Lifepacs Reviews

I taught in the private (KG) and public schools grades 1st, & 2nd for 4 years and in those 4 years I never taught anything as thorough and solid as this cirriculum! It has provided solid learning for my 3 children! I’m especially impressed with the math and language arts cirriculum, with constant review and mastery learning. I’ve read the other reviews and I am amazed to realize how many parents think that learning always has to be fun! If you ask ANY child that goes to the public schools, school is fun because of their friends, NOT because of the school work. This cirriculum teaches more than the concepts presented, it teaches children to sit down, stay focused, and get their work done! I love it! Now THAT’S preparing them for real life because the jobs that they will have one day will require them to do just that…not to mention going to college and sitting through one boring lecture after another, taking notes, then taking tests. This cirriculum also builds confidence as children are constantly reviewed over each skill until they have mastered it. I can’t say enough good things about this cirriculum. I’m offended that someone would suggest that this is lazy homeschooling! I’m raising children that are learning to become independent and responsible to get their work done, using this cirriculum. My children aren’t completely dependent on me for every moment of learning. I thought parenting is teaching our children to grow up to be responsible and independent from us….this cirriculum is an excellent tool to begin that process! Love, love, love this cirriculum!

One of the best parts about Life Pacs is that they are easy to use and can be a great transition for first time homeschoolers that are being pulled from PS. I have used these with girls that have fallen behind in school and really need to get it done before they are 18. (I worked in the classroom of a girl’s home). They are also a great way to get some of the electives for high school out of the way.
Their best is their Bible program. My daughter absolutely loved their 1st grade Bible.
I think this is one of the best for someone who is not sure of themselves or has a lot of kids and needs something that is independent. Negatives–not good for hands on or ADHD kids.

This was my first year homeschooling. I chose LifePac because it was relatively inexpensive compared with other publishers. I used Language Arts, History and Geography, and Science. My son was not challenged, and was bored easily. I thought that the topics and depth of content was shallow and not challenging enough. I chose to quit using the History and Geography because I felt that the comcepts were too “Easy”.

In moderation I think Lifepacs can be very useful for the different needs of a family. I would however sugest not useing all subjects of the Lifepacs for a single grade in a single yr, they have a tendency to be a bit boring. Math and English do not really build on previous lessons nor is there much explaining if u do not understand-not even in the teachers books.
I find the cd’s-the same company offers for ur computer much more likable as do my children.

My daughter tried to use this in the fifth grade, but it was so boring and unchallenging. Last year I started homeschooling a couple of brothers that their mother had previously tried using Lifepacs with. However the teachers books weren’t user friendly compared to the Saxon curriculum that I had been using for years and the workbooks didn’t have enough practice or review of concepts previously taught. I couldn’t stand it. Compared to other programs that I used, Lifepacs was so aggravating, that I went back to Saxon for Phonics and Math. Saxon is such a great program for both math and phonics. The teachers book tells you what to say and gives you a list of the materials needed. It is very user friendly. Saxon is very thorough teaching the calendar, temperature, measuring, facts practice, patterning, time, money, adding, subtracting, etc. Phonics goes over rules of spelling, sounding out, spelling, reading, games, lots of practice opps., etc. I’ve used Saxon for 5 kids and haven’t been disappointed. In all the years of homeschooling that I’ve done, which is now 16 years, I’ve never been so disappointed in a curriculum than I was in trying to use Lifepacs. Go and check out Saxon and compare the two and see for yourself before you invest in Lifepacs.

This is a very easy curriculum for a second grader. It was easy to look at the chapter and break it down to do weekly. I would recommend this to anyone starting out. I didn’t use any other experiments or curriculum to go with this because it was my first year and didn’t know much. I was scared and unsure of myself and this was not hard for me.

The first month was ok and then my son stayed very bored with it and it was hard to keep him focused on the work. He found the science interesting, though. And I think the Bible books were very helpful.

I like the Lifepac content, but only use selected books from each course. If I used it for all our subjects, or even one as a whole, my audio-visual learner would be bored very quickly.

I like that I can order just one or two books from a course/grade level. That way I can pick and choose where I need to supplement other curricula. The books are nice visually.

I wish there was an e-book option for them (not Switched-On-Schoolhouse – just straight e-books with PDFs).

We did the bible curriculum Lifepac. I really like the ease of use in and the layout, but for someone who has been teaching their children about the bible since they were very little and their child has a good grasp on the foundational principles I might recommend looking at a grade or two above.

We LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the Lifepac series. Our math is a really good curriculum for our kids. It’s easy to use, easy to grade, easy for the kids to progress to the next steps on their own!

This program was not made for our family. It becamse too repetitive and my children becamse bored quickly.
That said, it is very detailed and easy to follow.

We did the pretests to decide what level to start with. My son got about halfway through the tests and decided to just randomly mark answers because he was bored with the format. That should have been a tipoff there that this program wasn’t a good fit for him, but based on the scores where he DID answer he was about halfway through 3rd grade, so we ordered the booklets for the second half. I don’t think he finished more than 2 books in any subject, and he was very frustrated that even in math he had to do too many problems written out in words. He hated handwriting at that age, and requiring more of it wasn’t making things any easier.

I can see that this would be useful for a child who didn’t mind writing, or for a family where the teaching parent needed the work to be mostly completed by the student independently. For us, it became a battle over writing and we ended up just allowing him to answer those questions orally.

Ease of use 4, fun factor 3, over all 1

My girls liked these when they first arrived, but the novelty wore off by Christmas. The books were easy to follow, I didn’t need to teach much, they are very good if you are looking for your child to be an independent learner. We skipped a lot because they did tend to repeat lessons a lot. They come in a box of 8-10 workbooks and a teachers manual. My girls did feel a sense of accomplishment upon completing a workbook and were often excited to start another. Good for younger years, I probably wouldn’t use them past 5th grade.

We used this for my daughter’s kindergarten year…it was okay at most. The school system in our town is rated very high in academics and while my daughter was tested and found at appropriate grade level, I don’t think this curriculum took her as far as she could go. Unimpressed with this curriculum, we switched to Horizons Phonics K for my son this year and it is more chomprehensive and I feel he’s getting a better basis for letter and reading skills.

I gave it all 5 stars because it all works perfectly for my child. I believe you should see the lifepacs to know if it would be beneficial to your child.

What I like about the Lifepacs is the reasonable price, the ease of planning lessons, regular testing, easy grading, and review at the end of the year. However, most of the experiments required a lot of supplies and chemicals that were very hard to find. Once we got most of the way through the year I discovered a crumpled up card in the bottom of the box for ordering lab supplies that would have helped if I had found it sooner. There was almost too much information to be completed in a short amount of time, I felt like some of the information was just memorized long enough to take a test and not really learned.