Miss J is in 9th grade this year and rocking it. She works well each day, mostly independently. Her goals remain the same to start the year – lots of math and reading, interesting history, and baking, with the career goal of baker. So, the plan:
Curriculum choices were a combination of her requests and my final picks.
Math – No Non-sense Algebra
History – starting with Drive Thru History: America, following with a DVD on the founding fathers by Drive Thru History, following that with a DVD series called Liberty Kids
Literature – selections will complement American history. She started with History Bites: US History and will follow that with History Bites: US Presidents. We have several novels that we will add after that.
Grammar – Daily Grammar ( She is doing level 5, I think, as a review. Level 5 was chosen because we have it and level 9. They are not that different so I can still do another review with her later with the level 9.)
Writing – Jump In!
Science – Friendly Chemistry (continuing from last spring)
PE – dance (tap, ballet, jazz, hip hop, contemporary, strength training, company) and student assisting at the dance studio
Music – guitar, on her own via online resources
Baking – She has begun her weekly baking to help pay for her dance classes and costumes this year. She is going to be tracking her expenses and profits this year. She has named her bakery Sunny Spot Bakery. She will do cupcakes and cookies.
We began the first week of September and she has been trucking right along. She can cover her book work in about 3 hours and then spends several more on dance, music, reading on her own choices, baking, and other things. It is a productive year so far and I expect that will continue. We have our hardships: she loves math, so when she doesn’t understand it, it is really hard for her. But that comes with the territory and she is growing daily in her ability to understand and control emotions.
Miss J had been working on a middle school level chemistry course using several books I located for her. After completing that, I found a series of 4 books from Usborne that I purchased for her to go through. She has really been enjoying them. She is currently on the 3rd one and will finish the 4th by the end of May pretty easily.
The series is Kitchen Science: The Complete Collection published by Kane Miller. It is a set of four books: The Math of a Milkshake, The Chemistry of Cola, The Biology of a Banana, and The Physics of Popcorn. Each of the books, as is indicated by the titles, handles a branch of science or math. The books have been a lot of fun, with tons of unique tidbits of information that were interesting. They have presented a lot of ideas, some in depth, some fairly simply. They have been a great exploration of each of the branches of education they address. They all have lots of experiments, some of which we had already done and some we had not. The books had a good balance of reading, quizzing, and doing.
I found these books to be fantastic for middle school, as they push the envelope of known information in a way that has generally resulted in Miss J wanting to find out more about it. We have pulled additional books to complement the learning because she wanted more. Rabbit trails that produced more in depth learning.
The depth of information definitely requires a parent to be around to help with some of it but they are manageable for student led learning. If you have a middle school student and are looking for an overview course that will help students really learn about the different parts of science and math, these are great. There is plenty of material for a year-long course in my opinion, especially if you are doing all of the experiments, quizzes, and tests. This is a recommend from me.
I was not asked to write this and I purchased these materials myself. I am not a Usborne consultant but will happily connect you with Leslie (who I purchased these through) if you would like to order these or something else.
Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew.
As we prepared for this fall, my youngest daughter asked to be taken off of the computer math program we had been using and to be able to do her math from a printed book. It was really good timing because Math Essentials had just come up for review with their prealgebra program. Basic Math Skills Rescue Parts 1 and 2 is a two book set of softback, consumable workbooks. Together, these two books set the stage of a strong foundation for algebra, creating an algebra readiness for the student.
Creator and master teacher Richard Fisher knows that success in math relies on readiness for the upcoming ideas and concepts. In designing Basic Math Skills Rescue, he deals with what he terms the Critical Foundations of Algebra. He feels that success in understanding these ideas will result in long-term math success. There are three areas to deal with – whole numbers, fractions, and some areas of geometry and measurement. These are all addressed in this two book set.
Basic Math Skills Rescue Book 1 includes work with whole numbers and integers, fractions, and decimals and percents. Basic Math Skills Rescue Book 2 includes work with geometry, problem solving, and some more specific pre-algebra concepts. Each book is designed for a single student to work in and includes several helps at the back as well as an answer key.
Each page has a short review section up top. This is followed by a short teaching example and two sample questions to complete together. Following the samples, there are a number of questions for the student to work independently. It ends with a word problem to solve. As noted, the answer key is in the back of the book to check work. If needed, there is also access to online instructional videos to help teach the concept. The access information for this is in each book. We have not utilized these videos since she is wanting more one-on-one help this year but it is great to know they are there if she needs help when I am unavailable.
There are some really well thought-out parts to Basic Math Skills Rescue. Every lesson includes review so you never completely drop a concept until it is the main focus again. Each lesson seems to flow smoothly into the next concept focus, never big jumps in ideas that leave a student confused. The flow of each individual lesson makes sense. Each lesson is self-explanatory but does not make it hard for a teacher to guide the lesson. There are tests for each section. There is also a “resource center” at the back of the book.
The resources at the back of the book will come in quite handy as she gets into more complicated ideas. Included at the back are a glossary of terms and examples, a list of important symbols, a multiplication table to 12s, a table of common prime numbers to 1013, a table of squares and square roots, and a table of fraction/decimal equivalents.
My 7th grader has begun in book 1 and often tackles it while she eats her breakfast. This is a solid review for her of whole numbers at this point. Each concept generally has two lessons on it. She is completing one or two lessons a day at this point. As we move into concepts she is less familiar with and needs more help, we will move to a single lesson each day. Because there is not a lot of white space on each page to work the math of the problems, she also has a notebook in which she writes her problem and does the work. She then transfers the answer into the book. Using the answer key at the back, we check the work together.
If you have seen my review of previous math products from Math Essentials, you will note that they have a book titled Mastering Essential Math Skills. Because we have reviewed it before, I was quite curious to see how it relates to Basic Math Skills Rescue. Mastering Essential Math Skills Book 2 (the one we reviewed and aimed at middle and high school students) covers the same topics as our current review. However, it is all in a single book and has only one lesson per concept. Additionally, there are two speed drill wheels in the review section. I do think those are fabulous and would make a great addition to this book, also. Because it is moving twice as fast, Mastering Essential Math Skills is better suited to a student who is reviewing or is fairly familiar with chunks of the concepts and just needs a bit of review help.
Last year of high school! Some days, she is ready to go on and others she is not. That’s okay. She is not excited about being on her own and responsible for everything all the time. That’s okay. Her goals have changed in the last few months, in large part due to a very poor dual credit teacher. Maybe they would have changed regardless but they changed quite quickly last spring while she was in that class. Dual credit, though, has made this school year a bit easier for her.
Miss E is not taking dual credit classes this year since her goals have changed. She no longer plans to attend college and wants to get multiple income streams working for her after high school. She has talked to the dance studio already about teaching there in the fall of 2022. She is working on photography and is excited about starting a photography business. Setting that up will be part of her coursework in the spring. She also wants to be a published author. These goals directly impact her coursework for this school year.
First off, she is working on the Lenspiration website. This is a photography program that is designed to help students become better photographers. It is not aimed at only teens but also at adults. There are some pretty cool opportunities on the site and she is still exploring there and learning. She is working on photography daily, getting to know the camera and figure out how to better use it. She will be adding in some learning about photo editing in a couple of months. And, as I said previously, setting up her business will be part of her photography course in the spring.
In dance, she is taking every class she can and assisting as much as she can. She is assisting about 9 hours a week. She is taking ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop, contemporary, acro/leaps/turns/tricks, pointe, and is part of the company. This takes about 10 hours a week in the studio.
She is completing the last few lessons in geometry using CTCMath. After that, she will begin working on a personal finance class from Crown Financial Ministries.
For her language arts/literature, she is working on a novel. She is dedicating a specific number of hours each week to the writing and editing of the book. The goal is to get it written, have it read by others, then get it edited, and then work on the publishing aspect by the end of the school year. She also has a number of other writing projects in the queue that she is interested in so she may also work on some of those. I would like her to spend some time in the spring looking into some free lance writing and see where that takes her. She is expected to keep reading (never been a problem for this girl!) a variety of materials.
She has 3 credits of science and 4 credits of history so she has completed those requirements and does not have any on the schedule this year.
She has a one hour per week paid job in child care, as well, that she is responsible for.
It is not an intense program but it fits into her goals well, driving forward what she wants to do. That is the goal of education, right? Again, this benefit of home education means she will be prepared for her goals, ready to take on the world.
You’ll remember, perhaps, the review we did for My Father’s World 9th grade curriculum. I like the curriculum but it is packed. It doesn’t leave much space for personal choice, courses working toward a life goal, or electives. The coursework is interesting, though the Bible leaves a lot of information out there that must be discussed with a Bible open in front of you. This adds a lot of time to the curriculum. I treasure these discussions but you have to acknowledge that time addition. There are no electives in the curriculum so when you add those in, you are again adding in time commitments. All of this impacted the fact that Miss L did not complete the MFW 9th grade curriculum, though she worked a minimum or 4 hours on book work each school day last year. That time did not include dance, violin, or time spent in other situations working on electives such as a Bible study titled Pearls that she did through the church or debate. When you count in these other things, she would spend about 6-8 hours per day on her education. She generally worked on art work and dance on Saturday and had Bible class, worship, dance, and other church activities on Sundays. So, she worked hard. Yet, there was still a lot to be done in the MFW curriculum.
The other bit you need to know about Miss L is that her long-term goal is to dance with a professional ballet company and to teach dance. This drives our education choices for her and impacted some of our choices last year. She dealt with a long-term injury last year that required about 1 to 1 1/2 hours of therapy work daily. This again impacts the amount of time she was spending on her school work. Her recovery needed to take some priority as it impacted her health, her ability to dance, and, most importantly, her attitude. If you have ever worked through pain, you understand how it impacts a lot of your life. So, we prioritized her recovery, sometimes letting the therapy work push the book work to the side. She is much better this fall and so she is driving on with all of this.
That all being said, My Father’s World is the curriculum that she is using for history, Bible, and literature. They utilize a number of different programs within this curriculum so she has the Notgrass World History, some Bible resource books, and a good number of supplemental books for history and literature.
For math, she really struggled to understand concepts last year in Algebra 1. She could not comfortably move on with Algebra II, even though her score from last year using CTCMath showed an 88% pass rate. Yet, she couldn’t use the information. (I believe CTC is a good program; it just didn’t work for her.) We have pulled out No-Nonsense Algebra and are starting from the beginning on it to really solidify some of the basic information and get her comfortable to move on into the Algebra I and II information included in this program. It won’t take her all the way through Algebra II material but it will bring her a long way into it.
She is continuing on with the Apologia Physical Science that was included in the MFW package we reviewed last year. It isn’t a favorite but she is learning the information pretty well. She is working through it at a good pace. We will likely move her into Friendly Chemistry or Friendly Biology when she finishes this program.
She is working as a student assistant at the dance studio again this year. Her is putting in about 5 hours a week for this. She is also taking ballet, pointe, tap, jazz, hip hop, contemporary, private ballet, and is part of the company group. Her personal classes are about 11 hours at the studio per week.
She has decided that she misses violin so she is adding that back to her schedule. We will be looking for a retirement center for her to perform at in a couple of months. I don’t know yet if we are going to get her an instructor (where would we fit it in?) but she would definitely benefit from that.
Not to be forgotten is debate. She will tackle the Lads to Leaders debate topic this year. The debate topic is as follows: Resolved: Because the Bible is God’s authoritative and complete instruction to mankind, no latter-day revelations beyond the first century are valid. It will take, as always, a lot of dedicated Bible reading, study, and preparation. She’ll work on this until Easter weekend 2022. She will also include a number of other L2L events.
She has a plate that is so full but she doesn’t want to let go of any of it. We do modify some of the lesson plans and activities in the MFW curriculum. Some of it is just busy work or something to put a grade on; there is no real synthesis of information occurring. We skip those things.
This is the student that we are really seeing the benefits of home education with. We can tailor her schedule to her needs and allow her education to support her goals, not the other way around. Too often, education comes first and the goals are decided after. Her goals were definitely there first and I constantly remind her that education will help her fulfill those goals. Perfection in physical science is not as important as her time perfecting ballet. It is a joy to be able to help her reach for the stars without the stumbling block of a traditional education.
I enjoy reading about what families have chosen for their student’s curriculum. I assume that others enjoy reading about what we have chosen.
Miss J is 12 to start her 7th grade year. She is extremely social. To say the pandemic has been tough on her is an understatment. She thrives on hugs and talking to others. She loves to read and has spent the past 3 months reading over 40 books that her oldest sister recommended. She enjoys hands on learning and desires to be a chef or baker when she is older. Her desire after high school is to attend culinary school. I share all of this because it drives our choices for her.
Math – We are changing from CTCMath to a book based program this year. We decided this right before Math Skills Rescue Books 1 and 2 came up for review on the Crew. So, this is what she is working through. It is essentially a pre-algebra program. I don’t know for sure but I think this will likely take the better part of 2 school years to get through. I could be wrong and she could fly through some of it. We are still in the early stages of the program. Our full review will be up in a couple of weeks. Until then, you can look at what I have shared about it so far on social media.
Language Arts: Creative Writing – We are using the book we reviewed a few months ago, Sparkling Bits of Writing Book 1, because it was a fun writing process without stress for this girl. She struggles with her writing, not because she doesn’t have ideas but the process of taking thoughts and turning them into something on paper is hard. This book was so fun that it eased that process for her. We are continuing it. She will be working on this two times each week.
Language Arts: Literature – She will be reading literature that goes along with the period of history that we are in. I really like the books from Memoria Press on people from history periods. So, if I can get my hands on them for each time period, this is what she’ll read. Right now she is reading Famous Men of Rome. (This review was the whole package; we are just using the student text.) I like these books because they are story based while still being a solid biography. They provide interest for the person and it backs up her history program. I will also pick and choose a few other books to do as a read aloud with her because she enjoys that.
Language Arts: Grammar/Spelling – It’s NOT Greek To Me. We were supposed to be on a review for this program and I was disappointed when that option dissipated. We are still using the program, though we do not have the digital teaching slides to do with it. (The teaching slides came on a thumb drive that we could not use on the technology we had. We do not have brand new computers and it wouldn’t work on the Chromebook, a desktop running Windows 7, and a new computer running Windows 10. The teaching slides were on PowerPoint and they would not work with Google slides. So….) It works the students through 12 lesson of Greek morphemes (roots, prefixes, and suffixes) that are common in English. It is a lot of writing so we are taking it slow – at least 2 weeks per lesson. She is working on this 2 times in a week.
History – Miss J will be working through the studies for the ancient civilizations from Home School In The Woods. She will do them out of order since she was already working on Project Passport: Ancient Rome for a review. She will continue on that and when she is done with it, she’ll pick one of the others. This hands-on history program is a good fit for her. She can skip the parts that are heavy on the writing and do the other parts and still get the information. Picking and choosing parts is good. We will also utilize other books or videos, including Drive Thru History. (We are watching Ancient Rome lesson 1 now through SchoolhouseTeachers.com.)
History – Some of the time periods will have people for which we have a person in the Figures In Motion books. When we find those, she will cut the person out and assemble the flexible figure to add to her folder of people.
Science – The Critical Thinking Co. has sent us a book of science crossword puzzles. Miss J is doing one of these puzzles a day for now. In a couple of weeks, we will go back to the kitchen chemistry and science program I designed for her. We will add a few books around mid-school year to the experiments part. The kitchen chemistry is a lot of fun for her. She does get to choose which experiments to do but she has to do some reading as well. The books I chose for it cover a lot of chemistry ideas in a way that Miss J really relates to since she loves to cook and bake and be in the kitchen. You can see some of our activities by visiting these links: ice cream, can experiment, burning a nut, or a freezing experiment among many others.
Thinking/Logic – Miss J is working through The Fallacy Detective. You can read our review of it to learn more. She only works on it once a week and does one lesson each time.
Guitar – She really wants to learn to play the guitar. We have tried a couple of things but we are working with a video course from The Great Courses this year. We’ll see how it goes.
Dance – She is dancing quite a bit this year – 4-5 days per week. She is studying multiple styles and participating in Junior Company.
That’s about it. I am sure we’ll do some other things that will really impact her learning but this is the start and the outline. It is a good solid bit of learning.
Disclosure: I received this product free through the Homeschool Review Crew.
The Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership accessed through SchoolhouseTeachers.com contains a wealth of information, classes, planning tools, helps, and encouragement. From video courses to text courses, from PK classes through courses interesting for adults, you will find just about anything you could want in home education and resources to support all types of learning – home education, virtual learning, blended learning, or others that I don’t even know about.
One of the great things about SchoolhouseTeachers is that you can browse on the site in so many ways. You can search by grade level, subject type, need, keyword, learning style, and more. You come up with lots of options to explore and you can pick and choose what looks like a great fit for your own crew. And if it isn’t? No problem. Search again and pick something different. You have access to it ALL! One free for one year of ALL material on the site.
So, what have we been doing with the site?
The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe Literature Kit
With my 6th grader, we read the book together during December. We used some of the information from the kit to discuss. We talked a bit about C.S. Lewis. We looked at the background for why the children went to the country. We had previously done a WWII study so she was familiar with a lot of but it was good to check in with the history again. She kept a list of all the foods mentioned in the story as we read and we talked about what “tea” meant. At the end of the story, she did a bit of researching of recipes and picked from her list of foods to create a tea party. She cooked and invited her family and we enjoyed a Narnia tea time.
This literature kit is set up for a study to last several weeks. Because we were using it as a one week study during a break from our regular schedule, we adapted by picking a choosing a few of the discussions and activities to do. Activities we didn’t use included making snowflakes and snowflake ornaments, researching beavers, a study on Father Christmas, looking up flowers, how to draw a mouse, and much more. There is a four week lesson plan included.
I also had her pop over to the Literature Lessons for The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. We had some quick discussions about some of the questions there. They covered characters, setting, plot, conflict, and theme. There are suggested answers in a separate file. These questions can also be done using an interactive content tool. It asks the question and has a space to type the response. The responses are emailed to the email address entered by the student when starting the quiz.
Foreign Language – French
We have been hoping for a French class to show up on here and one did. I have just started to explore it a little bit to see how it will work for my 9th grader. It appears that they are 3-4 years worth of high school materials for her so we will likely be taking this up soon. It includes course work from elementary, middle, and high school levels.
Videos
We were excited to see in the Christmas Corner of the Seasonal Resources that there was a video on The Candy Maker’s Christmas. This relates to a favorite holiday book we read every year so we were pleased to watch the short video on it. It also had a worksheet to go along with it if we had chosen to use it.
There are a lot of other video options, from materials to go along with specific classes (one of our favorites is always Drive Thru History) to devotional materials available through RightNow Media. There are over 450 videos available with your membership to SchoolhouseTeachers.
Holidays
There are tons of holiday materials that are written specifically for the holiday or are a part of a larger course that have been separated out to make doing a holiday unit study easy. With Valentine’s Day and President’s Day both coming up next month, there are plenty of materials available to pick something to add a change to the school routine. I was looking at a couple of the printable games to use for Valentine’s Day or perhaps a poetry study. There is a book by Patricia McLaughlin titled “All The Places To Love” that reads like poetry and has a study but there is also a study of Shakepeare’s “Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day?” Both look like short but strong options for a 6th grader.
Other Resources
I can’t discuss them all but I want to name a few more that are worth checking out: – School Boxes (grade level curriculum options) – these are full of curriculum choices for a particular level to be able to quickly and easily pull together a full curriculum – Literacy Center – Special Needs Center – Parents eBook Library – Focused Learning Centers – High School Help – Planning: includes printable planners and schedule makers to customize
Much more is included on SchoolhouseTeachers.com. This just barely scratches the surface. Many other reviewers for the Homeschool Review Crew have written about how they have recently been using the Ultimate PreK-12 Annual Membership and some about how it will continue to be used in the coming months for their homeschools. Please pop over to the Crew blog and read more reviews.
The Blue Ribbon Awards is a tradition with the Homeschool Review Crew and it is a fun one for us as participants. I imagine it is also fun for the vendors. A number of categories are shared and every family in the Crew votes for their favorite in that category. We don’t vote in all categories since we didn’t review something from each of the categories.
Please visit the Crew blog to read about the overall winners from the Crew and to find other families who have shared their individual favorites. Without further ado, here are our family’s choices for the Blue Ribbon Award 2020.
So, there you have it. Our favorites for the year. We got to review a some new products this year and we got to know some new vendors. We also got to use some old favorites that we know work well with the girls. We are continually blessed by the Crew and are looking forward to another year with them.
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.
Math learning can be challenging. Math teaching can be challenging. MathandAlgebra.com is an online subscription that can take the challenge out of it all.
Presented in a combo online/offline format, the goal of MathandAlgebra.com is to help student learns math in a fun and accessible way. This increases not only skill but also confidence. The instructor is Rick Fisher, a math teacher with over 30 years of experience. He has been able to help many students increase their math skills by using his classes for 20 minutes a day.
MathandAlgebra.com has four available classes – Basic Math, Advanced Math, Pre-algebra, and Algebra. A subscription provides access to all four of these courses to work through at your pace.
Each lesson is composed of just a couple of steps. First, Miss L would watch the video. Each video is fairly short; most of the videos we watched were less than 5 minutes. These videos have Mr. Fisher’s voice teaching the concept while you see him writing on the white board. Students are encouraged to copy the exercises as he teaches. Miss L wrote them in her notebook with each page dates and the lesson number included.
showing work complete on left and the video for the current conceptat the bottom of the page you have access to the worksheet and answer key, as well as the place to mark your lesson complete
Next, access the worksheet. It can be viewed online or printed. We did some of both. Work through each of the questions. Again, Miss L wrote them into her notebook.
Once the student has answered all of the questions, the answer key can be accessed. Grade the worksheet at this point. Miss L had to correct any missed questions. Unfortunately, if a question is not understood, there is not an annotated explanation of the answer. Hopefully, the parent assisting can figure out what was missed. So far, in the algebra class, we did not hit any that I could not understand.
Miss L worked through the first few weeks of the algebra course. It came along right after she finished her pre-algebra work. There was not a placement test of any sort, so she had to begin at the start of the course. If you know your student well, you could probably have them skip over parts at the beginning of the class, especially if they are just coming off a course that covered those exact same concepts.
The interface is fairly easy to use. You can see what lessons have been completed in working on the course by the green checked circles. Also, if you have completed the lesson, than the “mark complete” at the bottom is grayed out. The student can easily know where to start each day by remembering to click that “mark complete” when they finish checking each worksheet.
The simplicity of this course is appealing. It doesn’t have lots of bells and whistles and jumps straight into what is needed to be learned for that lesson. Watch the video, do the worksheet. After completing the unit, take the quiz. Move on to the next one. Straight-forward.
The teacher/parent does have access to a simple report listing what quiz the student took on what dates and the grade received. The daily work is not graded online. That is graded by the student or the parent/teacher. If you want to include it in the overall grade, you will do that on your own.
If you are looking for a straight-forward, online math program with a video component, this might be a good fit for you. It is just that. Math taught without bells and whistles to confuse things.
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.
Simply Coding is a company that has created a huge number of classes over topics related to learning to write code for computers and learning technology skills that will benefit everyone. Coding for Kids Annual Membership gives access to everything on the website for one year. They have a 10 day free trial to find out more. But let me tell you about the company, what they offer, and our experience.
Simply Coding is a company that was born out of the understanding from the founders that everyone needs to have a background in technology and some basic code writing skills. Computer science is growing and changing before our eyes and these guys recognized it. Setting up a “summer camp” for their nieces and nephews, they tested their idea and curriculum. Thus, Simply Coding was born and it continues to grow and thrive through summer camps, in school and after school programs, and with online pathways.
The mission of Simply Coding is this: to prepare youth with the core principles of how all software is created so they can feel confident and able to contribute to technology of the future.” – on the About page from the website
In order to fulfill the mission, Simply Coding has over 40 courses that members can access. The site says it is for ages 11 – 18 but there is a lot on there that adults could benefit from, also. There are four areas these courses fit under:
1 – Simply Coding – how to work with various code languages, building websites, using Java, creating games and apps, and more.
2 – Simply Media – classes on photography, videography, different Adobe programs, and more.
3 – Simply Tech Essentials – different application programs, particularly Microsoft but also Google applications and Prezi, plus some general introductions to computers
4 – Simply Tech4Kids has a number of options that will help younger students get into some different technology areas that might be more interesting than the programming websites and such. This includes electronics, blogging, photography, and keyboarding skills, in addition to creating a YouTube channel. Lots of interesting things that I wish we had found earlier! This seems to be materials directed more towards the younger end of the age range for the Simply Coding site.
With the variety of materials on here, it seems there would be something for everyone. The classes run in different formats, depending on what you are learning. I started the photography course and it is simple. An instruction video runs (a few minutes up to 10 minutes per video) and then there is a short quiz to see if you were paying attention. After a few videos, it was time to upload some projects. I was disappointed that I couldn’t go further without uploading projects because I was wanting to learn more about photography but I don’t have a DSL camera. Since I couldn’t upload the projects, I could not continue. Maybe sometime soon. . .
Miss J is 11 and thought that learning to code a simple website would be fun. She started the Intro To Websites course. It us a fairly straight-forward navigation but you must be on a computer that you can download and save to. Which means this is not a portable program for us but we knew that ahead of time. 🙂
Each section of the lesson lists what it is at the top and you can navigate there through a sidebar to get to where you were working. You read the instructions and the work in the box on the right to complete the task being asked for and see what it does. This clear example is very helpful. If you need a video to teach you what is on the screen, the green button top center will do that for you. This was helpful for Miss J several times as she worked with the program because she just had a difficult time following the instructions. They just didn’t make sense to her. These video reviews really helped.
While this is a great skill to have, it quickly became obvious that Miss J was just not going to enjoy learning to code. This was not a good fit for her. I also struggled with using this program but it had more to do with my time at home on a computer that could work with their coding program.
Simply Coding is a strong company and the way they handle instruction is very good. The variations in styles of instruction varies with instructor and course, which is good. Different courses need different styles of instruction. The video based instruction runs from a video of the actual instructor (photography), to a video of animated instructors (Blogging For Kids), to an audio over a video of the computer screen showing what actions need to be taken for that programming/coding step (Intro to Coding). This variety does a good job of fitting the type of audience the course is aimed at and the type of instruction actually being given/what is needed.
Many students will benefit from Simply Coding and the courses they offer. There is much to be gained from this site and we are going to continue to explore some of the other course options that are not programming. Perhaps one of the girls will want to use the Blogging For Kids course, which is only 5 modules. Or maybe the photography or keyboarding classes.
Any family can gain much with the many different options available on Simply Coding for learning any number of technology-based things.
Be sure to visit the Homeschool Review Crew to read about other families experiences with Simply Coding because a lot of them have had great success with this company and it was a terrific fit for their tech interested students.
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