Well, mine is partly situational: I am in grad school with four sons. Oldest DS is in 3rd, second DS is in 1st, and the other two are 5yo and 15mo. Time management is an issue in our home. ha! I like SOS for the same reason I like LifePacs for the 1st grader: They can work quite independently. SOS gives a lot of supplemental materials that LP can't, though. For instance, if my 1st grader is doing a unit on automobile manufacturing, I have to go online and dig up videos and pictures. Not a big deal, but it takes time. But SOS has those videos and pictures built in. I like that SOS grades the work for me. Yes, I absolutely review his work and go over questions that he missed, but I don't have to physically grade it. Laziness? I prefer to think of it as streamlining my day. ha! Another big advantage of SOS is that DS no longer fights me to do his work. First and second were rough with him. He'd cry a lot because he didn't want to do schoolwork. I never could pin down why, other than he just didn't want to. That changed this year. At first, I assumed the novelty would wear off. But here it is April and he still enjoys his lessons. He's always saying, "Mom, come see this" or "Mom, did you know...?". He especially enjoys the science videos. Oh, and the games have helped immensely. I started out being a snob and disabled the games, but once I turned them back on, his test/quiz scores went up significantly. I really like the way the H&G lessons are presented at his age. I don't know about other grades, but he learns about a whole concept- people, places, time periods, careers- all at once. So when he learned about farming, they took him through the history of farming, highlighting farming states, living conditions in each time period, relevant historical events, etc. It's not just history or just geography. He can relate really well. That being said: -It's picky about answers; spelling always counts. But that's easily overcome by editing his grade while we're reviewing wrong answers. -I would never consider using it for math. I don't think I've met anyone who like SOS math. The biggest complaint is that it's tedious entering all the answers. -I do use LP with him, still, for Bible. I wanted something that he still had to write by hand. So between that, Math, and copywork, he's still getting writing practice. -Portability is occasionally an issue. Sometimes (at most, once a month), they go to Granny's while I do something. For instance, if I have a Dr. appointment or something. Anyhow, I have SOS on our desktop, so he can't just take his work with him. He takes his book work but we either skip the rest for the day or he does it when we get home. Like I said, it's not a huge issue with us and if it was going to be, I could easily transfer everything to my laptop. But it's something to consider.
We used it for L Arts and Spanish this year. We dropped LA after a few months because it just didn't have enough review.... my son would do fine on the daily lessons, but score very low on most of the tests. Also, having to go back and correct his answers when they were slightly off from what they wanted was a pain. The Spanish we still do because it's not something that he HAS to know, esp in 3rd grade, and he likes it for the most part. It's different from the other subjects - more entertaining. I do not plan to ever use SOS again, just because my son obviously needs much more review. But of course, I have another son that may do very well with it, so I guess we'll see when the time comes.
My oldest says, "It feels like we are just doing something to say we did it!" This coming from a child that doesn't like school. I feel the same way. We also don't like the fact that if you don't type an answer exactly right it counts it wrong. Now you can go and change it or the grade, but... My 13yr. said just the other day, "SOS, just wasn't for me, I didn't like it at all." He likes almost everything! I don't really know why, we just don't like it!
We're another on the HATE side! I got French for Rachael and Science for Faythe. With Faythe, it didn't work AT ALL from the get-go. We very quickly stopped. With Rachael, she was able to finish the program, but she said she really didn't care for it. She felt there wasn't enough practice and review. I felt that it wasn't AT ALL user-friendly. It was difficult as a parent to set up and make changes when needed. And you're not allowed to see it, which angers me quite a bit.
Which subjects/ grade levels were you considering? I know it is a more independently taught curriculum than your, say "Charlotte Mason" type. Many people use it because of time constraints. This same company (Alpha Omega ) has come out with a 7th grade Horizons mathe that looks interesting.
I have to say we used it briefly this year. When we first started hsing I bought a lot of BJU. Lets just say that was way over my head and I was extremely overwhelmed. So, we scraped the BJU and I bought the full grade levels for my kids in SOS. I would say for about 3 months what a complete life savor!!!! Since this was our first year hsing it taught me how to do thing and also helped my children. I found my kids sorta figured it all out and they were doing more than learning. Then as time went along they just really hated getting up and doing the work. So, I went back to the BJU we bought and what a difference. I felt like I knew what to do and we are handling much better now. whew.... I do understand time constraints because I work outside the home as well. I go to work from 6-9am then I school from 9:30 to about 12 or 1 because I have to be back to work at 1:30. My kids know what needs to be done and we have appts and or other things to do we pack everything up and bring it with us. The other day we schooled while having a oil changed and tires rotated. Now, that may not be the best scenario but we are working really hard to keep them home and make it work. Hope that helps
Certain subjects are better than others. We used LA/English, Math, Science over the last 4 years. We liked LA/English because we felt it was thorough (although we eliminated the spelling portion altogether and used Spelling Power instead). Science was good overall, but as you get into the higher grades, it was alot of long reading from the computer screen, which my oldest did not like. She'd get headaches or just simply got bored with it. We wished there was a way to print the section (reading and quiz/test) out if we so wanted to. There was, in fact, a way to print out the tests but you'd get one question on each page(!). There wasn't a way to print it in the correct format. We did not like Math because it was difficult to enter the answers. It felt awkward. My kids would do figuring on paper and then have to stop and put the answers in the computer. We also thought that there was not enough detailed instruction. So, I guess overall, I would recommend English but not Math or Science.
You know, I think reading it from the computer screen was part of the reason Faythe didn't like science. It was just too much of a pain to go back and forth. Couldn't bookmark stuff or anything, too hard to study from.
Well we only used it for high school French, but it just didn't work for us due to the frustration with having to enter in the answer SOS accepted as correct-no room for variation. Otherwise dc enjoyed the program, but as this was the deal breaker, we went back to Breaking the French Barrier.
I have not read the whole thing but we have used SOS mainly for science off and on for about 9 years, I have used it with three kids in various classes. We like it, for the most part for courses other than math. I think it is okay for some subjects, but Math is just too tedious to type in things and they get the right answers so they know enough but I am a firm believer of working it out on paper. This year I am choosing some SOS, some AOP and math with MUS. Its one of the video math courses. My last home schooler is going into Highschool levels though,what grade levels are you looking at? I do not recommend it for under say 8th grade because of the many hours of typing it takes per week. MY ds 2 used all sos in 4th grade as we were given a copy of the full set to use. We found that he would get tendinitis when he worked for long periods with out enough break to do other hand exercises.
TeacherMom touched on something that reminded me of a negative point. We noticed with my son (4/5th grade at the time) that he was doing so much on the computer that his printing really suffered. It set him back about a year, I'm not kidding. He did 4 classes with SOS and was typing so much his actual writing on paper was terrible. At the end of 5th grade year I was so concerened with his penmanship that I had him tested at the local public school (which at the time we did not think it was related to using SOS). They thought he was normal but was not given enough opportunity to write so if he was writing more, it would improve. So, yes we changed his curriculum around and now, 2 years later, he is doing much better. It's spaced properly and the size of letters are more normal. I am now able to finally teach him cursive. Something to think about if you have younger students.
WHAT we ended up doing to help my ds was print the lessons out, which you can do , so if you like the benefits of the timelines, and games, it is helpful to print now and then> I know a school that prints the tests out.
We used SOS for the first time this year. My kids like it. They very seldom complain anymore about school work. Unfortunately, I have not insisted on them taking notes. But, that is changing next year. If they take notes they get handwriting practice and good study skills. They only take the quizzes and tests for math and LA. For science and history, I had them do the lessons twice in year. Next year we plan on using SOS for everything except math. We are trying Thinkwell for pre-algebra. SOS just didn't have enough instruction of new concepts. I could fill in the gaps most of the time, but there were things that I had forgotten from school. There is a little headache with figuring out exactly what answer they are looking for on occasion, but you can change the grades as needed or look up the answer to help guide your child. As with anything, it's going to depend on you and your child. For us, the benefits outweigh the headaches.
