Hey Homeschoolers! I am working on making a resource for new homeschoolers where they ask the questions and veteran homeschoolers give the answers. My goal is to provide advice, resources, and most of all to show that there is more than one way of doing things.
Please contact me with your answer to the following question. I have already included answers that folks sent me on Facebook. Please let me know if you do not want me to include your name in the posting. Please give as much info as possible including links, details, explanations, etc... I will add your answers to this page so that new homeschoolers will have a resource to refer back to again and again.
You can contact me at everestacademy1@gmail.com with your answer. Please put "Blog Challenge" in the subject line.
Thanks!
Deb Spradlin
Everest Academy Administrator
Question: What is your least favorite curricula and why?
Answers:
- Saxon Math - Too much drill and review work. However, it may work well for someone else whose children need repetition and review.
- Saxon Math - We tried that the first year and my son, who is great with math cried and begged not to do it. It has LOTS of problems to work which can be overwhelming to one of my kids, but when tmy son, who is really good with math broke down I knew it was just too much. They use a spiral approach which I know is good for some kids, but for us is was VERY boring, confusing at times, and very overwhelming at others.
- Latin's Not So Tough - It took me some research but, I had it confirmed that there are no context clues. Not only that but there is only ONE right answer listed in the answer key even if there are several possibly right answers.
- All of them - Most of my children are ADD and no matter how much time we spend on workbooks nothing sticks and frustration ensues. For me, avoiding headaches and burnout means avoiding curriculum.
- ABEKA (hock pooey) - DULL! Too much busy work and too heavy of a work load for the average student. This to me would be like "Advanced/Gifted classes"
- Abeka - Abeka uses too many books for one subject. An example for history there is the student & teacher book, a map book & key, a test book & key.
- Switched on Schoolhouse -It starts great. The novelty of having your curriculum all in one place, on the computer, to be graded by a little guy inside your PC, is wonderful. This wonderful feeling lasts about a week and a half. That's when you realize that your child is stuck on a question in every subject because aforementioned little checker guy doesn't understand that just because there is an extra space in the answer, the answer is still correct. Or maybe your student accidentally capitalized "Spring" or perhaps they typed a fraction as "two-thirds" instead of 2 / 3 with all the spaces in the correct spot. Or, even worse, maybe they've found one of the one thousand trick questions that AOP decided to use. I loathe curriculum that tries to make my child feel ignorant. What is the upside of a child trying and trying to find the answer, only to walk away feeling dumb? If that isn't bad enough, the material is painfully boring. I've tried to read aloud the material in order to spark some interest and I find myself irritated and falling asleep. Nothing about this fosters a love of learning. Top all this off with a ridiculous price tag and Switched On Schoolhouse gets a failing grade.
- Switched on Schoolhouse - SOS is easy because it does the planning and most of the grading for you, but the material can be difficult and we found errors. Sometimes the answer key matched what they typed in but still counted it wrong a few times there would be a wrong answer.
