Tuesday, January 5, 2016

SchoolhouseTeachers.com Yearly Membership Review

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is the online curriculum arm of The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine. Whether you're looking for preschool alphabet activities or to print a high school transcript, a Yearly Membership to this site offers a wide variety of quality homeschool resources-including complete online courses. Over 200 of them! Visit www.SchoolhouseTeachers.com to explore for yourself. At the beginning of our homeschool journey ourselves, I'm so impressed and encouraged to see amazing homeschool helps like this available at my fingertips-this yearly subscription offers so many resources and does not disappoint!

How we used our membership:
In the weeks spent reviewing this online resource, we mostly hung out here...
I feel like we've barely scratched the surface-so.many.choices! Spelling, copywork, Spanish, history, electives and so on...you name it and it's available. For those of you homeschooling older children, I've read some pretty awesome reviews on the quality and variety of courses offered in the middle and high school arenas-economics, architecture and web game design to name a few. And bonus-academic weighting for transcripts of many high school classes is included.

Our favorite stops on the site far have been the Elementary Art and Explorers courses, as well as the Figures in History lessons.
The figures in History unit serves as a great complement to your regular history studies. Each characater portrait includes a printable standing cutout(paper doll style to be used for plays/ reenactments ), a coloring page or word search puzzle, and an "accent on art" lesson comprised of a project relating to the life of that historical hero or heroine.
Here is Evan with his cut out of Robert E. Lee. The "accent on art" lesson in this unit was a map of the battle of Gettysburg with corresponding questions. I'll definitely be revisiting these weekly lessons once we get into the Revolutionary war.

The elementary art units each focus on a different area of art such as color theory, primary colors, famous artits and more. We took a dive into the Renaissance and enjoyed lessons on Michelangelo and Leonardo DaVinci(inspired by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of course). These lessons came nicely in printout form and contained a short biographical sketch as well as art project ideas and book recommendations. For Michelangelo we read about how he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and did a bit of upside-down drawing ourselves as our art project.
The art project suggested under Davinchi's lesson was to sketch a portrait in the style of Mona Lisa. Now my Bennett is no Mona Lisa, but his expression was pretty right on.  ;-)
Also, most all courses I've seen come with a printable course completion certificate, which is a pretty big deal when you're five. Here's an example I'm hoping to present to my own little learner soon.
In addition to the quality course content and Applecore record keeping software(a topic for another blog!), another huge perk of a schoolhouseteachers.com subscription is access to the RightNow Media Library. RightNow Media offers the golden ticket to over 10,000+ streaming video recourses. I'm especially excited to watch the "Torchlighters" biography series with both boys. I downloaded the app to our ipad and let Evan watch his selection of videos on our breaks or for an extra special treat-this is especially handy since we've taken the dive to drop our cable connection this past year.
And in case you've graduated Kindergarten, there's a great selection of instructional videos and biblical historical documentaries I can't wait to dive into myself. 

How much does it cost?
You can subscribe to SchoolhouseTeachers.com monthly for $12.95 each month or save over 10% on a one-year membership for $139. One fee covers your entire family, and you have the option to cancel anytime. And, special pricing is available for small groups and co-cops!

Even better news? Drumroll please....You can buy a subscription for half off thru Jan 31 with the code CREWFOLLOWER!
 photo 50 percent Discount Code Schoolhouse Teachers 2016_zpseei1h818.jpg
You can see what my fellow Review Crew Members thought of it by checking out the Crew Blog Post for this product. It's a fun window to look through and see how other people used the same product in their homeschools, especially as it applies to different age groups. I've already made several mental bookmarks of new places to visit and courses to research based on these fellow reviewer's notes.


No comments: