A review of Schoolhouseteachers.com

Confession:

I am a curriculum hoarder.

No really. Those of you who live close to me know how much I love this stuff. I have shelves and shelves of pretty books, and workbooks, and dvds, and binders upon binders of printed PDFs. I collect it like its candy…. (don’t judge, I get most of it used for cheap….. and I use it too! Or I will. Eventually….)

Schoolhouse Teachers is a dream come true for people like me. It’s probably a dream come true for normal people too. I’ll get to normal people in a second…. But for now, let’s talk about curriculum junkies like me.

Schoolhouse Teachers is a new website, by the same company that brings you This Old Schoolhouse magazine. The website is set up in blog form, staffed by some of the biggest and brightest names in homeschooling curriculum. Each subject has a “teacher” who puts up brand new content- some subjects monthly, and many subjects more often than that. They even have DAILY subjects, with something new every morning for you and your students.

Have you heard of Knowledge Quest? Yeah, the author, Terri Johnson, is on Schoolhouse Teachers. What about Teaching the Classics? Adam Andrews from the Center for Lit is on Schoolhouse teachers too. Does Kim Kautzer’s WriteShop sound familiar to you? It’s there too.

What makes it even cooler is it isn’t just WriteShop, or Teaching the Classics. It’s NEW lessons. Things they haven’t put out before, that you can’t find anywhere else.

Some of these programs are way out of my price range to splurge on, but on Schoolhouse Teachers, I found new lessons, for affordable prices. A subscription to schoolhouse teachers starts at just 1 dollar a month, and then is 5.95 a month after that.

I have very young kids, who admittedly, aren’t ready for chemistry, or lit studies, or many of the activities on schoolhouse Teachers yet. This is where my curriculum hoarding really comes into play- The first thing I did when I logged on was to go to the archive section of the site, where you can see all the past lessons, and I downloaded to my heart’s content. I was able to save, in PDF form, lit studies for The Hobbit and Treasure Island, which are both on our reading list for this year. Almost all the lessons on the site are available as PDF downloads, so you can save and print the lessons to be used at a later date, or saved to use again and again.

The only downside I see (other than needing to buy a thumb drive just to save all the PDFs I hoarded….) is that I am a planner. Enough of a planner that the blog format doesn’t work well with my compulsive need to have everything scheduled out ahead of time to know what is coming. Luckily, the PDF lesson feature saved the day. Instead of using the daily assignments as they were intended by Schoolhouse Teachers, I would come back after they have been archived, then download the lessons, print off the ones we wanted to do, and schedule them in…. or just save them for a rainy day.

Schoolhouse Teachers’ strength really is the curriculum for older kids (with curriculum for chemistry, economics, geography, history, home economics, technology, math, music, writing, and MORE….), but they do have a wide assortment for all age ranges. The daily section has lessons for art, geography, hands on explorations and pre-k.

I can see this working really well for people who are looking for fun supplements to *fill the gaps* in their schooling. I like having the little “this day in history” tidbits to add in for the kids, and when I get stumped for activities, I’ve been exploring the site. There is so much that that the site can be a bit overwhelming, and more than a little addicting. It’s exciting too- they are adding some new subjects this fall, to include math for younger students and classics based writing, which I cannot wait to see. It’s very much worth you taking a look, you can see samples and tour the site here.

The rest of the TOS Review Crew has also been using and reviewing Schoolhouse Teachers, and I encourage you to check it out by clicking the banner below. There is so much on the site, between lessons, and the planners (I didn’t even START to tell you about the amazing planners) that each blogger will have their own favorite things to share with you.