Lord Heritage - Review

Lord Heritage is a company that has put together a product called HomeSchool Office that I got to try out.


The mission statement for Lord Heritage says, "To preserve and teach God's Truth in education by following His commandments in instruction so that,

"All thy children shall be taught of the Lord;
and great shall be the peace of thy children."
Isaiah 54:13

The HomeSchool Office product is an on-line planning/organizing tool that is designed specifically with homeschooling in mind.
Its premise is wonderful and based on what they call the POWER strategy.

P - Plan
O - Order
W - Work
E - Evaluate
R - Report

Sounds good, but what does that actually mean?  Well, for Planning - that would cover  setting up your lessons and your schedules.  Order would be where you create your lists and reminders (I used this the most!) and the place that you can integrate both sides of your life - school and home.  Work is where you can print schedules and the students can follow their lessons.  Evaluate is where you can keep track of stuff like attendance (if you need to keep track of that where you live), time and grades. Report is the area where you can keep all the transcripts and reports that you may need to meet your local state requirements for homeschooling.  

(Think I could have anymore tabs open on my desktop?!?)

If the idea of the POWER strategy  isn't enough awesomeness for you, each letter also has a Bible verse(that I have paraphrased below) attached to its premise also.

P - Jeremiah 29:11 (This is "my" verse that my parents sent me off to college with! For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future )
O - Corinthians 14:40 (But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way)
W - John 17:4 (I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do)
E - Matthew 28:20 (...and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.)
R - Romans 14:12 (So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God)

I know.  Sounds awesome and inspiring, doesn't it?

I was so excited about trying this system out.  So excited.

But, I neglected to take into account a few things.  First that I am, at heart, still a paper and pencil kind of gal.  Second, that in order to successfully use this fantastic system, it was going to take some time/effort to get things set up and entered on-line successfully.  The third thing that I failed to take into consideration was that my thyroid surgery was going to kick my butt so badly.

The first thing to do it to get your Team set up.  That is basically getting all your kids/students information put into the system.  This also where you can also put in the "type" of grade you will be giving your students.  For example, grade letter, percentage, or descriptive.  We do percentages around here that we translate into a letter grade....except in Kindergarten where we do our own description and star system.   Inputting all these details on your kids,  will  enable you to see all their different things that they have to do....it can even be color coded on the calendar.

This screen is from the Plan portion.  Notice there are tabs for Subjects, School Year Plan, Master Schedule, Projects and Budget.   LOTS of detail can go in here.  Here is where the time and thyroid surgery issue reared its ugly head.  :(  I just didn't have it in me to enter everything we had going on into this system.  I just didn't.

One of the best things I saw about HomeSchool Office is that you can do (and keep) everything in one place.  You can have each member of your family's schedule there.  You can do all your lesson planning and reminders to yourself about what needs to be reported or turned in for credit.  If I had decided to homeschool all through high school, this would have been a fabulous product to keep track of everything so I could have created their transcripts and not have to rely on my memory of what we had done in years past.

Unfortunately, taking into consideration the 3 things I listed above that I hadn't thought about (love of paper and pencil, time to input our lives/schedule, and my thyroid surgery) HomeSchool Office ended up not being a good fit for me....right now.  And, I just thought of a 4th reason.  Rainman.  Rainman is way less technologically savvy than I am (he still has a flip phone...and is happy about it!).  Rainman is also the one that creates our lesson plans and yearly schedule....on paper.  I just follow and implement them.  I think if he would have had the chance to try this out back in July/August when we were setting up our school year, it would have had a better likelihood of succeeding.  I think.

With that being said, I really do think it is a fantastic premise and there were pieces of it, that even with all my reasons, including my post surgery stupor/brain fog, that came in handy.  My most frequently used portion of this program was the"To Do Lists",  "Reminder" and "Family Messages" features.  That was were I did actually type in things for myself and the kids so I wouldn't forget.  I guess it was sort of a step up from my usual  paper and pencil To Do list...but, it did work.  It showed up on the front page whenever I logged into Lord Heritage.  The other part of this that I almost came to love (and, again....if I would have been able to enter more of our actual lives into) was the calendar section - where you can see as much or as little as you want....and each thing is color coded.

I think if you were already someone who relied on an on-line app or calendar program, you will absolutely be in love with HomeSchool Office, because it has everything you need to run both a smooth home and school.  Everything.

I also think that if you are homeschooling in the high school years, this is something you absolutely need for keeping track of everything to make sure you are complying with laws and creating a great, usable transcript. But, for me to go from my hard copy, paper/pencil versions of everything we do, it was too big of a leap for my first foray into organizing and planning with the help of technology.  Make sense?

HomeSchool Office is web based and can be accessed from any device that has a browser, for me, I just used it on my computer.....plain and simple.

Go take a look and see what other TOS Reviewers thought.

You can try HomeSchool Office free  for 30 days, or go ahead and take the jump for $79/year.

One Thing That I Like About NOT Homeschooling

I have discovered one thing that I like about NOT homeschooling my oldest two kids anymore.

It is......getting their report cards.

Not just the fact that I didn't have to grade all the tests and papers and then do the calculations to determine their grade (yes, we do that stuff in our homeschool). 

My favorite part of getting their report cards, isn't even their grades.  However, I am proud to say that they are both getting straight, honest to goodness, A's.  My favorite thing is actually reading the comments from their teachers.

I mean, I think my kids are totally awesome, most of the time, anyway.



But, to hear the things that their teachers say about them....especially when those things are good....is awesome.

Makes this mom proud when a teacher says that they are always in the best mood after your kid leaves the classroom because of what they do and say (and, I might add, they aren't just the class clown, because they actually got an A in the class too!)  Or that they are just plain and simple doing "amazing" work. 

My heart is happy when the word "stupendous" is used or when the teacher notes that it is evident that your kid has a "shrewd intellect" and now that they are participating more in class discussions that their opinion is respected by the whole class.

That my dear friends, is something that you don't get to see when homeschooling.  A real picture of what the world is seeing from your kids when they are away from you.

I am still a huge advocate of homeschooling.....and LOVE that I have gotten to do it for all of my kids until 9th grade.  If any of the other 4 kids want to continue homeschooling through high school, I will make that happen and it will be awesome.

But, I have to say, hearing teachers say incredible things about my oldest children has been awesome and unexpected blessing for me.

Standard Deviants - Review

Wow....was this a fantastic program to review!  It is called Standard Deviants Accelerate.



We got to try out an annual subscription to  Standard Deviants Accelerate homeschool courses.

Here is the simple list of the courses that they have available:

Arithmetic - Grades 3+
Fundamental Math - Grades 4+
Earth Science - Grades 6+
Nutrition - Grades 6+
Algebra - Grades 7+
Biology - Grades 7+
Chemistry - Grades 9+
English Comp. - Grades 9+
U.S. History - Grades 9+
AP Biology - Grades 11+
AP Chemistry - Grades 11+
AP U.S. Government & Politics - Grades 11+
AP U.S. History - Grades 11+
AP Eng. Composition - Grades 11+

But, the simpleness is deceiving.  Did you notice that they have coursework for grades 3 through 12?  And, really, a grown up could use these courses too.

This is a totally on-line course.  Yes, I will usually say I am not totally in love with my kids doing too much of their school while staring at a screen.  But, I have to say, this one felt different.  It didn't bother me that it was video based. 


The actual teaching "style" is also quirky and different.  They joke around.  They use more than one "teacher".  They use visual aids/graphics.  Take a look at this short clip to get an idea for the "quirky" style that I sort of love......

One slightly different aspect to this video aspect is that next to the video clip is the total transcript of the script of what they are saying in the video.  So, if you child learns better by reading, or any combination of listening, seeing, and hearing, Standard  Deviants Accelerate has got your back. The information is in digestible chunks that won't overwhelm you.



Primarily, L-girl was my guinea pig for this one.  She started out with the Algebra course....which in our homeschool, she hasn't quite officially started yet.  Quite honestly, Rainman and I had a disagreement about whether we felt she was ready to dip her toes into upper level (hard) math.  Rainman didn't want to push her and scare her off, or give her the idea that she wasn't smart enough.  I, on the other hand, thought she would enjoy the challenge and the ego boost she would get by doing hard math a little bit earlier than D-man and A-girl did.


We were both a little bit right on this one.  When she first started out, it was a little rough.  She just kind of shrugged when I asked her about the lessons and mumbled something  like, "Yeah, I sort of get it."  She was scoring in the low 70s on her quizzes....which, for her, is very low.

But, I asked her to commit to sticking with Standard Deviants Accelerate, at least for the review period.....and to not worry about it....this was just an experiment. 

She ended up doing a lesson everyday, rather than just the suggested 3 days a week. (that was the part I was right - she was challenged and didn't want to admit defeat!)  I saw a big difference by the time she was done.  I sat through a lesson or two to really watch and see what they were like and how she responded.

I saw her wheels turning, connections being made and just generally getting a better handle on how Algebra works.

The times I sat by her side and listened to a lesson too, I felt my own brain grinding back to life.  After a lesson on x,y intercepts and slope value, I turned to L-girl and said, "You know what?  I understood that!  There were lots of steps to figure it out, but.....I got it!"


(In the bottom right graphic, it shows the progress report that I can see on all my students to see how they are doing.  The example is more for a normal school setting, but what I see is similar....just a lot less kids!)

Each lesson has 5 components:

Video clip (these last 5-10 minutes, have the scrolling script alongside the video, you can pause and play whenever you want, and take notes to save in your "locker".....actually, you can just copy and paste right from the transcript too, if you are feeling a little lazy)

Vocab - just what is says covers the vocabulary used in the lesson

Diagram - which is an activity section tied in with the lesson

Quiz - which is graded in real time

Written answer - This is the only part of this that I have to grade the work myself.  They do help out by giving me a rubric to follow, so I am not just flying blind.

Before we started, I attended an on-line Webinar that explained how to set up classes for one or more of my kids, how the student would access stuff, how they took notes and saved them in their locker, and just in general how their whole program works.    I liked it because even though I had already clicked around on their website, I still wasn't quite sure how everything worked.  They explained things really clearly and I was able to ask specific questions related to K-girl and get answers.

The webinar I attended was for a group of us moms/teacher.  But, here is a tutorial for how their student accounts work.  They explained things so well to me, that I was able to turn around and explain it to L-girl, but this would have come in handy if I hadn't had time for the webinar.

Standard Deviants really had super customer support.  They were open to questions during the webinar, we were encouraged to contact them if we had any issues or questions.  It seemed genuine too.  They seemed legitimately excited that we were going to try out Standard Deviants Accelerate with our kids.  Like, they were excited and knew that we were going to love it.  That kind of excited.

They were right.  We did love it.  It was a really nice addition to our normal math.  But, we could have just used it as our actual curriculum.

In addition to L-girl working through Standard Deviants Algebra for 7th grade, I also had D-man take a look at their AP US History course.  He is taking that at his school this year and a friend of his who had graduated a few years ago, recommended that he supplement the course a bit to make sure he did great when he took the AP exam at the end of the year.  I have an AP US History book that he could have used too, but he opted to try out the Standard Deviants Accelerate video course.

He has only just taken a quick look at a few lessons, but liked them.  He thought they were funny and said that they covered slightly  different things than his textbook at school was covering, and went into more detail in others.  So, he is going to keep checking in on this course through the year and I suspect do a bit of cramming when the end of the year AP exam comes around.  (Can't really blame him...I did a bit of cramming in my day too....but my only option back then was textbooks.)

Overall, this is a really awesome course.

L-girl will continue with her Algebra.  D-man will brush up on his AP US History.  The other possible combinations of kids and courses are almost infinite

Not sure if this is something that will work at your house?  You can sign up for a free 6 month trial before you make up your mind.

When you are ready to give Standard Deviants Accelerate in all their quirky goodness a try, the classes are each $99 for the year or $24.95 per month for each student. The AP classes are $14.95 per month per student.

All the TOS reviewers got to choose whatever class/classes they wanted to, so take a look and see what they tried, and what they thought about Standard Deviants Accelerate.