My mom shared this site with me when I told her I was going to go the soroban abacus route with my kids. There are video lessons for soroban, chess, origami, spelling, art, cursive, and many other subjects as the project grows. They also teach 3rd grade math in 17 lessons. Sweet! It was made with Christian homeschoolers in mind, so especially the history and moral/life training courses have that undertone, but not as a proselytizing goal, more of a compatibility goal.
Most of the videos come with pdf printouts as “homework”. I’m doing their free week’s trial now, then I’ll switch to their suggested membership plan. While it was designed for homeschoolers, I think it is a great fit for EL kids that have finished the BK-type products and are in the “what’s next?” boat, as well as after-schooling families as far as it meets their academic needs. It can’t hurt to check it out!
The only thing labeled for a specific grade is the 3rd grade math in 17 lessons. Everything else seems to start with basics and go up. The US Constitution stuff would be to boring for little kids, but the spelling lessons are short and begin simple. It’s a basic resource site not necessarily geared towards any particular age group and they are fairly new. There are enough free videos on the site to get a feel for what it is and the free trial gives you access to everything.
Thank you Tamsyn for bringing this site to our attention.
One thing I don´t quite understand to start with are their membership schemes. They say all membership deals will “give you access to everything this site has to offer” but there are huge differences in the rates (from US$7 to US$25/month) Does anybody know a bit more about this?
All pricing schemes give you the same thing. Pay what it is worth to you. If you can’t afford much, pay the $7. They recommend the $12. If you like what you see and want to help them out so they can create more, pay more. They are trying to make it more affordable, but they also know this website is a good cause that people with better means will want to support.
My mom said that they are really good people. She’s been using the website for some time (and never told me until I said I wanted to teach soroban. :p). She said they are quick to answer questions, which for my mom has never been issues with the site but rather questions about the school material. It’s a great thing and a lot of volunteer work has gone into it.
Tamsyn, thank you for sharing. I will wait to do the trial till the next week ( I am hardly home this week, so it would not do me any good :nowink: ), you’ve mentioned that they have soroban resources, can you tell a bit more?
And yes, agree with you, I always admire people like that who put a lot into creating excellent resources to share with others, they are worth of support!
Tamsyn, Skylark and any other member who did the free trial: What can you tell us about the site please? Is is recommendable/what did you like or dislike about it?
Thanks in advance for the update!
We started our monthly subscription. I like this site a lot. We bought the same abacus he uses on Amazon.com and we’re going to go through the abacus and then the 3rd grade videos. If you want to know more, I recommend doing their 1-week free trial- it gives you access to everything on their site including the printables so you can get a really good feel for what it’s all about. We’re planning on doing their spelling, cursive, science, and chess videos too.
I think the idea behind this site actually has a lot to do with the Thomas Jefferson Education method, which I don’t recommend actually. (my review: http://www.professional-mothering.com/2012/11/a-thomas-jefferson-education-my-review.html). The DeMilles are from Utah as are the creators of this website, and TJed is extremely popular here. They are essentially unschoolers but they don’t call it that. Anyway, kudos to the makers of this site. They realized that their kids wouldn’t learn the things that they wanted them to learn on their own unless they took it apart into bite-sized pieces and since kids are drawn to videos, they’ve put together this site for other TJed and other families in hopes that the kids would want to do it on their own. Anyway, that’s what I think they’re doing. But all that is just my speculation. While I don’t do TJed, I think this works to our advantage in the EL community. The videos ARE short, and they ARE videos, and the worksheets that go with them aren’t full of needless busy work but do provide practice. I like that. I think the videos are great and so far they have held my 5-year-old’s attention.
