SchoolhouseTeachers.com Review

I am writing a thorough review on the Yearly Membership Option of SchoolhouseTeachers.com as my first review for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine Review Crew.

SchoolhouseTeachers.com is a subscription site that offers daily, weekly, or monthly lessons on various topics.  Some of these are lesson plans by top names like Adam Andrews of Center for Literature, Tyler Hogan of Bright Ideas Press, and Brenda Ellis of Artistic Pursuits.

We were given a year's membership to the site, but only got two weeks to use it before the review post was due and the first of those weeks, my family spent sick with the flu.  Hence, the kids and I were only able to use online education for one week before sharing this with you.

The first day we received the login information, I went to the website, logged in and browsed around.

I took a few screenshots to help you understand the website better.

I went to the preK/elementary heading and looked around in there, and then went to the lesson archives.  I was amazed at the plethora of lessons to be found. There is instruction for all sorts of subjects: math, French, Spanish, history, geology, geography, and more!

I was extremely happy to see literature lessons from Adam Andrews of Teaching the Classic! I have been trying all year to fit his literature program in our schedule.  Oh, we read, of course we read, but the discussions I long to have about plot and conflict and literary devices never seem to materialize.  But now? Oh, how happy I am to have discovered this gem!  I printed out his lesson for All the Places to Love, but am waiting on the book from the library.

After I recovered from finding those literature diamonds, I discovered the dailies section, in which new lessons are put out everyday (or 4 days per week for the daily grammar).

I found daily grammar and printed out the previous week's lessons so I would have a week's worth at the ready and have been putting one in Bear's work trays each day.  The lessons say grade 5, but Bear, who is mostly working at third grade level, has been very successful with them so they must be closely on par with the FLL 3 lessons.

There's daily copy work in cursive and print which would be helpful if we didn't already have lots of copy work in our current curriculum. I do like the choices they've made for the copy work - Christmas carols for December, pilgrim stuff for November. It's all rather seasonal.

As we were given a very short time to explore this site before the review was due, I decided to concentrate on the art and the daily grammar.  We jumped in on the Art Techniques class on Sunday and followed the first lesson for the month.  I had the lesson open on the computer to refer to as we drew.

Drawing from observation is challenging!

They did well.

 The thing in the middle of J-jo's is the poinsettia plant.  He decided to spend more time drawing all the leaves after I took this picture.

We are scheduled to do the lesson for the second week today and will be painting our drawings.
We look forward to seeing the third part of the lesson posted next week.

In the new year, I plan on using the lessons on Thailand from the "Asia safari" for Passport Club.  I took a precursory look through the info and will be able to use it with my children. I also saw something similar in the dailies about Canada, which I will modify a bit to use when we get to Canada in our passport club.

The incredible thing about SchoolhouseTeachers.com is that you could use just this site for a year's curriculum for all your students preK to 12.  There is something for everyone. Plus, the website provides various checklists for you to keep track of the lessons. You can also find archives of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine and all the Schoolhouse Planners.

screenshot of a portion of a checklist

For a yearly membership option of $139 for the year (working out to be $11.58 at month), this is one reasonable way to get instruction for your whole family. Mind you, for most of these courses, you get lesson plans and you still have to teach the content, but at least the planning is done for you.

In a nutshell:
Pros:
All your lessons for potentially all your subjects from preK to 12 all in one spot.
Lesson plans by high quality teachers
Good variety of subjects in addition to core subjects

Cons:
Navigability of the website could be a little better, a little clearer, though I am not sure just exactly how to improve it. It's not that the site was hard to navigate.  I found what I wanted quite easily (except for what I wrote below) but just think there has got to be a way to improve on its organization, such as being able to sort the lessons out better based on grade level.
I was hoping to see at a glance who teaches each of the courses, which is really what I thought I would get when I clicked on the "Teachers" tab, but found instead when I clicked on "Site Content" under the Home Tab.

Bottom line: My initial reaction to the website, is that I like it, but I certainly need more time to explore it and see how best to utilize it for my family before making my ultimate decision.  We will continue with the art lessons and the literature lessons, but would I purchase a membership just for two subjects?  Considering what I paid for just one particular reading program, the price of SchoolhouseTeachers.com is quite reasonable.  At this stage I can't say, but I intend to come back and tell you once I have used this longer.

See what other crew members have to say about SchoolhouseTeachers.com.