Standard Deviants Accelerate - Review

This is the second time we have gotten to try Standard Deviants Accelerate. and their Homeschool Courses.   The first time was almost exactly a year ago.  Last time, L-girl was my guinea pig...and lucky her...she was again this time too!  Although D-man is getting in on the action a bit too (more on that later).




They have a ton of course options for your students:

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+


I think I got them all.  It is a big list!

We were boring and only used this for  Biology and Algebra for L-girl (D-man stuff later...)

Biology covers:

Moleculres and cells
Heredity and inheritance
Molecular genetics
Evolutionary biology

Organisms and populations

Human physiology and immune response

Ecology

Here is Algebra...

That screen shot turned out smaller than I intended.  But, it shows that there are 7 areas under the Algebra umbrella of study:

Foundations
Functions
Mechanics
Equations
Inequalities
Polynomials and Factoring
Quadratic Equations



Honestly, we like the same stuff about Standard Deviants Accelerate that we did last time.  The lessons are fairly quick and all of that jazz.  The videos  are clever and funny...and....a little quirky. L-girl is really doing well.

As the mom, I don't have to sit next to her and watch everything she is doing when she does her lessons.  Sometimes I do, just because I am reviewing it - and they always make me a laugh a little. (in the real world, if I wasn't reviewing this and we were just "doing" SDA - I probably wouldn't).  When I am not physically watching, I can just log on and check her progress report to see how she is doing.  Right now, she has an 88.5% in Algebra, as an 8th grader.

It is actually sort of funny, because Rainman usually doesn't get involved with too many of our review products.  And, honestly, most of the time doesn't even know we are working on one.  Sometimes he will say...."Hey, where did this come from?  I don't remember this."  And we will just explain that it is a review product....and he will just move on.

You may or may not remember that Rainman is sort of a mathematical genius (thus his nickname)....as a result of this, I will be honest and say that I pretty much leave all the higher level math teaching in his very capable hands.  (I do actually remember how to do a lot more than I thought - and I understand a lot more than I was afraid I did - now that Mr. Anlauf is not breathing down my neck)

Anyway, so, yes, L-girl is my guinea pig for this SDA course, but she is continuing to do her normal stuff with Rainman from an old algebra textbook we have.  About a week or two ago, he was a bit worried because he had been busy and hadn't gone over or corrected L-girl's "normal" algebra work he had assigned to her.  He was sort of kicking himself because he knew L-girl well enough to know that his lack of correcting things wasn't going to stop her from just plowing through and getting all her work done for the day (most of the time before he even has gotten up in the morning).  She is a diligent little thing.

So, he took her stack of work to go over and correct, said something soothing to her like, "Don't worry....if you missed stuff, it was my fault because I took so long going over stuff.  So, don't feel bad, okay?  It is my fault.  Don't kick yourself."

Well, the joke ended up being on him.  He finished correcting and she hardly had anything wrong and he said, "I don't know what you are doing differently, but it is working."

L-girl and I shared a secret little smile, told him she was working through an Algebra program for a review and all was well.

Sometimes, when I have a review product, there is a lot of moaning and groaning and complaining by my children that they are getting to try something new and cool....for free.  Ungrateful little things.    But, this time around, when I  told L-girl that we had been chosen for this one again.....no complaining...no eye rolls....no nothing.  So, in teenage speak, she was thrilled.  Right?

D-man using SDA:

D-man, when he transitioned from homeschool into the little college prep school that he is attending now, ended up testing well, so he was put into upper level classes - which was awesome.  Rainman and I were completely happy because it meant that, at least academically, we hadn't screwed him up.  Ha!  Only one small problem with that.... his guidance counselor just noticed that because of  him going into the higher level classes, he missed a semester of health/nutrition that he needs for graduating.  The school is allowing him to complete that course as a home study course, so we are going to work through the SDA Nutrition course at home.

Cells and macronutrients
What your body does with good
Food spectrum
Micronutrients, vitamins, minerals and water
Preventing nutritional disorders
Eating in context
Where does your food come from?
The savvy eater

Pretty sure that is going to cover all the necessary bases for his basic health/nutrition course needs before graduation!  Whew!

This is a really good, solid on-line option for homeschooling.  If you know me, you know I am not a huge fan of doing on-line or screen based school most of the time.  But, SDA makes me soften my stance on that a bit.  It is fun and quirky.  I mean, take a look at this picture and try to tell me you don't want to know what or how this is going to teach your kids something....




Prices run about $9.99/month for each course, (AP courses are $4.99)  but there is an option to get 35% off if you buy all the subjects and that also gets you lifetime access.

Take a look and see what the other TOS reviewers thought of their Standard Deviants Accelerate experiences.

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Dynamic Literacy - Review

Here is a fun one we got to try from Dynamic Literacy called WordBuildOnLine.




WordBuildOnLine is a vocabulary program that spends time working on individual parts of the words and what they mean.  (Like root words, suffixes and prefixes).  The program we used was designed for 2nd through 5th grade, so S-girl and A-man were my lucky students for this one.




WordBuildOnLine has you doing the same group of five activities for each unit.  So, each day, you log on and hit the start button.

First you will see a short little video   After the video, you will do your activities.  It is designed to take less than 15 minutes total to finish.  There is even a timer in the upper right hand corner of the screen that counts down your time spent.  In addition, the activities keep track of how long you are taking to complete them individually too.

Now, they even specifically say in ALL CAPS that the timer isn't supposed to be used as A RACE TO SEE HOW FAST YOU CAN DO THIS.  But, they have obviously NOT met me OR my children.   It is one of those personal points of pride to try to beat your score and do things just a little bit faster than you did last time.

This program is also designed to just truly work for 15 minutes a day, so you don't spend too much time on them. But, again, the Dynamic Literacy folks haven't met my children.  When my kids were having fun....or, yes, beating the clock (even though it was very carefully explained to them that it wasn't a race), they would just keep clicking on Continue and Let's Go....and, just...keep on going until they were bored or sick of it.  I honestly think that they did a whole week of lessons in one day once.  Because they did it this way, I wasn't a stickler about them spending time EVERY day working on WordBuildOnline.  But, that is the intended way for it to be used....a little at a time....a little every day.

My kids are just weird.



I was able to just remind them to get their WordBuild stuff in before they had their regular computer free time.  I never got any complaining from them.  I took that as a good sign that the program was well done and not something that the kids would dread having to get over with, like a chore....or bath time.  Ha!!!

Things were also explained well enough that it was okay if I wasn't around when it was time to do their WordBuild stuff. Plus, the system sent me an e-mail telling me when they finished an activity and told me what they had finished.  However, it would be worded like this: "S-girl has finished F1 03 ED MS N".  So, yeah, in order for me to really know what they had studied I had to ask them or go dig around my parent page for their lessons.  

There was one activity where it seemed like I got a lot more questions about than others.  Below is a screenshot of the one that was, for them, a little on the tough side.  Words and definitions part of, in this case, the prefix "in".  They were totally fine creating the words, but had a little more trouble putting into words definitions for their new word.  Definitely good practice, but a little tricky.  I got a lot of questions like, "Mom!  What is a definition of outfield?"  or, "Mom!  What do I put for infill?"

Overall, we all liked WordBuildOnLine.  The kids liked it because it was fun and moved fast.  They also liked it because it wasn't too brightly colored or, in their words.... "baby-ish"..  This Magic Square game was listed by both A-man and S-girl as one of their favorite "games" in WordBuild.



I liked WordBuild because it was teaching really solid vocabulary and word building principles.  It actually reminds me of the approach we take with our older kids with Greek and Latin morphemes.  I like that we are starting that approach and way of thinking with the younger kids. I also like some of their encouraging little cheerleading phrases when the kids would get something right.

"Correctamundo!"

"Nurse, bring me an ice pack!  This one is on fire!"


The only two bummer kinds of things I can think of is the e-mails that took a special decoder ring to figure out what they had studied that day, and that it took a little bit for them to figure out how to actually click and answer the questions. It isn't a typical double click or even a click and drag thing. You click on the answer and then click in the space for the answer.  It was only frustrating to them for the first few lessons, but, then we ALL figured out what needed to happen.

But, that is pretty much the extent of the stuff we didn't like with this program.  This was a fun one.  A helpful one. A quick one.  A really good strong early elementary vocabulary program.

If I have intrigued you to check out Dynamic Literacy and WordBuildOnline for yourself, I have a special reader treat for you!  Just enter the coupon Code fridge at checkout and you will get 25% off any of the books at http://www.dynamichomeschool.com/ or 10% off of http://www.wordbuildonline.com/.

Check out what other TOS Reviewers thought about the Dynamic Literacy products they got a chance to try....some where actual physical workbooks (thus the coupon code for a percentage off of books!)