An All-in-One Curriculum: A SchoolhouseTeachers.com Yearly Membership Review

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Sensory Activity from Small World Sensory Science

A Yearly Membership to SchoolhouseTeachers.com provides homeschooling families with over 300 courses, PK through 12th grade, "grounded in a Biblical worldview." My family is very excited to be able to review the Yearly Membership, in particular the preschool classes, from SchoolhouseTeachers.com. Parents and children can pick from subjects such as art, foreign languages, mathematics, history, and science to name just a few. Once you have reviewed the courses and made your selection, you can use their schedule builder to prepare for the year.  There are no textbooks to buy; you can download all the course PDF files or queue the videos to screen and start learning at your own pace.

Besides having quite helpful tabs that allow one to browse by grade and subject, there is also a course directory that breaks down every course by subject for easy comparison.

Our youngest children (aged 2 and 4) are those that we are planning to homeschool but I also love that I am able to access materials for our high school son to review with him as needed.  And since he is attending a public school, we can provide him access to a variety of Bible courses to complement his secular education.

I have been able to include lessons from several Preschool classes (Small World Sensory Science, ABC: What Will I Be?, Schoolhouse Spelling, and Preschool Playground: Numbers, Patterns, and Cognitive Skills) in our daily activities as well as examine the Preschool Playground part of SchoolhouseTeachers.com.

Preschool Playground provides resources for studying the Bible; Language Arts; Numbers, Patterns, and Cognitive Skills; Manners and Healthy Habits; Arts, Crafts, and Music; Science; Social Studies; and Multi-Subjects resources such as Getting Around videos on the World Book Early World of Learning site and a World eBook Tough Trucks.  The Getting Started page provides information for parents on how to set up binders to store and organize your lessons and ideas for homeschooling your preschooler.  As a former teacher, I am very pleased to see that they are recommending a very similar set up to the one I used while I was teaching high school. That is, keep a master parent binder separated by topic and a child binder with the child's daily work (changed each day as your child completes the work).

There is a Scope and Sequence document which provides you with the age appropriate objectives for your preschooler.  I find this to be valuable because it helps one see how each subject is really connected.  For example, learning shapes falls under language arts and arts and crafts.  It can also be applied to discussing patterns with your preschooler. When your child has completed the work you have chosen for them, there are colorful certificates of achievement you can print for writing the letters of the alphabet and counting all the way to 10, among others.

There are also articles for parents to help encourage you on your journey to homeschool your preschooler. In “Preschool Education” by Juliebeth Lamb, tips are provided for organizing your home and setting a schedule. Donna Conner writes about “Preschooling with One” and offers this piece of great advice: “I think I wouldn’t be as concerned with messes.  They’re only messes, and your child is only that age once in his life – once in your life!”

In World Book: Early World of Learning, there are a number of activities for younger children to complete (both online and offline).  For example, there are series of Print and Do Activities that can be used as part of Preschool Playground.  There are matching pages, color by number, and location worksheets as well as activities for shapes, sizes, and time -- to name a few. There are also videos to view with your youngster.  My only complaint is that the videos are extremely short (some only 15 seconds).  As soon as the video starts, it is over (which my four-year-old doesn’t really like). 

In 2017, my preschooler and I started using the lessons in ABC: What Will I Be?  We completed B is for Baker and recently completed our study of C is for Construction Worker. Each letter in the course focuses upon different jobs and includes book suggestions and a series of five activities for the week.  For C is for Construction Worker, activities including building a skyscraper, acting out the work completed by equipment (for example, spin like a cement mixer), and working on writing the letter C.  Both my four-year-old and my two-year-old thoroughly enjoyed the activities and I love being able to have things that both can do together. 

Beyond being able to use World Book with younger children, it also provides a number of other excellent resources.  While I have been writing a history curriculum for SchoolhouseTeachers.com, I have used the World Book Advanced to provide future students with articles to read on the United States and its history, such as biographies of presidents and leading citizens.

There is also a World Book Kids that provides many resources including such science lessons as "Do plants like salt?" where children will test out if plants can survive with or without salt.  The lesson includes materials needed, procedures and discussion, and links to online articles explaining topics in the experiment.

And if your family really enjoys eBooks, there is a great selection of educational ones as well as classic stories like J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, and non-fiction such as Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. For younger children studying animals, there is a series of Animal Lives and Animals of the World eBooks.  Those interested in mythology, legends, and folklore will find tales from places like Ancient Greece, the early Americas, and Ancient Egypt, among others.

There are so many great resources to SchoolhouseTeachers.com.  Part of the video collection available for members are the following Drive Thru History videos: American History and Ancient History. Accompanying the videos are worksheets that your child can answer during the viewing or afterwards for a review.  We have started watching these together as a family. As a student of history, I always enjoy videos best where the presenter's interest in the topic is evident and Dave Stotts' enjoyment of the subject matter is evident. 

Please be sure to take a look at other reviews for SchoolhouseTeachers.com.  There are many wonderful aspects to the site for the entire family.  I am looking forward to continuing to use SchoolhouseTeachers.com for my family's homeschooling needs as well as checking out some of the other resources I have recently discovered like the Monthly Menu (I am always on the look out for new dinner ideas for my picky eaters.).

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