I may be going down this road. With us moving out of the country in a few months, I have been looking at online high schools and gulp...Switched on Schoolhouse. Here's my somewhat of a dilemma. We want to continue homeschooling for obvious reasons. I don't want to worry about having to pack up and ship everything over there and I don't want to have to take it on the plane with us. I am really looking for something completely online that is reasonably priced. I still want it to be founded on our christian beliefs. I know that I could go online and do a bazillion searches for everything we need and do it basically free however, who has the time for all of that. Does anyone know of an online christian high school that would be affordable. Keep in mind I have three children that will be homeschooling. Any amount times three can be overwhelming for my husband. Also, anyone on here use SOS? Do you like it? Do your child/children like it? Is it engaging not cheesy? Do you find it to be a good solid education? Can everything be done on the computer? Is there another type of curriculum that's similar yet reasonable? Thanks so much in advance for helping. I really appreciate it.
I used SOS last year in two areas. French for Rachael, and Science for Faythe. The science didn't work out at all, possibly because doing it on-line isn't Faythe's style of learning. And, while the French worked for Rachael and she learned from it, she didn't care for it. I didn't like SOS at all.
See Jackie, that's what I'm afraid of. I don't want to purchase it get over there and be disappointed. We looked at videos of it on youtube and they were not impressed.
We used SOS for Spanish and tried for Language Arts. LA was a complete fail, and while Spanish was ok, it wasn't really the way my DS learns best so we haven't continued with it. If your kids learn well by computer and are able to retain things without much review, then it may be great for you. I will see what I can find similar to SOS...
Have you looked at AOP's Monarch stuff? Bob Jones has online curriculum as well. And there's this group that I haven't heard of before but that will be at our area's book fair in May: http://www.fpeusa.org/
I have a friend who uses it for her kids. Not sure that they love it or not, but it is what she bought and it's what they use. We tried it for a few subjects. It didn't work for my son with Tourette's. Too much screen time and sitting in one spot. There is also quite a lot of clicking back and forth when trying to find information. It is much different to have a book in your hands to flip through. We did have some praise for the science, though. The labs are built in to watch.
We used SOS last year, the more we used it, the less we liked it. My kids had a difficult time finding the answers quite often. Sometime, I could find them, but too often I could not. There were times when they would reword the answer. If you're kids have patience with getting the answers wrong, and having you evaluate if their answer is correct, then it might work. Also, my kids just weren't academic enough to handle the quizes and tests. The only subjects that worked out well for us was Elementary Spanish and Bible. For Bible, I turned off the quizes and tests. We are using Thinkwell for Pre-algebra, Plato science, and Grammarlogues online this year. They are working out much better than SOS. I purchased them through homeschoolbuyersco-op.org which saved me some money.
