Master list of on-line classes...

[RootAnn]

Someone posted in another thread about bytheonionsea.com

Julia Demme - teaches Russian, but also offers upper level Russian literature (with writing) classes.

I didn't see it on the list. I'd put it under Foreign Language, but maybe also under Literature/Writing with a note that they are upper high school level & all focused on Russian literature (albeit in English).

[CAtoVA]

Apparently, homeschoolworks4U is out of business. From the website:

 

It is with both a heavy and glad heart that we announce homeschoolworks4u.com has been sold. As a result, HomeschoolWorks4U.com will eventually go offline.

TRUE NORTH HOMESCHOOL ACADEMY (TNHA) is now the owner of this website and its content. TNHA is working to transfer the information from this site to their new website.

TNHA will provide you with numerous choices for homeschool and tons of free information to help you, your child, and your family along the way.

There will be a huge announcement once TNHA launches their website (anticipated launch date is the first quarter of 2018). To get in on any early-bird specials they may offer, email them and request to be added to their email list. The email address to use for this request is:

YES@TRUENORTHHOMESCHOOLACADEMY.COM

Thank you to everyone who has entrusted us with helping your child learn and succeed.

May God Bless and Keep You!

[CAtoVA]

But True North Homeschool Academy may have something valuable to offer once they come online!

[Liza Q]

Here's a review for the Senior Thesis class - 1 semester - at Memoria Press. https://www.memoriap...pagename=thesis

 

This class is for student who can already write - this quote is from the website:

The course is a capstone class and assumes that the student can write grammatically correct and complete sentences. It also assumes a student has written essays and papers before (not necessarily a research paper), but does not assume completion of our Classical Composition program.

 

Also from the website: Students should expect to spend 3-6 hours a week on this class. This seems about right, though I think my son spent more like 10 hours during the week before the rough draft was due and maybe 8 hours before the final draft. But - he is a slow writer.

 

You should know that my son - 17yo, 12th grade -  doesn't like writing. He can turn out a decent, if plain and boring, essay if he needs to, but he'll moan and whine quite a bit. He hated studying grammar, complained all the time, but is actually very careful with his writing. Too careful - he was a perfectionist and driving me crazy. Because it was really affecting our relationship, I had him take a few Bravewriter classes and was extremely pleased with the results. I made him take this class because I didn't feel like working with him and teaching him to write a research paper, MLA citation, etc. I did this with my daughters before they went to college without any fuss but he is way more of a drama queen than they are lol and I didn't want the struggle. Also. Bravewriter has a class like this but it is shorter and more expensive...and I thought it would be good for my son to try a different approach.

 

He told me this about the class (I'm paraphrasing this as he wouldn't actually write something for me about the class!): Because I don't like writing I didn't enjoy the writing. But the class was good and I really enjoyed it. I learned stuff. It was not that focused on grammar and editing and it could have been. It was more about the process.

 

They met once a week for 90 minutes and the class ran from September through January. Excluding holidays, it met for 17 weeks. I am not very techy but I will do my best to explain the set-up - there was a camera so you could see as well as hear the teacher and he used slides during the class. The students communicated through a chat box but could use the mic for a complicated question. The assignments were done in Word and were uploaded to Memoria's site - simple. There is an online Forum where they can ask the teacher a question and all of the assignments/grades/etc are online and easy to access.

 

The 17 weeks were set up this way - 3 weeks on initial research and choosing a topic, 4 weeks on choosing sources, drafting a thesis statement, and writing an outline, 2 weeks for the rough draft and final draft (but this included Thanksgiving week so they really had 3 weeks), and 6 weeks for Student Presentations and short analyses of each paper. Each student read their paper out loud and then the following week they each wrote about each paper.

 

There were 2 texts used - Research Papers for Dummies and an MLA Handbook. Since I got them used from Amazon, they were very inexpensive. There were weekly reading assignments and my son said they were helpful.

 

The paper itself had to be about 15 pages, double-spaced, and the student had to use a minimum of 8 sources. My son wrote on the colonization of Mars but he could have chosen any topic. Some of the other students wrote on topics like why fathers are necessary to families, genetic engineering, even the history of gingerbread! It was a small class of 8 students and I think my son received plenty of personal attention.

 

Here are a few examples of the comments my son received on his work:

 

On his adjusted Thesis Statement:  This should work. You've dialed it back a bit, but you are still clearly intending to argue for a definite position. Good work!

 

Later, in his rough draft, my son wanted to change the wording of his thesis and wrote this: For this section, I'm finding that the thesis statement feels pretty clunky. Would you be okay with me changing this section to

 

"...or some combination of the two. The best way to do it is to combine the resources of both public programs and private industries."

 

or at least something along those lines. It doesn't really change the meaning, but really helps the paragraph flow.

 

And this was the teacher's response: I agree with the need to rephrase it. I think what you’ve proposed, or something like it, should work just fine.

 

 

On this sentence (George H. W. Bush tried and failed to bring greater life back to NASA.) from his rough draft :  Maybe elaborate on this sentence and the following ones. How did these presidents seek to enhance NASA, and why didn’t they have more support?

 

On his final draft:

Mechanics-19/20pts

Content-70/70pts

Presentation-10/10pts

 

99/100

This is a well-sourced and thoughtfully planned paper. You deal with the necessary issues and argue appropriately and consistently for your thesis throughout the paper. The few errors that cropped up dealt more with citation placement (inside the period on short quotes, outside on block), and really do not seriously detract from the overall effectiveness of the paper. Considering this topic’s rather offhand or seemingly random beginnings, I think the project turned out very well. Great work!

 

I put his entire grade on that last one so you can see how the paper was graded.

 

The teacher was Dr. Kevin Dray. My son thinks he was marvelous. Like, even slightly better than "Mrs. Jetta" of Clover Creek Physics (sorry Jetta/morningglory lol!! He did say that he loved you!) Personally, I disagree - my son learned to love Physics and did not learn to love writing, kwim? But my son said that Dr. Dray was hilarious in both his personality and his comments, he taught well, was likable and fun, had a dry sense of humor.

 

I do have one sort-of negative comment. From the website: This class is worth 1/2 a high school credit in Language Arts, Composition, or Writing.  Imo, this is not enough for a semester credit, especially for the upper grades (11th/12th). I paired it with a homegrown Lit program that included a lot of reading and discussion.

 

I would definitely recommend this class if you want your child to learn to write a research paper with MLA citation and don't want to teach it yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

[eternalsummer]

We're 2/3 or so of the way through Lukeion's Latin 1 with Amy Barr (which I'm sure has many reviews elsewhere on the forums, but reviews were requested here so I am posting them).

 

Background: DD is 12, in 7th grade, highly gifted (but not profoundly gifted - i.e. quite bright, but not a genius).  She has good natural self-control and executive functioning and works a few grade levels ahead in verbal skills.  She was motivated to take this class as she's always liked the classics and been interested in Greek and Latin.  She took Barbarian Digrammarian (henceforth BD) with Lukeion last year and so got somewhat used to weekly classes, quizzes, quia (their online class software thing), etc.

 

She likes Latin 1 better than she liked BD.  Part of this is the subject matter, part of it is the class - I think she identifies with a few classmates.  There's not a ton of time for student interaction but they open the chat several minutes before class and talk to each other then.  I don't watch the classes, monitor studying or homework, remind her to wake up for class or turn in quizzes, or anything.  I know nothing about Latin.  I am 0% involved except for paying.

 

She studies, she says, about 2 hours a week.  Class is an hour and the homework and quiz both take about 30-45 minutes, so call it 5 hours a week or so.  She does very well in the class on a consistent basis.

 

Grades for quizzes are not public, exactly, but the top three scores (often obtained by more than 3 individual students) are listed along with the students who got them and medals are awarded.  So each week an email goes out that might say something like (names made up): Gold: Harry P., Cornelia F., Jane A.  Silver: Michael D., Connie W. Bronze: Eric C., Edward B., Marissa L.  And then a breakdown of scores: 90-100: 15 students; 80-90: 25 students; below 80: 7 students.

 

I really like the last part, with the general breakdown of scores, because if DD has had a difficult week she can see if the class on average has had a difficult week or if it is just her.  She is also motivated by the weekly medals.  In Latin 1, Gold medal for a quiz is almost always a perfect score or a perfect score + getting the bonus question right.

 

From what I've seen walking by the computer very briefly (and asking her now), the teacher talks while showing powerpoint-type slides that are sometimes animated.  She often asks questions and students type the answer or click a multiple choice answer.  DD says she's very clear.

 

Lukeion as a provider and this teacher in particular are not waffly at all about deadlines.  They are very clear about that and part of what has been good for DD in this class and BD last year is the necessity of keeping herself organized.  She has missed a few classes; in theory you can ask for a password to a recording but DD doesn't generally want to.  She self-studies from the book on the rare occasion she misses the class.  

 

I should say that they advise a lot of specific ways of studying and interacting with the class that DD doesn't do right now.  I've told her she may need to for Latin 2.  They suggest (strongly suggest) making flashcards and taking notes during class; DD does neither.  I think that in the next year or two she will need to make flashcards.

 

There are a variety of games provided on the class website to reinforce grammar and vocab skills.  DD does some of them sometimes.

 

Overall grade is weighted heavily towards quizzes and the midterm and final; part of it is also homework/participation/doing the online games, but not a large part.

 

 

The only thing I don't like about the class is that you have to ask for a password to the recording; I wish they were just available automatically.  

[OneStepAtATime]

Will update links and additional descriptions sometime this weekend.  Thanks for the additional feedback.

 

Lots of on-line providers are starting to offer their course catalogue for Fall/Spring.  Big thanks to those who are offering reviews of courses their children have taken/are taking as parents try to navigate choices for this coming academic year.

 

If you know of any course providers offering summer classes PLEASE POST and notate in bold letters that it is for summer session.  

[Penelope]

I didn't see Ray Leven's classes listed anywhere. https://sites.google.com/site/spanishlearningonline/

 

Here is a review for his class and for Sr. Gamache's class at la Clase Divertida.

Senor Leven's classes are extremely organized, efficient and well-thought out. Class time is used to introduce new concepts and to practice them. Classes meet for one hour a week and are small, about 5 students, and highly interactive. There are online computerized assignments through the Vista website as well as written assignments, which are quickly and meticulously graded by Señor Leven. This class is for bright, self-motivated students who either work hard or pick up the language easily, IMO. The expectation level is high. My dd has taken Spanish 2, 3, and 4 with Sr. Leven and will take AP Spanish with him next year through PAHS. She just took a Spanish SAT Subject practice test to see how she would do and she scored a 740 on the first try, so I feel he has given her a great foundation. I do know there are others out there who have not meshed with his teaching style and who have found that the work takes them many hours a week. We have never found him to be anything but kind and gracious and my dd has found the workload to be light, about 2-3 hours a week, which is what he advertises. I just want to mention that so that anyone interested in the class can do their own research and decide whether they think Ray's class would be a good fit for their child.

My son has done Spanish 1, 2 and 3 with Senor Gamache. This class offers 3 hours a week of class time, but there is a lot of time spent explaining assignments, giving directions, taking quizzes and taking care of administrative tasks. Class size is about 20 students for Spanish 1 and 2, but I believe there were only 8 students in the Spanish 3 class this year. Most of the assignments are computer-based through the Vistas website. Some of them are automatically graded by the computer and others are graded personally by Sr. Gamache. The workload can be high, but varies from week to week. There is an occasional assignment outside of the Vista assignments, like cooking a Spanish dish or making a family tree. This class has been thorough and challenging for my ds. Sr. Gamache genuinely seems to care about his students. The main complaint I have is that he can be very disorganized, though that seems like it has improved this year. I'm not sure if that's because my son understands more of what to expect from him or if Sr. Gamache himself has actually improved in this area. Overall, I would say this class has given my son a good foundation in Spanish and I think ds will be able to get a high enough score on the SAT Subject Test to meet the foreign language requirement at the school he is interested in.

It looks like Senor Leven is no longer offering Spanish 1 and 2 as classes, but only for tutoring of 1-2 students at a time. He is offering Spanish 3 and up for next year.

[OneStepAtATime]

Have some additional reviews I will be writing and will update the links to other reviews then.  I won't get to this until Wednesday.

 

Please add reviews or link to reviews that would be relevant and I will update the links in the first post sometime this week.

[eamcd]

Hi,

Do you have any thoughts on GBA (Great Books Academy) or the Angelicum Academy? They have on-line options linked to the Great Courses.

 

Thank you,
Andrew

[Karen08]

Mark..

[CAtoVA]

Some other options I have stumbled upon in my research this year. I am not evaluating these schools/programs just letting anyone interested know they exist:

 

Rolling Acres School is classical and Catholic and offers courses for middle and high school students in Latin, French, German, Literature, Logic, Writing, Philosophy and Science (Grades 6-8 Only for Science). It appears some classes are offered live online and some are offered as a home study option that is self-paced and parent supervised: http://www.rasonlineacademy.com/ 

 

This is from their website:

R. A. S. is an online academy fostering Catholic identity through a liberal arts and great books inspired classical curriculum. We use blended learning in an online educational platform. We strive to be essentially Christian, academically rigorous, and practically helpful to all families. We offer services for Pre-K to 12th grade homeschoolers through the Online Academy for 7th-12th and Schola Rosa Co-op & Home Curriculum for Pre-K to 12th.

[SoCal_Bear]

We are nearing the end of my son's Latin for Children A class at Schole Academy. He has been engaged and interested throughout the year. Mrs. Chilbert did take a maternity break so Mrs. Gerard (sp?) subbed in. Both teachers are enthusiastic and encouraging. He is a bit sad to not continue on with them because the schedule does not work for us in the fall, but he enjoys enough Latin so we will be using Wilson Hill in the fall solely because of scheduling reasons. I though Mrs. Gerard did do a better job of creating practice resources for the students to use on quizlet. It wasn't an issue for us as I already had quizlet set up for practice as well as a subscription to Headventureland. Both teachers are continuing to teach for Schole Academy for 2018-2019 and are teaching at least one Latin course. My son liked both of the teachers.

Please be aware that Schole Academy is distinctly Christian so the classes do follow a liturgical model and have prayer, devotional time and closing prayer. This is fine with me because it is consistent with our faith, but I did want people to be aware of this. The class is live video where you can see every student as well as the teacher. She controls whether or not a student can speak. There's no class chat box which does make the class a little less interactive, but it also removes that distraction from the students as well. The platform used is Schoology which seemed to be quite stable and was easy to use. Assignments were always posted and any homework that needed to be submitted was able to be scanned and uploaded pretty easily. At least for the Latin class, there are no recordings posted for the classes. If a student is absent, you can notify the teacher and a recording will be provided. Schole's guidelines do state that students may not miss more that 6 live class meetings. Class grades are given using magna cum laude, sum laude, satis, and non satis. Assignments that are graded on the Schoology are done via point value so the platform will generate a percentage grade based on those graded assignments.

When Mrs. Chilbert had to cancel a class due to illness, she did set up a make up class time and offered several options for parents to vote on. She selected the one that accomodated the most students. A recording was provided for students who could not attend. The maternity leave transition off and tranition back was handled very smoothly and with very little disruption to the class. All in all, we would recommend this class. My goal was solely to keep my son in interested and engaged. He was able to learn Latin from teachers who actually love Latin and that showed in their instruction. He was motivated to do well because of the "competition" that a class environment provided.

Please also note that it appears that Schole is switching LFCA and LFCB to meet 3x a week for 45 minutes instead of the 2x a week that it was meeting for approximately an hour.

[satellite]

On 3/1/2017 at 8:49 PM, mirabillis said:

Edhesive offers AP Computer Science-A. Great MOOC course, very inexpensive. Free or pay about $150 for full teacher access. Includes AP prep. Engaging video lectures and lots of practice. Very responsive discussion board for when students get stumped. So far, so good. We'll see how we fare when it comes time for the AP exam. Many boardies have good reviews for them.

 

Also offers AP Computer Science Principles.

 

www.edhesive.com

(formerly Amplify)

Thinking about using Edhesive for AP Computer Science A.

How many hours per week did the class require? How's the course load, and did your student score well on the exam?

The price is so good. Too good that I'm not sure if it's "good" enough.

[daijobu]

3 hours ago, mjt182 said:

Thinking about using Edhesive for AP Computer Science A.

How many hours per week did the class require? How's the course load, and did your student score well on the exam?

The price is so good. Too good that I'm not sure if it's "good" enough.

 

We're a few years away from that class, but I can assure it is very good.  Mrs. Dovi's lectures are excellent.  

[RootAnn]

Review of German 1 at CLRC

This school year, DD#1 added her third foreign language - German. I decided on CLRC because of 1) workload being not too heavy (as reported by the teacher in emails prior to signing up for the class), 2) native speaking teacher, 3) class times worked for DD's schedule, 4) other people's positive experience with CLRC, 5) the Monday-Thursday class days seem to make sense to me (offering a balanced way to get homework done vs. a one-day-in-the-middle-rush of Mon-Wed or Tues-Thurs classes) and 6) neither of us wanted either asynchronous (because she doesn't do well with no deadlines) or a three-meetings-a-week class like WTMA offered. 

The class was small - only about 8 kids. This was a plus for my DD because she is more outgoing with smaller classes. Roughly half the class had taken CLRC's Young German 1 the prior year. There weren't enough kids to run both German 1 & Young German 2, so they were combined. Perhaps this led to the class going at a slower pace than previous years; I don't know. They did not make it through the entire textbook, but will finish it in German 2 & move onto the next text. So, if you want to get through an entire textbook (or close to it), this might not be the class for you.

The teacher is a native German who has lived in the US & raised her kids here. I sat in on very little of the class, but I noticed that her explanations were sometimes along the lines of, 'that's just the way it is; memorize it.' This could be because she's a native speaker & doesn't exactly know why the language is structured the way it is or maybe that is just true of German.

DD did not find the textbook itself to be difficult, although I know another student in the class was exceedingly frustrated with it. However, the audio file exercises (homework) were REALLY tough. Also, sometimes the workbook directions weren't clear.

Grading was, IMO, lenient. The teacher would often give kids another chance to redo a bombed assignment, turn assignments in late, or to resubmit something that was missing the first time. Sometimes, things were incorrect & marked that way - but the teacher didn't take off any points -- making it more of a learning exercise than a punishment for not getting it correct. I, personally, didn't have a problem with this, but perhaps some people would want the teacher to be more of a stickler.

The teacher often added cultural discussions, videos/music, or her perspective on current events to round out the class. She sometimes would get off track & go down a rabbit trail although I don't know how often or how much time was spent on unplanned discussions.

Overall, my DD loved the class. The kids were allowed to interact with each other in the chat box so she was able to develop a comradely with them and looks forward to another year with the group in German 2. CLRC only offers German 1 & 2 - meaning that you will need to go elsewhere after that if you want German 3 & up.

[laughing lioness]

 

On 2/7/2018 at 8:02 PM, CAtoVA said:

But True North Homeschool Academy may have something valuable to offer once they come online!

 

True North Homeschool Academy (formerly Homeschool Works 4 U) is live and would love to serve your family in the coming year! Our launch special is this: 3 classes for what two formerly cost with Homeschool Works 4 U, NO registration fees all year and a complimentary Scranton Performance Series test for each student registered for a class.

Live on-line classes for 8th-12th grades, Academic Advising, Clep Prep

English: Lit & Comp, American Lit & Comp, Britsh Lit & Comp, College Comp I (Clep prep)

Math: Algebra I, Geometry (with proofs), Algebra II

Science: Biology, Chemistry both with labs

History: West Civilization II, Constitutional Studies, Government & Econ

Foreign Language: Latin I & II, Classics Club, Spanish I, II, III, Spanish Lab, Hebrew I, Hebrew History, Culture and Conversation

Electives; Music Theory, Psychology, C# Programming. 

Clubs! Writing, Classics, Spanish (lab), C.S. Lewis Club

The strength of our program lies in the experience and expertise of our teachers: Biology taught by a nurse, psychology taught by an MFT, Hebrew taught by a Rabbi (from Israel), as well as our collective teaching experience. Many of us come from a classical pedagogy and are passionate about supporting the homeschooling community (because we've been homeschooler or are homeschooling).

We are also looking for bloggers who would be interested in working with us! Please touch base with any questions!

 

 

 

[CAtoVA]

AWESOME!!!!! : )

[displace]

I’m not sure if these were mentioned: 

learning to read/dyslexia- nessy.com.  Offers systematic phonetic instruction in learning to read in a fairly engaging platform.  It is made by the same company as teach your monster to read.  I think it could be good for dylexics as a spine for instruction but they would likely need extra practice.  The program does include worksheets and activities for each phoneme.  For a neuro typical or mild dyslexic it is likely comprehensive enough to learn to read.

reading/phonetic support: teach your monster to read- apps or website.  It teaches phonetic basics and is thorough but likely not enough practice for someone with dyslexia.  Great basic reading starting point.

reading comprehension- readworks.org.  Website (free) for reading comprehension.  Has lots of topics, different types of questions, reading material for K to 12.  Has audio feature for vision impaired or reading disability.  Has on screen adaptability (enlarge fonts, highlight, take notes, etc).  Self grading multiple choice and teacher (parent) needs to grade short answer questions.  Can be sorted by lexile, grade, topic, literature skills (plot, character, etc), fiction/nonfiction (I think).  I believe it was started by teachers/educators.

Edited August 4, 2018 by displace

[Farrar]

Adding these that Jill and I are teaching at Simplify...

https://simplify4you.com/classes/

[SoCal_Bear]

It seems like people are looking for secular online options. I came across this one in another group I am in.

They are a multi-subject provider of middle and high school courses. Live and self-paced options.
https://www.williamsburgacademy.org/about-us/

 

Edited March 14, 2019 by calbear

[SoCal_Bear]

No personal review on this. Just a friend's son enjoyed the class he took with them.

This provider is based out of the UK. So for example, UK 6 PM is 1 PM EST 10 AM PST. The class lengths are shorter in duration. It seems similar in the way outschool works from what I can tell.

A variety of classes, multiple subjects, 3 age groups 7-10, 10-14, 14-18.

https://www.thinkersmeetup.com/?fbclid=IwAR10j-m87vQ1TaEjrttQhJrlld6VXxOoWhC50mgoB_WHtB7bET-3cCw6bcA

Edited March 14, 2019 by calbear

[SoCal_Bear]

I think you probably should remove Lone Pine from the Foreign Language listing.

I will add Lingobus for ages 5-12 Chinese classes. I know that there are people with kids on the higher end of the age range, but you have to be aware the style is to engage younger students.

My son has studied Chinese using a variety of resources and in person classes. This is the first time that he has actually been eager to do Chinese classes. He actually loves his Chinese classes. His speaking comfort and fluency has greatly improved with Lingobus. This is an extremely large company based out of Beijing. I was invited to visit their offices about 2 months after starting classes since my family was travelling in China. I thought it was maybe going to be 50 people at most. I was really surprised to arrive at an office of over 1,000 people at that one location. It was overwhelming to see what a large scale operation that builds Lingobus ( and their older sister company VIPKID - provides English classes to Chinese students). 

You schedule classes at your convenience with teachers up to two weeks in advance. You can choose from your frequently used teachers (3 of them) or from all teachers. You are able to cancel classes up to 24 hours prior without incurring a charge. You buy classes as needed, in bundles, or you can save significantly during sales (the best one is Black Friday) and get classes discounted up to 50% off which worked out to about $10 per class if you buy a 100 classes bundle. Discounts are less for smaller bundle sizes. Classes are 25 minutes one on one with a teacher and are immersion. These can be taken on a computer or iPad via their app. You do it as frequently as you like. 

While you can hire tutors at iTalki and other places, the advantage of LIngobus is that it is a thoughtfully designed curriculum with a progression of 7 Levels (so far) designed to get your student to pass the YCT (Youth Chinese Test - international Chinese test). No matter what teacher you happen to schedule, the class structure and the material delivered is always consistent. The beauty of the number of teachers is that you aren't stuck with a teacher that your student doesn't click with someone in particular. I know that they take their teacher quality seriously and parent feedback as teachers have been pulled off the schedule and sent for training if there's something that they notice needs improvement. I believe only 4% of applicants actually make it through and become teachers on this platform. Learning resources to review prior to a lesson as well as after the lesson are available on their platform. All classes are recorded and available to rewatch. This is excellent for review and reinforcement. Plus you can watch it back yourself to see how your student is doing without hovering over them during the live class. Teachers provide written feedback for students within 24 hours.

If your students have studied Chinese prior, you will want to let your advisor know so that they can schedule a free evaluation session. Your advisor is the person that contacts you via WeChat or Facebook after the demo to answer questions. Your student will be placed at a higher level based on their evaluation. Most students are non-native speakers and will be enrolled in the Chinese as a Second Language course. If your child has fluency coming from a Chinese speaking family, there is a separate track for Chinese Literacy. You are able to do a free demo and of course, you can buy a small number of classes to see if the program is a good fit or not. While some people use it with very young children below age of 5 at times, I really think people should be cognizant of their child's ability to remain focused, participate, respond, and engage in online learning. I do notice with the younger children, parents are sitting with their children and prompting them. My preference is to be a lot more hands off with online learning so that my son is personally engaged without me since I have a toddler in the mix. It seems more effective to do online learning around 7. or 8 Sometimes a little earlier or later depending on the child. There is some reading and writing that will be required in Chinese and pinyin is there to assist with pronunication, so it helps if a child is reading and writing already. That's just my opinion though. I'm also of the mindset that I want to get my money's worth out of the class I'm paying for.

You can get a couple of free classes if you sign up using a current LB user's referral code as well. 

There are a couple of fairly activie Facebook Lingobus groups. One has people from LB on there. The other one is parents only. These are good for asking questions and even getting recs for teachers.

[SoCal_Bear]

Just a suggestion that maybe math and science should be separated as the list of providers is growing long.

I haven't used it, but there are tons of rave reviews of Dicentra's Clover Valley Chemistry classes.

The link under gifted for John Rosasco is broken. He primarily offers math courses though so not sure if it should also be listed up math. http://mathandmusicstudio.com/About_John_Rosasco.html 

[RootAnn]

@calbear These are great suggestions. The original poster/keeper of the thread isn't on much anymore, so perhaps another poster or a moderator could take over updating the first post.

I plan on posting some more reviews at the end of the school year.

[cintinative]

I am looking for reviews for the True North Homeschool Academy, specifically for the middle school lit and composition and the history.  Thank you.

[jplain]

On 2/16/2018 at 10:55 AM, Penelope said:

It looks like Senor Leven is no longer offering Spanish 1 and 2 as classes, but only for tutoring of 1-2 students at a time. He is offering Spanish 3 and up for next year.

Definitely check directly with Ray if interested in the lower levels, regardless of what the website says.  I think he runs a class if he gets enough interest. There was a Spanish 1 class of five students this year (2018/2019).  I’m not sure when it was officially offered/announced, because my younger daughter joined late in September, after rejecting two other online Spanish classes because of disorganization and excessive class sizes.  (I’d have considered Gamache for her, but the schedule was going to be awkward for us, and she prefers very small class sizes so that she can practice oral skills.)

My older daughter transitioned from Spanish 1-3 with Gamache to Spanish 4 with Leven this year.  That went super-smoothly, because although the texts Gamache & Leven use have different titles, they are 99% identical inside (Vistas is marketed to colleges; Descubre is marketed to high schools).

[cintinative]

On 3/19/2019 at 6:12 PM, RootAnn said:

@calbear These are great suggestions. The original poster/keeper of the thread isn't on much anymore, so perhaps another poster or a moderator could take over updating the first post.

 

how do we make the 1st post editable? Does anyone know? Unfortunately this is from when we had post numbers (those were nice, weren't they?) and so maybe we need to put quick links in or something.

[Guest JessGK]

Thanks for the list!

[CAtoVA]

Found this in my research; apologies if it has already been posted! Classes by Beth is now Seasons to Grow: https://seasonstogrow.com/

Looks like they offer many literature classes, many writing classes, algebra 1 and 2, chemistry, biology, physical science, general science, economics, ethics, geometry, geography, French, Spanish, ASL, government, study skills, computer science and some AP classes. It looks like classes are mostly (maybe all) for middle and high school levels.

I have no personal experience with this provider I'm just throwing the information out there!

 

[orthodoxmother]

My son had good experiences with CLRC for Pre-Calculus and Classical Rhetoric. The teachers knew their stuff and he learned what he needed. 
 

Classical Learning Resource Center
 

 

[SoCal_Bear]

I had signed my son up for the Good Books class this year after hearing so many good things about Angelina Stanford's classes over the years on this forum. While her content is great, her decision to double the class size this year has had such a negative outcome on the quality of the class. I think it must be between 40+ students per section - had I known the sections were going to be this big I would have passed on this class. The chat feature is disabled because there are far too many students abusing it so it has to be shut down and there is very little student engagement. I didn't expect a great deal of student engagement verbally because of the nature of her classes but I thought there would be engagement via chat...but it has basically turned into a rather passive experience like sitting through a live recording since chat is shut down completely.

While I appreciate her insights, I can't spend this kind of money on this sort of class experience. I gave this feedback to them last fall, and I hope they heard me. I realize she wants to accomodate more students, but it would have been better to offer more sections than to dilute the experience to this extent. I also think that extending the grade level down to 5th grade has probably detracted as well as it appears there are a lot of immature students which is frustrating to my 7th grader to see chat disabled because of their behavior. I honestly don't usually post such strongly worded reviews but I know people are started to think about planning to the fall already.