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Best online courses for lower elementary


Sarah0000
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I've heard Athena's mentioned before but that looks geared towards upper elementary, I assume unless the kid is self motivated? Are those classes fun for a kid who isn't necessarily a high achiever? 

What are all the options that might appeal to a 7/8 year old boy as a first exposure to a real class? So far his homeschooling has been largely unstructured in terms of following a syllabus or maintaining a daily schedule or structure. He will sit for long periods of time and focus on a project if its his idea. We're in a charter school and I'm trying to figure out which companies I might want to request our charter school pay for if that's even a possibility for online courses. The process takes awhile so I'm planning ahead for next year or possibly even the following year if he's not ready yet.

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DD took her first Athena’s class when she was 6 and really liked it. The grade levels listed on the website in the prerequisites are content, not participation. So, for example, Think Books lists a fifth grade reading level, IIRC, which means just that - an average fifth grade reading level, regardless of what age the child is. I’ve found that the classes that look more traditional at Athena’s (literature, history) skew towards early to mid-elementary kids, and the classes that are more elective (Mythology, marine mammals) skew mid- to late-elementary. Homework has taken her roughly an hour or so per week, plus reading time for literature.

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Thank you Jackie. Would you say the teachers for the traditional classes are fun at all? Are they teaching in a light hearted maybe even silly way that would engage second graders who aren't necessarily self motivated to learn history or literature? Or is the homework hands on and engaging? 

I'm not sure how DS would react. He's been doing very very well with in person piano lessons and doing his piano assignments daily with only a reminder from me. 

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I wouldn’t call them lighthearted or silly. They are generally engaging for a kid who is engaged by academics. We didn’t do the history classes, but have done literature, as well as some of the enrichment ones. 

Class time in the literature class is a couple minutes of the teacher talking with them about literary elements (setting, character development), followed by discussion for the rest of the hour. Kids are always asked to bring one interesting question that they have from the reading (why did a character do something, for example), they type that question into the screen, and class discussion is guided around those questions.

Homework is usually divided into three categories - required, highly suggested, and optional. Typical weekly required assignments would include the reading from the assigned book, a one paragraph response to a question, and often one creative assignment about making a trading card or a comic. Highly suggested often includes some vocabulary words, additional reading, maybe a video or two. Optional would include a lot of links to additional reading or videos for further depth to the reading assignment, and a Minecraft build. My kid does the required stuff, then pokes around in the other categories to find anything that appeals to her.

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