I think one of the hardest things to figure out is how to teach history to younger kids. Meaning we know in highschool we have US History (if you are in the USA), World History and Government. But what about elementary and middle school, what should we be using to teach them history? To me history is informational, meaning I don’t think we should be quizzing and testing our kiddos. I know from experience I didn’t want to “learn” about history if there was a test, I just wanted to learn what was going to be on the test to get a good grade. I missed the point of it, to learn what went on in our past that shaped the way we live today. Well with that said let me tell you about an amazing company that developed an amazing history book, two books! About The Tuttle Twins was created by Connor Boyack, who is the founder of Libertas Institute and who happens to be a fellow homeschooling parent. All his books are centered around freedom in a way a child can understand. The books focus on concepts like free markets, rights, responsibility, and a whole lot more. American History The Tuttle Twins American History is amazing. If you were ever on the fence about which history curriculum is the best to teach your child who are the ages of 7-13, look no further. This amazing book not only tells a story but comes with worksheets, audio books, and videos. The first volume of the book is from 1215-1776. That is the one I have. It is a history book put into story form. My son loved it and to be honest I even learned something. Just learning facts is not easy for me to comprehend, but putting it into story form helps me visualize what is going on in my head and if that helps a 43-year-old, imagine how easy it is going to be for a 7-13 year old to understand. The Tuttle Twins are named Ethan and Emily and they learn about early American History from their neighbor Fred. Fred makes learning about history fun. He sets up fun activities to do with the twins to help in understanding how and why things occurred in history. My son was very intrigued with the story and how it was laid out. If you are a person who loves facts and feel that teaching facts are important, don’t be alarmed there are facts within the story and there are even little tidbits about historical figures within the pages of the story. They also completed their second history book, 1776-1791. You can check out both here. Conclusion History is our story, it should be taught as a story, not just random facts splattered on some pages. It should be fun and engaging. For centuries people have been intrigued by stories why should history be any less. Follow the adventures of Emily and Ethan Tuttle as they learn about the story of Us. Find out what really went on in history and how it relates to events happening today. Disclaimer: I am an affiliate of The Tuttle Twins, I will earn a small commission when you make a purchase using the links in the blog post. Let’s talk about online curriculum. There are so many out there that it can be overwhelming. I know that a lot of people confuse online curriculum with online school. Online school is public school done at home, these types of programs follow the same rules and regulations as a brick-and-mortar public school. Online curriculum is just curriculum. It is the same as if you bought physical books and used them in your homeschool. Today I am going to be talking about Acellus 2tor curriculum. About Acellus Acellus is both an online school and an online curriculum. The school is a public school done at home. But they also offer a homeschool program. They offer the same curriculum that they use for their public schools, but it is just that, the curriculum. The parents have control. They offer two separate curriculum programs called powerhomeschool and 2tor. Acellus is a video-based learning system. That means your student watches the videos and answers the questions and moves on to the next video. If you are in the public school it varies, but using the program for homeschool it is just as I described. If you are interested in the public-school online program you can learn more here. If you are interested in the curriculum part of the program, click here. Powerhomeschool and 2tor Powerhomeschool and 2tor are basically the same. They both use the same curriculum. The only difference is that powerhomeschool is a watch the video, answer the questions and move on to the next video set up. You can’t move on to the next video until you have completed all the questions to the previous video. With the 2tor program, which is set up the same way, you have more freedom to use the curriculum in the sense that you can pick the order of the videos to watch and do as many questions as you want, you don’t even have to do the questions, you can just pick another video to watch. I used powerhomeschool for a while, but I soon realized that I wanted something that I had more control over. I wanted to be able to pick and choose how I wanted my son to do the program. That’s where 2tor came in. I was excited to see that I could choose different videos for him to watch and if I didn’t want him to watch a certain video, he didn’t have to and he could still continue to the next video. Also, if I just wanted him to watch the video and not do the questions he could and still move on to the next video. I use this program for three of my son’s classes: history, science and health. For our homeschool, those three subjects are more about informational purposes than quizzes and tests. I want him to enjoy learning about these subjects, not just memorizing facts so he can ace the tests. I will say I do have him do the questions after the video but not every video, I choose what questions I want him to complete, but only for comprehension purposes, I want to make sure he understood what he just watched, I also don’t make him do 10 questions, the most I have him do is 5. This way I have a clear indicator if he understood the material or not, if he didn't understand I either explain it or look for other resources to help him understand it better. Side note: I also help him if he needs help, it is more about the discussion aspect than him being able to get the answers right. The best part of this program for me is that each video is taught by a teacher or a professional in the field. For an example their health videos are taught by doctors, nurses, and other professionals in the medical field. The math teacher is amazing, he is funny and makes the lessons easy to understand (we used math in the elementary years). 2tor is a paid curriculum, each class is 4.95 a month. I am using it for three subjects, so it is costing me $14.85 a month. That is not bad in my opinion. You can cancel at any time. If your child finishes the class early, you can cancel or edit it to add another class. For more information on 2tor, click here. Conclusion Choosing curriculum doesn’t have to be hard. The internet opens up options that are cost effective. Acellus 2tor program is great and affordable. Each class is taught by a teacher or a professional in the field. One thing to keep in mind though, online curriculum is just that, curriculum, it is not a school, you are using it as a tool in your homeschool. Side note: Some online curriculums do offer online school, which is called e-schooling, but they are a public school done at home, they follow the public education rules and regulations, you don’t have flexibility when it comes to that. So far, I have shown you two great free curriculum choices, The Good and The Beautiful and Easy Peasy All-In-One Homeschool. If you haven’t read those blog posts, check them out. Today I am going to wrap up by giving you a few websites that offer free worksheets, games, etc. They are not full curriculum sites, but you can find supplemental worksheets, games, etc. to add to your current curriculum or for extra practice. I have used all these sites, so I highly recommend them. Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) Teachers Pay Teachers is a marketplace type website. Teachers and Homeschooling Parents upload their creations for other teachers, parents, and homeschoolers to purchase. The great part is that they offer some free resources. You can pretty much find all subjects. You can sort resources by price to make it easier to find those free resources. There is no limit on how many free resources you download, so go crazy. I have used their free resources for years and I even purchased a few. Eventually I started my own TPT store. If you are interested, you can check it out here. Education.com Education.com is another great resource that you can use for free, but there is a limit. You can only download three free resources a month. This isn’t too bad if you are looking for something specific to download. They offer worksheets for all the common subjects, and they also have a worksheet generator for you to create using your own information. You can create crosswords, quizzes, word scrambles, addition, and subtraction drills, etc. K5 Learning Here is one like education.com but they offer more free worksheets. You can search for worksheets by grade level or topics. When you click on a worksheet you want, you have different options of the worksheet to download. This feature is great if you want to practice a concept several times. I have also used this website for worksheets, especially for their money worksheets. If you are looking for worksheets for couniting money I highly recommend K5 Learning. Classful Classful is something new to me. They are a fundraising website for teachers that recently added a market place to their website. They are like TpT (teacherspayteachers). They offer free resources as well as paid resources and there is no limit on how many free resources you download. Conclusion There you have it, four amazing websites that offer FREE educational resources. I have personally used these websites repeatedly, so I highly recommend all of them. Remember homeschooling is a journey and having some freebies along the way makes it more enjoyable for not only you but your student too! I am back again to bring you another free curriculum option to get you started on your homeschool school journey. There are so many great resources out there that I just had to tell you about a few. In my last post I talked about The Good and The Beautiful free curriculum they offer. Head on over there if you didn’t get a chance to read it. Today I am going to tell you about Easy Peasy All-In-One Homeschool. Curriculum Background Easy Peasy was created by a mom who wanted to put her children’s school lessons online to have a record of it and to also make it available for other homeschool moms to use. She designed the lessons and courses to get her children ready for college. She also included challenging books to read from the Robinson and Ambleside curricula. You can use Easy Peasy from preschool to highschool. Course that are available on this website are all of your basic school subjects with some electives like computer, bible, art, humanities, etc. You can print out all the worksheets that go with a subject and then use the computer to teach the lessons. There are links within the lesson plans that take you to other websites, so make sure you have an internet connection. The lessons plans are designed to be open and go. To learn more about Easy Peasy and its creator click here. To learn more about the course for elementary and middle school click here. To learn more about the highschool program click here. My Opinion I looked at this type of curriculum when I was first starting out and I chose not to use it at the time. I personally didn’t like the fact that I had to click links that took me to other websites and then I had to go back to the lesson plan page. It seemed a little choppy to me. Plus, my son would get frustrated if I had to stop and figure something out. But the information is very well thought out. This is a great resource to use if you are just starting out and not sure if homeschooling is for you. This way you can do a test run without spending a bunch of money. Another plus is that all the courses are in one place, no more searching around trying to piece together a complete homeschool year, it is all laid out for you. Conclusion Homeschooling doesn’t have to be expensive. The internet gives you the ability to find great resources for free to help you on your homeschool journey. Easy Peasy is just one of the many free curricula that is floating around out there on the world wide web. It is a great curriculum to use when you are just starting out and wanting to test the waters of homeschooling. Did I mention that it provides all the courses in one place? Disclaimer: This curriculum is Christian Based Throughout my years of homeschooling and trying to choose the best curriculum I have realized that homeschool moms love curriculum shopping! I will admit I am one of those moms! There are so many choices out there today that it can be overwhelming and expensive. Don’t worry, I am here to help ease your burden of finding the right curriculum. I am going to give you some suggestions for FREE curriculum. Today I am going to be starting with The Good and The Beautiful curriculum. About The Good and The Beautiful The Good and The Beautiful was created by a lady named Jenny Phillips. Jenny is a homeschooling mom who was searching for curriculum and just wasn’t finding what she needed. So, she created her own. She wanted something that was strong in academics but wanted it to be wholesome and fun! To learn more about Jenny and her journey click here. Language Arts When I first started out homeschooling, I used the free Language Arts program that they offer. I was so blown away at how well this curriculum was put together that it was hard to believe it was free, but it was. You can get grades K-8 for free. It is a pdf download, and you get everything you need. I will say that the curriculum is more advanced than what public school kids are using. So for an example, you can use the 8th grade Language Arts program for your 9th grader. This curriculum includes more than just English, you get art and geography as well. It is all worked into the lessons. The best part is that it is open and go! I will say one thing, I decided to stop using the Language Arts program. It wasn’t because it is not a good curriculum, it was because my son was at different grade levels when it came to Language Arts. He could answer comprehension questions and was very good at grammar but when it came to reading, he struggled. So, I had to piece together our Language Arts program. To see all the levels of Language Arts program that is offered for free click here. Also remember that if you don’t want to print it out you can order the physical copies, they are offered for a decent price. Math Another great curriculum that The Good and The Beautiful offers for free is their Math program. They just redid their Math curriculum and it’s amazing, the lessons are shorter, colorful and there is even a section for your student to do work independently. You can get grade levels K-6 in pdf form free. As always if you would rather not print the pages out at home you can purchase the physical books at a decent price. I will mention one thing is that when you get the free versions you don’t get the math boxes that come with it, which includes math manipulatives. They do offer you instructions on how to make them at home. To learn more about the free math curriculum, click here. Conclusion When choosing the right curriculum, it can seem like a chore that will never be finished. A good place to start is free curriculum. There are some good programs out there that get the job done just as well as the paid programs. The Good and The Beautiful is one of those companies that offers free curriculum. Not just a portion of the curriculum the whole curriculum. Disclaimer: The Good and The Beautiful curriculum is God centered. |
Hi! I'm Robin. I am a sister in Christ, a wife second, and a homeschooling mom third.
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