The most difficult part of Schoolhouse Teachers is figuring out what to do! The Old Schoolhouse, which is well known for its quality magazine, has taken on a new project and has worked very hard to create a one stop website at a low cost to cover as many subject bases, ages, stages, and needs as possible. At $5.95 per month or $64.26 for the year, Schoolhouse Teachers is an inexpensive resource for homeschooling no matter what style or methods, ages, or stages of your family. Every month's lessons are planned and prepared by various curriculum authors. For example, historical figures with Cathy Diez-Luckie from Figures in Motion, Lapbooking about a monthly theme with Kimm Bellotto from Hands of a Child, Writing lessons with Kim Kautzer from WriteShop, and Geography with Terri Johnson from Knowledge Quest. In addition to the lessons, there are reading book lists, planners, ebooks, back issues of the TOS magazines, and in the future Expo downloads, and free TOS ebooks each month. There are so many resources on SchoolhouseTeachers.com that at times it can be overwhelming. The site tour will help with knowing what is available.
View sample pages of many things from high school math to music lessons to the incredible planners here. I am amazed at the creativity of the various lessons available as well as the dedication of the teachers. For example, the Economics lesson archives include "Chocolate Economics" and "Pirate Economics." Some assignments even include grading by the teacher if the answers are emailed to him. The Pre-K activities are mini-units on great children's books. For example this month one of the books is If you Give a Mouse a Cookie...
There are so many parts to Schoolhouse Teachers that I really am struggling to do the site justice. In order not to write a thesis on this website, I will only highlight three of the areas that I really like. This is not an exhaustive list of parts I like though- just a sampling.
The first area I am excited about is the planners. I have been printing pages of the Primary Planner so Tiger can plan his days. The Schoolhouse Planner is almost 800 pages with the usual calendars, field trip logs, and planning pages, but it also has articles on homeschooling, meal planning pages, chore charts (with cute graphic cutouts for kids), garden planning and other home keeping pages like appliance and repair records and gift ideas. The Schoolhouse Planner is a one-stop print what is relevant place for all things planning for the next year. There are five different planners available including ones for middle school, high school, and special needs.
I also really like the Schoolhouse Dailies Everyday Easels. The Everyday Easels includes an art lesson and information about a piece of work. It is not always a painting. For example one week it was a Tiffany stained glass window. Each week a piece of work is highlighted and then each day there is something to explore or a craft to do that is related to that piece of work. Many times the activities are broken down into grades K-2, 3-6, and 7-12 so the whole family can participate in the lessons. In the fall I intend to take better advantage of this particular section of the website during our group time!
The monthly lapbook lessons from Hands of a Child are a fun resource for themed enrichment. A few months ago the theme was England. While we didn't do the lapbook or all of the lessons, we used the resources presented to go on a tour of Buckingham Palace and learn the history of some of the monarchy. The lapbooking units are a great source of fun websites at your fingertips or a brief detour in the current studies.
At $1 for the first month, I recommend trying out Schoolhouseteachers.com and exploring what a great resource it is. Be sure to see what other crew members have to say- they are sure to highlight something I missed.
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