DS14 finished his freshman year via Time4Learning at the end of April. We switched over to Education Portal, currently free for 6 months if you were part of the Beta Test (we were), after which it will jump to $50 a month (yikes!). So he's going straight through the summer and fall and will hopefully finish his sophomore year curriculum by the end of 2014 (when the price hike hits.)
Things I like about Education Portal:
1. The way they teach. Combination of video, audio and text.
2. Smaller bits of information at one time (each segment is about 5 min) with mini-quizzes sprinkled throughout. DS14 seems to do better (averaging grades of 78% to 85%) with this presentation time & arrangement than T4L which was about 15 minutes per, audio and visual only, with a unit test at the end.
3. Still get to pick your own curriculum/slate of subjects, so we are still able to structure it around a Classical Education framework.
4. Still the only place (that I know of) online where you can take AP (Advanced Placement) high school courses. That's pretty awesome.
Things I don't like about Education Portal:
1. OM fricking Gosh!! Talk about being over-run with Common Core Crap. Non-common core curriculum is now in the minority. But at least they DO have a solid (albeit smaller) non CCC offering.
2. Still no foreign languages. Come on. You could at least do Latin. Or Greek. Their Spanish offering is a waste of cyber space.
3. Pretty much forces you into the higher-priced option, since that's the only place you can get the quizzes and tests. I really don't care about the instructor help, blah blah.
4. Not a fan of the math options (chiefly because my son has dyscalculia.)
At $600 a year, it's one of the pricier options...but you get to go at your own pace (versus the notoriously NOT at your own pace: K12), and it works well for my son.
September 10th
I've mentioned before: I have been very pleased with the curriculum and our experience at http://www.time4learning.com. I found out about it the middle of last year from a friend of mine.
As you may know, we are a homeschooling family following a Classical Education methodology. My son has dyscalculia, and we've found Math-U-See works well for him. Although we use IEW for written english and some grammar, I wanted something a little "more" for him in Language Arts. We found it at Time4Learning.
Time4Learning teaches all the basic curriculum (math, science, history, language arts, art) in a fun, engaging, and animated way. It breaks down each lesson in small bites. The first time my son went on it, he spent 4 hours solid. In Language Arts. Learning english GRAMMAR for heaven's sake. My son was having so much fun, he didn't even realize he was learning. When he took his "state standardized tests" (he asked to, don't get me started), he came home from the LA test and told me "he remembered learning that" in Time4Learning. Time4Learning, by the way, has an online State Standardized testing simulation for those who wish to "test" their kids.
My only regret was that it didn't have a high school program. This year, they added that component, and it looks just as exciting and engaging. It is literature based for Language Arts, so we are finishing up the grammar components from "last year" before we move on to high school. Having done other "online" programs, I really appreciate a curriculum which truly runs at the student's pace, rather than the online-school pace.
I do wish that the site was easier to navigate and allowed you to print out sample work. This would have been a big help last year, when my son was working as part of a charter and we had to bring in "proof of work." Maybe it does let you, but I couldn't figure it out, so I had to create my own, and have him do it, just to check it off the charter school's list. I also wish it was Apple product friendly. You can access it through Photon, but T4L is a Flash technology, so...need I say more?
The cost for this wonderful program is ridiculously low. You'll spend more in a single meal for your family at a fast food place than you will spend for an entire month's fees at Time4Learning. One low fee. No need for textbooks et cetera. If your child leans to a visual and audio learning style, you will love this program. In a world where most kids have grown up in an "animated" TV environment, Time4Learning has captivated this reality and turned it into a learning advantage.
And now, a small disclaimer: As a member of Time4Learning, I have been asked to review their online education program and share my experiences. While I was compensated, this review was not written or edited by Time4Learning and my opinion is entirely my own. Write your own curriculum review or learn how to use their curriculum for homeschool, after school study or summer learning.
August 17th
Every day, I'm glad we home school. We have gained so much by home schooling: knowledge, public service, deeper understanding of issues.
And then every once in a while, something happens in California (ok, it's more than every once in a while) where I am DAMN GLAD we home school, and I wonder why YOU'RE not?
As of yesterday, I really feel bad for those of you who have your kids in public schools. You may have had a sneaking suspicion back in June when Jerry Brown enacted the non-legal but binding standard in California that only FEELINGS matter, that it was going to get worse.
Well it did for you public schoolers. As of today, thanks to Jerry Brown signing off on AB1266 any child who "feels like" they are opposite gendered, can enter into, shower, hang out in, whatever gendered bathroom/locker room they "identify with" that day.
And yet, when my oldest DD was in public high school, her 21 year old coach put cameras in the girls locker rooms, and is now a registered sex offender.
So it's OK for an 18 year old senior (legally, an adult!) to go oogle naked high schoolers, but a barely out of high school-er is now a sex offender?
Don't get me wrong. He should be. But that's the point. Some things are just wrong, and no amount of legislating it otherwise, is going to change that truth.
I'm looking forward to the flip side of AB1266: that's where school districts and schools wholesale refuse to adhere to AB1266 because they don't feel like following the law.
After all, that's what JERRY MOONBEAM, our commander in chief, sworn to uphold the LAW, models.
May 24th
PRESENTATION: The Truth About Common Core
WHEN: Saturday, May 25
TIME: 6pm
PLACE: Mission Viejo Calvary Chapel
24821 Crisanta, Mission Viejo
949-951-9678
DIRECTIONS: Take LaPaz east off the 5 fwy, Left on Crisanta
SPEAKER: Jeanne Goodin, SoCal Vice President of Eagle Forum
May 16th
People ask me all the time about Common Core. I haven't yet developed a 3 minute answer about it. I do have quite a few hyperlinks which explain Common Core pretty well. My youngest goes to a independent study/charter school twice a week for history, science and art. We were notified a few weeks ago (this is a facility which WAS geared toward a Classical Education Model!!) that they are going to basically shelve that, and go to a Common Core (traditional public school) approach.
Thank GOD (literally) this was going to be my last year there anyway (see my mainpage post.) How you can bill yourself as a Classical Education Model and stuff Common Core down your students' throats is beyond me. But then, according to the Executive Director Terri Novacek, I'm just a stupid, uneducated, emotional parent, not able to determine what is the best education for my child.
So here they are. Get educated, get armed. Come homeschool with us !
Bullet points of Common Core: http://tinyurl.com/buonk3g
Saxon Math went Common Core this year:
Common Core Part 1:
Common Core Part 2: (this one is particularly well written regarding the problems with CC English)
Common Core Part 3:
Common Core Part 4:
http://michellemalkin.com/
Common Core national blogsite:
The local/California movement against Common Core:
happy reading !!
January 30th
Math skill was the primary reason I withdrew my youngest son from public after 3rd grade. By the time I withdrew him, he was 2 years behind in computational math skill. My last parent/teacher conference, we discussed his math. Their response was "they weren't going to worry about it until 5th grade, and if he was still behind then, they would simply retain him." So....we're not going to address the real problem, we'll just ignore it until we can't ignore it anymore?
It took me a full year trying out every math program I could find. By the time we started Math-U-See (http://www.mathusee.com) he was close to 4 years behind, and lacked a solid foundation in math facts.
The brilliance of Math-U-See is that it takes one subject skill at a time, such as Addition, and for 30 weeks (roughly a full school year) that's ALL you learn. Like Montessori math, it uses manipulatives, and for my son, a visual learner, this is important. By the end of 6 months, my son had finished the Addition program. More importantly, he was skilled in it. By the end of 12 months, he had finished subtraction as well.
At this point, we have closed the gap to within 1 year of what "other 8th graders" in public school are doing. I find PS students are wasting time--they'll have to redo Algebra in high school anyway. Additionally, few students are really masters of facts, an essential component of the Grammar years.
I recently received an email regarding "Investigations Math." Clueless as to what it is, I did some digging. Created by a company called TERC in Massachusetts (http://investigations.terc.edu/curric-gl/index.cfm) Investigations Math claims to teach "real world problem solving skills in a group setting."
While it's not possible to do indepth research from sample pages provided by the company, I do have an opinion based on what I saw, and what I've researched and tried over the years.
I think that Investigations Math aim is noble. I do believe that real world applications of math problems is a valuable skill-- to quote the TV show Numbers, "math is all around us."
Here's what I didn't see in the sample pages (particularly 2nd grade): no formulas, no guidelines on how to solve the problems. It's great to write a word problem, but translating word problems into a math formula is a complex skill. I didn't see anyplace the transition or skill from "Abby has 3 sticker sets of 10 and bought 2 singles and 4 more sets of 10, how many does she have" to a concrete formula.
YOU know that the solution is: 30+2+40=72 or even 3(10)+2+4(10)=72. But how do you know that? Because some teacher somewhere, taught you fundamental math addition.
So, if you don't know how to write a formula, if you aren't familiar with adding in columns, or multiple numbers, exactly how are you supposed to solve the problem? IM's solution is to cut out pictures of stickers (their version of manipulatives) and count each one individually.
My problem is not with individual sticker count. My problem is the lack of a bridge between the hypothetical and the solution; the lack of teaching formulae; the dependence on "someone else" in the group being able to figure it out for you; the subtext of "group mind think" and "working in the collective."
If you're a fan of social engineering, Investigations Math will feel like a warm shower of love. If you'd rather your child develop a solid foundation in Math, and be able to apply those skills in the real world, you might want to give Math-U-See a try.
December
We are a dedicated California homeschooling family. Took me years to decide to homeschool, after all, I'm not one of those homeschooling wackos! (I've heard there's some debate about that though.)
We employ a Classical Education model. I love it. There is SO MUCH to learn, you can't possibly teach it all, but using a CEM, you can instill a love of learning, something which is sadly lacking in our public education system.
Don't get me wrong. I happen to live in a wonderful public school district. If the State of California would actually let our teachers teach, maybe my kids would still be there. But they don't, so we're not.
CEM is the way our educators used to teach. You know, before Social Engineering was far more important than teaching and learning the fundamentals and developing critical thought. I felt like I had "come home" when I ran across Susan Wise Bauer's book The Well Trained Mind.
A more complete discussion of CEM can be found here: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/classical-education/
In brief, K-5 or 6 is spent mastering Facts. It's called the Grammar Stage because you establish the building blocks of information. Just the facts ma'am. You know, learning to walk before you can run.
Middle school/junior high years is the Logic stage; taking those facts and finding out "why," (or at least, asking the question!), learning the logic of the scientific method, framing an argument.
High school years are the Rhetoric stage. Taking the facts, applying some logic, and expressing your thoughts in a well formed, well thought out, well reasoned argument.
All of these are made possible by establishing Cycles (usually 4) where Cycle 1 is Ancient History, Cycle 2 the Dark Ages, Cycle 3 the Renaissance to the Industrial Age, and Cycle 4, Industrial to Modern Era. Everything you learn and do (history, literature, writing, music, art, science, language, specifically Latin) is based on that time period, so everything inter-melds. Key facts and ideas are reinforced over and over again, because you are not just learning it once, but fleshing it out in all other aspects of study.
I'm in the process of writing a high school curriculum based on the CEM. I'm almost finished with Year 1. When it's done, I'll post details here.
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