SchoolhouseTeachers.com Review

I've looked at SchoolhouseTeachers.com several times over the last few years and have considered signing up for a membership but just never took the plunge.  As a member of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Review Crew I was recently given the opportunity to review a Yearly Membership with SchoolhouseTeachers.com.  Wow! Now that we've had a few weeks to get a feel for the site and all that it has to offer, I'm kicking myself for not joining sooner!

The new SchoolhouseTeachers.com website is amazing!  It is easy to use and navigate.  They offer Online Classes and Online Electives to use in your homeschool, either as your full curriculum or as a supplement to what you are already using.  There are Scope and Sequence charts, lesson plans, and printable certificates of completion. 
Homeschooling children of multiple ages?  No problem!  They have course work for students preschool - high school. We have used several of their history lessons while studying the Renaissance.  There are weekly lesson plans, lapbooks, notebooking pages, as well as links to videos and related maps as well as hands-on activities like games, recipes, and crafts to really bring the Renaissance to life for my kids.  
In addition to the courses, we have also enjoyed some of the special online access to products included in our membership like The World of Animals through the World Book eBook Library and learning about how Christopher Columbus discovered American through watching the amazing video series called Drive-Thru History.  These have been so much fun for my kids to explore!
Just take a look at the subjects below that are covered in the SchoolhouseTeachers.com courses:

In addition to the wealth of curriculum on the site, there is also an abundance of homeschool parent support resources on the site.  As a member you can download several different planners.  Here are just two of them which are for homeschool parents to help organize their homeschool as well as manage their home. However, they also offer primary, intermediate, and high school student planners, as well as a planner for special needs students.

There is also a Custom Schedule Builder to help you organize your homeschool day as well as online access to Applecore Recordkeeping for tracking your students' portfolio, coursework, grades, and attendance.
SchoolhouseTeachers.com really has everything you might need for your homeschool!
Be sure to join SchoolhouseTeachers.com during their Super Christmas Sale and save 50% by using code: CHRISTMAS for $9.95/month or CHRISTMASYEAR for $90/year.  This is really a great deal!  The sale ends on January 15th so HURRY and lock in your promo rate.

To read more reviews for SchoolhouseTeachers.com from other members of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Review Crew, please click on the graphic below:


My kids and I have thoroughly enjoyed using SchoolhouseTeachers.com in our homeschool and I have written my honest opinion about this product.  Although I was given a free Yearly Membership in order to research the product and write this review, I have benefited so much from it that I will definitely renew our membership when this one expires.

Kids and Their Mis-Matched Outfits

Kids have a tendency to put together mis-matched outfits.  I have always tried to let my children pick out their own clothes.  However, I make it easy for them by hanging outfits together and teaching them how to match colors.

Rachel was getting dressed so she could run an errand with Daddy to Home Depot.  She came downstairs and proudly showed us how she could hold a book in her dress.

Interesting.  

But not as interesting as the rest of her outfit.  First, she had chosen a velvet and satin embroidered dress that she only wears to church.  Remember she is going to Home Depot.  Plus she has matched it with red socks and hot pink glittered shoes.  Oh my!

I let the mismatched colors go but I told her that dress was too fancy to wear to Home Depot and that I didn't want her to mess it up by just spending the day playing in it.  She told me, "Don't worry.  It will be fine!"  But I insisted that she needed to go back upstairs and put on some pants.  

Here is what she did:

Yep, she did NOT change OUT of the dress.  She just added pants to it!  Seriously, you can't make this stuff up!  Stuart said it wasn't worth arguing with her over and off they went to Home Depot.

Make Your Own Pretend Candy Box for Kitchen Playtime

Rachel loves kitchen playtime.  She has a pretend kitchen and lots of pretend food.  She takes our orders and then serves us wonderful meals of plastic and wood with such a happy grin on her face.

We had an empty heart shaped box left over from Valentine's Day and I decided to show Rachel how we could make some pretend candy to put in it.  We went to Hobby Lobby craft store and found some clay.  I looked at "real" clay but it is very firm and difficult for little hands to manipulate.  Instead we found a cool product called Model Magic by Crayola.  It has an airy texture and super soft and easy to shape by hand.  It is also air-dried so you don't have to bake it in the oven to harden it.  It is just perfect for young children to work with.  We got some in brown and white so that we could have milk chocolate and white chocolate candies.  I even pulled out some real sprinkles from the pantry!

We first made little candy balls of chocolate and white chocolate.

Then we use contrasting colors and sprinkles to decorate the tops of our candies.

Once we were done we let them air dry.  This is so hard for little ones to do.  They just insist on playing with them and touching them before they are dry. Rachel's candy box turned out so pretty and she is so proud that she learned how to make her own pretend food for her play kitchen.

The boys were intrigued by the Model Magic and had to give it a try for themselves.  Daddy made a cute little piggie while Nicholas made a fire-breathing dragon!  I love how this turned into a fun family craft project!

Community Helpers: Fire Fighters

Today for preschool, I talked to Rachel about fire safety and fire fighters as community helpers.  

Outside, I used colored chalk to make some fires on the sidewalk.  I let Rachel play the role of the fire fighter who had to put out the fires with water from a squirt bottle.  

What kid doesn't love playing with a squirt bottle?!

I loved watching her at work.  

She put out all five fires.  Yay, Rachel!  You saved the day! 

She quickly realized that the wet chalk could be smeared around and could decorate her hand.

Finally, we played hopscotch on the fires.

As we were heading back inside, she was drawn to one of my rose bushes in the front yard.

She absolutely loves flowers and she enjoys checking on my flowers, smelling them...and occasionally pulling off their petals.

Learning About The Post Office

We love playing outside with chalk in the driveway, especially on a beautiful fall day like this.

While we were out there, Rachel saw the mail truck approaching our house and she watched it as it stopped at each house.

We have a wonderful mail man who waves at us all the time. The kids love it!

Nicholas has always enjoyed checking the mail box.

When he brought the mail to me, Rachel started asking questions about the mail man and why he brought those envelopes and catalogs to us. So I spent some time talking with her about it. Shortly afterward, I stumbled upon the perfect book at a used book sale. It is by one of my favorite children's authors, Gail Gibbons, and it's called "The Post Office Book: Mail and How It Moves".



We read the book and then we set up a little post office in our front yard so the kids could pretend to be mailmen!

Each of them brought out a couple of stuffed animals and chairs and we set them up in their "home" complete with mail boxes.

Can't forget "Big Dog". I love this dog. Nicholas' Aunt Marinee and Uncle John sent him to Nicholas before he was ever born. I'm so glad that Nicholas treasures him as much as I do.

I grabbed some empty cereal boxes and other boxes that were about to head out to our recycle bin and wrapped them in shipping paper complete with "to" and "from" addresses filled in. I let the kids have a blast delivering mail, then pretending that they were picking up outgoing mail so they could bring it all back to the post office to re-sort.

Rachel loved it! We helped her read the names on the packages and she was off!

Nicholas has actually done this post office game in a playgroup when he was about Rachel's age. He loved it then but still had fun with it now.

Rachel discovered a rose bud and decided to go visit the whale family as she studied the bud and took it apart.

Love her curiosity about the world around her.

Nicholas was excited to sit with her and watch what she was doing and even talked to her some about buds and flowers. He is a good teacher!

As we were collecting the packages up for the last time, Rachel sneaked over to the front door and hunkered over as she unwrapped one of the packages. I guess she was thinking this whole time that they were real packages and there might be something in there for her. Poor thing. You know she was disappointed to find it was just a box of Rice-A-Roni...and empty at that!

Nicholas put one of the packages in the mailbox just so we could let her get it from the mailbox.

With Nicholas, I talked about every new experience to make sure that he understood what he saw and experienced each day. I want to do the same for Rachel so I was surprised that she didn't understand the mail service yet. Unfortunately I find that I miss these opportunities for teachable moments with her during the day. I think this is mostly because I'm so much busier and more distracted than when Nicholas was this age or else we're running late for something (probably some activity of Nicholas) and don't have time to just sit and talk about things. I'm so glad I was able to catch Rachel's moment of interest in the mail man and take that to another level to help her to learn more about the postal service.

Halloween Fun for Preschoolers

Rachel and I have done a lot of things with pumpkins. You can check out most of them at Quirky Momma on my post about Preschool Halloween Activities.

But Rachel was also just excited to clean out her pumpkin so we could carve it into a jack-o-lantern.

She was very curious about the pumpkin and couldn't wait to see what was inside of it.

I was proud of her curiosity since she often gets squirmy about things she isn't familiar with and pumpkins guts are definitely slimy and unfamiliar to her.

She separated the pulp from the seeds.

She washed the seeds.

She laid the seeds out to dry.

We used these pumpkin seeds in some of the activities in my Quirky Momma post that I mentioned above.

Preschool Lacing Cards

Check out my post at Quirky Momma to see a fun lacing project I made for Rachel with a sink mat and some used ribbon!

Talk Like A Pirate Day

September 19th is the official Talk Like A Pirate Day - AARRGGHHH!

What? You landlubbers never heard of Talk Like A Pirate Day? Walk the plank!

Stuart first told me about this cool day and I found a website that explained the whole story. There are some great pirate activities for kids on here as well as some fun pirate things for adults too.

Today we've talked like a pirate and we've worn pirate costumes. We even played some pirate games.

But I think the kids most enjoyed my Talk Like A Pirate Sensory Bin!

A sensory bin is a great resource for preschoolers. It can have a base of rice or dried beans or really just about anything that is fun to run your hands through, scoop, and pour. Nicholas had a rice box and a bean box when he was at Montessori for preschool and it was his favorite thing to work on. There may also be things added to the box that have different textures, weights, sizes, etc just to add some different things for little hands to dig for, grasp, and play with.

I decided to make a blue rice to be the ocean and then add a pirate theme to the other things in the box.

To make colored rice, you will need rice (the whiter the better), rubbing alcohol, and food coloring. I used liquid food coloring but paste food coloring will work too.

Mix 2 teaspoons of rubbing alcohol with about 10 drops of food coloring. Add more food coloring if you want a darker, richer color. Then pour the liquid into a cup of rice and mix.

The rice will quickly absorb the colorant but it will need to dry out overnight. If you are impatient or wait until the last minute like me and don't want to wait overnight, you can spread the rice out in a thin layer on a cookie sheet and warm it in an oven at 200 degrees for about 15 minutes.

Let the rice cool then pour it in your bin.

I found some "Toobs" that had little plastic ocean animals and pirates. I got these at Michael's so I could use their regular 40% off coupon!

I buried some of the sea creatures deep into the blue rice. Sneaky Mama!

Then I covered them with rice and the pirate characters as well as some fake gold coins and large rocks for islands.

Both of my kids went crazy for their pirate bin!

I spread out a tablecloth on the floor and put the rice box in the middle of it. I told the kids that they had to keep the rice in the box at all times and the toys had to stay on the tablecloth. Somehow we still got a few grains of blue rice sneak their way around the room but overall it wasn't a very messy activity.

And it was good practice for Rachel to scoop and pour the rice.

But you really can't leave a two year old alone with a box of rice for even a few minutes or else they will feel compelled to squeeze their little bodies into said box and sit right down in it!

I plan to do more of these themed sensory bins throughout the year. They are great for Rachel to work on her fine motor skills but they are also just plain fun!