Hi, I have used lifepacs for all three of my children and am currently using them for my 1st grader this year. I like lifepacs because I need all the help I can get and the teachers guides are very helpful. I also like the fact that there are 10 workbooks per subject per year, so we do one lifepac a month, which may take longer to finish the school year, but allows us to do less work each day. When your a 1st grader you don't want to be in school all day long, so doing less work each day works for us. Each lifepac is very colorful and easy to read. My 8th grader does SOS now, but has done the lifepacs in the past. Hope this helps.
I am using lifepacs for my 2nd grader. We only use history and science though. She loves them. They are very user friendly for the moms ( or dads as the case may be)
I did not like them. We had all five subjects for 1st grade. Although 1 book per month does not sound bad, it gets to be a bit overwhelming for 6 year olds to do 25 pages of sheet work a day (on average to finish in 9 months (Actually recommended in the lifepacs))). That is an average of five sheets per subject per day. Nope, sorry. Not in this house. Also, it was too infantile for us. My four year old, could do the first two books in the first grade math pack. There was no real challenge, for us. It did not seem any more informative than a simple workbook we could have bought at Walmart. (Not that there is anything wrong with those workbooks from Walmart, but why spend 100's of dollars for something you can get for 10 dollars?, eh?) Finally, the pacing and style of the lifepacs annoyed me. See, it is all about "Fill in the Blanks". I hated it. I wanted the kids to do more creative, free writing. Actually using their grammar and punctuation skills, NOT filling in the blanks.... It took me two months to get the frame of mind out of their head of constantly looking for "Where to put the answer" (They would look for the BLANK spot.) It is like they are waiting for someone to feed them the answers. Ick! For example, we have one country a week we randomly pick to study. We have to use dictionaries, encyclopedias, internet, library books, etc for the basic information. Yes, they learn a bit about the countries, but moreso, they learn to research. Whereas with lifepacs, they would simply flip the pages back to find the answer handed to them. Now, I have a couple of set curriculum, but I determine our subject for bible, history, science and geography, social studies myself and we explore more on our own with encyclopedias and dictionaries and searching out the information, instead of simply mocking what was on page 25 and putting it in the right blank on page 27. Sorry, but I loved the "Idea" of lifepacs. But after two months I could not take it anymore. Just my experience
I like them for math. I have recently gone back to them. We have had a rough week though and math was one of them. I let my daughter do as much or little she wants to. It don't have lots of repititon and some things I had to spend extra time on with her. I don't love or hate them. I dont think they are ahead but just at the right spot. I haved used Lifepacs all for 1st and now I just used them for math (3rd)
We use them right now for math and language arts only. We tried history last year - but my daughter was ahead and my son got bored. I don't mind the math - my daughter likes the workbooks instead of the big ones you get from Walmart - they are easier for her to work with PLUS BOTH KIDS feel a sense of accomplishment when they get to put the book away. My daughter just skipped one unit though in Math as she could do the test without a problem. No big deal. I believe next year we will be doing Saxon - but only because we are probably going to do a set curriculum because of my time. However - in the back of my head is SOS for my son cause he loves the computer. But it has to do with planning. BTW - I don't see an overwhelming bible influence in even the Language Arts - but as converting Catholics we wouldn't do the Bible course - but my daughter liked it when we did it (she just loves workbooks)
I have used them and have no trouble with them. I don't think they give enough work for the kids to do. I always had to add more for the girls..
First year using them I used lifepacs this year for the first time for Bible. Love it. The writing is simple and easy, the questions and self-tests take the work out of it for me. It's a lot of work though, because we only use it once a week, so I don't think we will finish until next year.
We use Lifepac for language arts and my kids really like it. I love having the teacher guide. I do supplement with other things and it works out great.
Used both 2nd and 3rd grade with my oldest - full package. The jump, though, from 3rd to 4th was too much - and it didn't seem to prep them for the drastic jump (K-3rd IS all about filling in the blank - 4th up is more conceptual trying to get the kids to draw conclusions, though they never taught them the process of how to do it). I do, however, like them for Math. They are definitely slower than many programs out there, but their style is really neat and builds a strong foundation. My 4th grader has already touched on base algebra and base geometry this year - so it won't be too scary when it starts getting intro'd later. I am actually trying it out on my 2nd grader now (he's a different style learner). Overall for 2nd & 3rd we liked it...just not the leap to 4th. On L/A - the spelling lists are really low - my daughter never got one wrong in 2 years. HTH.
We skipped 3rd grade LA and went from 2nd into 4th. It takes some working with my dd - but she gets it. I anticipate her retaking 4th next year in whatever program we go with.
we used life paks and still use SOS version will probably be using Life Pak next year for atleast one of our classes. 2-3rd are super grades for LP as they are not as thick as first grade.. the history and geograpy is slow moving at times but it teaches a lot about reading maps and what people do in different parts of the country.... world etc..... My kids did great with them.. we did not do 5 pages a day but could have had to a couple times a month becasue we did some classes on certain days and other tings on other days.... but we usually got done on time.... Uhmmm.... one of my kids interupted train of thought here so hang one... Oh, The way we did it with one of my children was one or two classes a day all day thought subjects I mean? And then these years were the ones my kids got done so fast cause the font is huge and the reading is easy and the work was small, except on Spelling days haha, they would ask to do more! One day my ds sat and did the rest of a book because he wanted to stay up on top of the new fort daddy and the kids had built! AH the joys of homeschool!
we tryed them our first year and my son did the SOS for 2 years and I'm with Jen on this one. It sounds good but the reallity of it wasn't what I was looking for. I might recommend using some of the books for a first timer who wasn't sure what to do but I would not use it exclusively.
I have been told that if you like the LifePacs style, but not the quality..then you might like CLE. CLE purchase publishing rights to LifePac basically, but then re-wrote them to be higher quality is my understanding. I think they are done by the Mennonites and are similar to Rod and Staff, but workbook format. I have no personal experience so this is 2nd hand info.
Thanks for all the replies. We're now leaning towards Abeka. We're currently with Calvert, but I'm not thrilled with the program, so a new curriculum is in order!
I have used Lifepacs for all my children since the beginning of our homeschooling. Started in 2000. I like the independence it creates in the child. We go through one book in three weeks. Following their directions of overviewing the whole LP and reading through each section before the actual doing of the work. The children do their work independently, come to me for questions, we do extras that are found in the teacher's guides, find extra books covering the subjects at the library. I went to a homeschool conference when dd#1 was 4. After talking with representative after representative and seeing and looking through many different options, we settled on LifePacs and Horizons (another AOP publication) Here is the line up at our house for the lifepac work: Dd#1 8th grade...H&G, LA and Math Lifepacs DD#2 4th grade...H&G, LA lifepacs Dd#3 2nd grade...H&G, LA, Science Lifepacs
