Calvert Homeschool Online Review

I have been curious about Calvert Homeschool for awhile so I was super excited when they offered their Calvert Homeschool Online program with access to all the courses to our family for six months.  With Calvert Homeschool Online we have access to over 45 courses spanning 3rd grade through 12th grade in the subjects of history, geography, language arts, math, and science.  We have access to this program for up to 3 students so B, C and D have been using it the last month.  I like that I can assign courses across the different grade levels to fit the kid's specific needs.  While you can definitely use this as your core homeschooling program we have been using it to supplement some of our courses.  B has been working on Science 800 and History and Geography 800, C has been working on Science 700 and D has been working on Spelling 500 and Science 500.

Setting up our account.  I added the kids and the courses I wanted them to take.

The kids can customize their online background for their classes.  Above you can see the background choices.  B chose the hummingbird.

C chose chess.

We have only been using this program for a short time but we are enjoying it.  There are several features of this program:  it's portable, contains interactive lessons (videos, audio files, games, interactive exercises, etc.) and has automated grading.  I think it's pretty awesome that you can log-in and use this program wherever you are, as long as you have Internet and a device to complete it on.  We have mostly used this program at home but I love having this option.

D using Calvert Homeschool at home on our desktop computer.

Calvert's lessons are laid out nicely and the kids enjoy the pictures and videos sprinkled throughout the courses.  Let me walk you through some examples.

I appreciate the course overviews.  Above you can see a portion of the overview for C's Science 700 course.

Above you can see some of the pictures that D viewed when working through her Science 500 course.

Above is a video talking about Protozoa.

D learning the parts of a microscope.

Video lesson on D's spelling words for the week.  I think this spelling course is a bit easy for her so I will most likely move her up to the next class.

Above B is learning about safety symbols in her Science 800 course.

B's video that she watched on laboratory safety.

I hope these examples give you a feel for this program.  I previously mentioned interactive exercises.  These are set up at the end of the lessons to test the student's retainment of the knowledge they just learned.

Above you can see that D was awarded a 100 on this exercise.

Here, D has an interactive exercise to drag and drop her spelling words into the correct column based on the long i or short i pronunciation in each word.

Here you can see my dashboard.

The parent board lets you set up courses for your students including customizable options for how they answer questions, what grade equals an A, and more.  You can control how many times your child can answer a question, only once, twice or even unlimited.  If you have three times selected and they miss an exercise question, they can then retry to get the answer correct up to three times.

Above you can see what I mean with custimization within the curiculum set up.

I put the kids in subjects that are geared for their grade level but I love that you can put your students in any of the classes.  This is great if they are behind in a subject or need more instruction, find the course that's right for them.  I will be moving D up in her spelling course!  I like that I can see the kids progress easily and that I have the option to create different reports - report cards, grade report or a daily work report.

I previously mentioned automated grading.  This program does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to grades.  It will grade everything that is multiple choice but there are times that you will have to grade or give input in the courses.  When the kids are asked to write paragraph answers, those are graded by me.  I think it would be awesome if this were 100% automated grading but I definitely appreciate that it is predominately graded by them.  If you are looking for an online program for homeschool classes, you will want to check out Calvert Homeschool.

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