REVIEW CREW in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way.
Today, I would like to give my mid-year SchoolhouseTeachers.com review. We have been using SchoolhouseTeachers.com online homeschool site for almost one semester. I will share with you how our school year has been going. My goal is to help you decide if SchoolhouseTeachers.com is the right curriculum for you.
Beginning in 2020, I joined the Homeschool Review Crew. The Homeschool Review Crew is comprised of homeschool families (like ours) who receive homeschool products for free in exchange for an HONEST review. I was delighted that the first review is for the Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership of SchoolhouseTeachers.com. I have written other articles about Schoolhouse Teachers.
You may have already read about my homeschool struggles at the beginning of the school year. If you haven’t, you can read How to Change your Homeschool with Schoolhouseteacher. Basically, my children were unhappy with the curriculum we were using and needed a change.
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This post may contain affiliate links. You can read my full disclosure here.
Now that we have been using the curriculum since September, I am more familiar with SchoolhouseTeachers.com and how it is working for my kids and me. I have all five of my children using SchoolhouseTeachers for almost everything except for math. My children’s’ ages are 6, 8, 10, 11, and 12 years old.
The Benefits of Schoolhouseteachers.com
Overall, I have really enjoyed our switch to SchoolhouseTeachers. The five main benefits of the curriculum are variety, cost, flexibility, Christian worldview, and customer service.
Variety
SchoolhouseTeachers.com offers a full curriculum for every grade, including electives, from preschool through high school. One Ultimate membership provides access to all the content on the site, allowing parents to design a complete set of courses for each child, all at one price. Using the Scope and Sequence tool on the website, it is simple for parents to build a customized curriculum that matches the specific needs of their children.
Cost
SchoolhouseTeacher is very affordable. There are so many resources available including video courses, seasonal courses, planners. It is a steal! Especially if you join when they are running a special, which is very often. If you have a small homeschool budget but want a high-quality curriculum, SchoolhouseTeachers is a great option.
Flexibility
One of the main benefits is the flexibility of the courses and educational resources included in the membership allows parents to use SchoolhouseTeachers.com as the primary curriculum in their homeschool, or pick and choose courses as a supplement to their child’s education. of the site.
I have built our own curriculum based on the Scope & Sequences to put the year together for each child. You can build a curriculum based on your child’s abilities and skills. Using the included Scope & Sequence tool, it is simple for parents to build a customized curriculum that matches the specific needs of their children.
Christian Worldview
The main reason my husband and I decided to homeschool is that we want to raise our kids with a Christian Worldview. We are also very specific about our doctrinal beliefs. I am extremely pleased with the SchoolhouseTeachers.com. It is solid and Biblical. Every course is designed with a Christian worldview, providing parents peace of mind.
Customer Service
If you get confused or have questions, the customer service team is available to answer questions by chat or by phone. They will guide you as you choose the courses for your children. I have chatted several times with various questions and the customer service is responsive and very helpful.
Our Favorite Courses
Some of our favorite courses include Daily Grammar, Everyday Copywork. and various Unit Studies including Wonders of Flight. We are also really enjoying a geography course called Learning Across America. The picture above is my son cutting out state birds and flowers to paste on the state page. We are learning a lot about different states and their symbols, industries, topography, and flags.
For each course, there is a page outlining the course.
- “Getting Started” is a quick overview of the course including the grade level, course length, supplies needed.
- “Course Outline” gives you a brief overview of what will be studied in the course.
- “More about this Course,” tells you in a few sentences what to expect in the course.
- There are also standardized lesson plans for each course. This is nice because even though there are different authors, the lesson plans are in the same format for each course.
- “Go to Course” – this is the actual course which is usually a downloadable pdf but can also include video lessons.
Video Library
Both my children and I love the video library. There are so many wonderful videos to choose from. Some are stand-alone videos, others are part of a course. By far, my children’s favorite video course is Drive Thru History. They love adventures and Drive Thru History is such an exciting way to learn history. My children wanted to binge-watch all of the available episodes. We also enjoy many missionary stories available to watch.
Another thing I really like about the video library is that I can open a video for my kids to watch if we need some down-time. For example, if I need to make an important phone call or I don’t quite have their lessons prepared. I can allow them to watch a video and I know they will be learning something from the high-quality videos available. We also watched several Christmas videos as a part of our December studies.
Literacy Center
Honestly, with so many resources on SchoolhouseTeachers, I didn’t even know the Literacy Center existed until I started researching more areas of the website for this SchoolhouseTeachers review. All I can say is “WOW!” I am definitely going to start utilizing this resource in our homeschool. The Literacy Center outlines a consistent reading strategy to use with children of all ages. The word READ is used as an acrostic to help parents remember the 4 strategies. R stands for “Read”, E stands for “Everything requires reading”, A stands for “Ask questions”, and D stands for “Develop comprehension skills”. There is a complete, downloadable guide that walks parents through developing each step.
FOCUSED LEARNING CENTER
The Focused Learning Center is another amazing tool at SchoolhouseTeachers. According to the website,
” Everybody needs a little extra help now and then, so if you are looking for help in a particular area—math, reading, special needs, foreign language, high school, college planning, or science—you have come to the right place. Our Focused Learning Centers will direct you to the courses, individual lessons, and articles that can assist you as you homeschool your children who may struggle in a certain subject or with a particular ability. You may even find new ways of presenting information that can facilitate their learning. ”
Basically, it is the place to go to when your child gets stuck or needs extra help to master a particular skill. I have used “focus on math” resources and read many articles in the “focus on special needs” section. There is also a Charolette Mason section and a Hands-On Section, among many others.
The Drawbacks of Schoolhouseteachers
I am just going to be honest with you. Both of the drawbacks of this curriculum are my issues rather than SchoolhouseTeachers. Honestly, it is a wonderful curriculum that is well worth the price. The classes are educational and high quality. We love SchoolhouseTeachers for all the reasons discussed so far.
However, I am not perfect. Big surprise, right? My personality is that of a squirrel. I am here, there and everywhere. Another one of my personality flaws is that I am also a starter and not a finisher. I love starting projects but struggle to complete them. In addition, I am also very busy with farming, working, and running a household. Keep these factors in mind when you read the drawbacks.
Overwhelming Choices
There are so many classes, over 400, with more classes being added all the time. I have started classes with my children, but then saw another interesting course and changed to that one. I have remedied this problem by printing out the first week of materials and if I think it is going to work, I print out the rest of the lessons so I am not tempted to change classes before we finish.
Discipline and Organization
Since I am somewhat squirrely in my personality, I have found it is hard to discipline myself to build a complete curriculum rather than just choose classes that my children and I find interesting. I have dealt with this problem by developing a Weekly Custom Schedule for each child. Since my children do some classes together and some separately, I downloaded the schedule as a word document and customize it for each child. I print the schedule out and give it to my children at the beginning of the week.
The Weekly schedule also helps with organization. I am able to look at the weekly schedule and make sure that we have all the materials needed for the week. I struggle with keeping 5 children and myself and organized. However, SchoolhouseTeachers.com also has many other organizational resources such as a wonderful, comprehensive planner, master course checklist, lesson plans, record keeping, free printable help charts, and even monthly menus. There is even a course just for parents called Everyday Organization that I plan on completing.
final thoughts on SchoolhouseTeacher.com Review
If you have been reading my blog for a while, you already know that I love SchoolhouseTeachers. It offers variety, is very affordable flexibility, has a Christian worldview, and wonderful customer service. If SchoolhouseTeachers sounds like a curriculum you are interested in, but you don’t know where to begin with SchoolhouseTeacher, check out my post about How to Use SchoolhouseTeacher in your Homeschool.
I hope you have found my mid-year SchoolhouseTeachers review helpful. Head on over to SchoolhouseTeacher.com and check out this amazing online membership with downloadable, printable elements as well as online classes and video components. If you have ANY questions, please reach out to me in the comments, via e-mail, or through social media. I love hearing from my readers!
Be sure to also check out what other Review Crew homeschool families are saying about SchoolhouseTeachers.
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