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Entirely free, complete college preparatory curriculum created by a homeschool mother of six using online materials. The curriculum emphasizes students working independently with parental support. There is a separate site for high school. For families who would like additional organization or would like to support the free Easy Peasy curriculum, there is the option to register for My EP Assignments, a separate web-based tracking system for assignments.
Website: Easy Peasy All in One Homeschool Curriculum
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(3 Reviews)
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Contributor Reviews
Reviews are solely the opinions of the contributor.
Cons: No handwriting component
Grades Used: 1st
One of main issues with traditional school, is that they made simple things, complicated. Kids do not need complicated to learn. Have you ever seen a kid with a cardboard box? My point exactly. Anyway, EP does a great job of keeping it simple. To me, she gives the foundation and it is up to you, the parent, to enhance if needed. No curriculum is going to provide all that you need because it was written by a human...even the curriculums in schools don't do this. This is why teachers supplement. I also find it to be a good mix of online and in person learning. Our school did far too much on computers. Kids need to hold pencils and use crayons...we do that with EP. I like how rich some of the content is...our kiddo is learning about volcanos in the first grade. I feel like the reading is more advanced than what was offered in our school, which isn't a bad thing. We had to scale it back...and I like that I get to personally influence reading now and hopefully make it positive. My only request is I wish she would add handwriting/cursive. We oversee all work and computer use. Our child knows they do not click that green mark until we have seen the work completed with our own eyes. This teaches honesty and accountability.
Cons: Not well organized. Lacks the ability to keep children accountable with online assignments. Lacks ethnic/cultural diversity.
Grades Used: 4-7th grades
There are aspects of EP that I really like but also ones that are disappointing. As a previous reviewer wrote, the accountability aspect is difficult. When using the online site, it's difficult to track where my children are even with myepassignments. I have a large family and students in multiple grades so This can be overwhelming. I believe this is because EP uses multiple sites to bring together their curriculum.
I also find that the curriculum is based on a Eurocentric perspective and lacks diversity, as so many other homeschool curriculums do as well. They do teach certain cultural aspects such as history lessons on Egypt but I have yet to find a healthy dose of Hebrew (Black American, Caribbean, Continental) accomplishment and cultural influences throughout the world, past and present.
I appreciate that the curriculum is free and the information is highly educational but I wrestle with this curriculum because of the organization and lack of accountability. My children mainly use the site for their science curriculum now but other resources for their other subjects. All in all, I think EP is very helpful for homeschoolers who need a good curriculum at no costs.
Cons: difficult to hold your children accountable if using the online version of a course
Grades Used: Pre-K-4th, & 9th
Easy Peasy All-In-One-Homeschooling was a life saver at the time we found it! My children used exclusively EP for 2.5 years. My first grader was struggling reading and after only 8 days of their Learn to Read program we could tell a noticeable difference. The site uses outdated materials for their reading and free online resources to teach in order to keep the site completely free if you use the online version of the site (some subject are also available offline). When we first started using EP all the lessons were listed from days 1-180 on a single web page for each grade level, so it was sometimes confusing to find the lessons, but now that they have added My EP Assignments, it keeps track of exactly which lesson they are on in each class. My EP Assignments has made a WORLD of difference as far as user friendliness goes!
It cycles through 4 themes for Bible, Science and History on two different levels, one level for 1st-4th grade and one level for 5th-8th graders. I love this set-up because I have the ability to teach all of my children these subjects together as a family so they aren't spending the whole day on the computer. If I'm not able to, however, I still have the freedom to have them do the lessons on their own. So it's very flexible and adaptable in that way. I love that my children are able to do the lessons independently and that you can place your children in different levels for different subjects based on their needs.
We test our children with the CAT test each year to see their progress and my children tested levels above their grade in all of the Reading/English/Language Arts portions of the test and right on par for the math sections. I found the reading to be approximately two grade levels above where my children's public school peers were and the math to be a little behind where their peers were. She addresses this on her website, saying that while it starts off slow in the lower grades for math, she does catch them up to a comparable place by the time they reach 7th-8th grade to where their peers would be in public schools.
The bad part about using Easy Peasy is that it is difficult to know whether or not your children truly completed their work. My oldest son would skip the online activities that he didn't understand at times instead of asking for help understanding because he just wanted to be done with school. Since there's no way to know for sure if he completed the online activities because it redirects your children to different websites for different learning activities to teach the multiple concepts needed taught in each subject, it took about 2 months before I caught on that he was skipping the things he didn't want to do. We had to go back and re-work a lot of the problems and topics he didn't know because it took so long before I realized what was going on. You could get around this by training your children to take screenshots of each activity of their scores for completed activities, but for me it was very difficult to get my children to do this. After a long time of fighting with them trying to teach them to get me that proof, we finally switched to a different curriculum because I just couldn't stay on top of whether or not their independent work was actually being completed and I needed a solution with better accountability because I was about to return to work.
Prior to switching, we did begin using the workbooks, which are not free but they are very affordable, which are available for Math, Reading, & Language Arts and those were a life saver. Even after switching curricula we still use these books as additions to their current curriculum because I love them so much! With the workbooks I can easily tell whether or not their work has been completed and we don't have the same issues as we did with the online courses. The workbooks are only available through 7th grade. The math does get a little difficult for the child to do as they advance through the levels without assistance. If math is something your child struggles with, you may need to offer a lot of help as the more difficult concepts begin to be introduced, or choose another program altogether. The good news is that you get to pick and choose which courses out of what they offer you are using, so cutting math out is as easy as clicking a button if you choose to do so.
We did use the high school online version with a young woman who came to live with our family who needed to complete high school and while the lessons were absolutely excellent, we had the same issues with accountability. I did love that the high school version does give great detail about where to go after certain courses are completed in order for your high schooler to receive Advance Placement, or dual credit through CLEP or DSST exams. There was a lot of information about how to do this on the website which I very much appreciated.
Other than the lack of accountability, my children were able to complete their schoolwork in 3 hours or less. We used EP for K-4th grade with two children and once the children were both able to work independently on parts, they were able to both be done in 1.5-3hrs routinely. My high schooler was able to complete her work in about 4-5hrs each day. Overall, it's an excellent program that we desperately needed for the years we used it. It was excellent academically, easy to use, and freed up so much of my time because of the independent work.