Another homeschooling question- curriculum?

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tamccrackine

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I know of the majority of the Catholic homeschooling curriculums available. My question is if anyone has heard of or used Alpha Omega’s curriculum. For some odd ball reason I got a cataloge in the mail today and I was flipping through it. I’m in desperate need of a decent computer based program (meaning the student does most of the work on the computer, not out of workbooks galore) and they have one. I’ve read their statement of faith and it’s pretty vague and general in nature. No statements of sola scriptura or sola fida that I can see.

I have had one friend tell me that it’s anti-Catholic but I don’t know from what she’s basing that opinion. Has anyone used it?
 
KCT said:
Isn’t Regina Coeli on line?
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it is but it’s for highschoolers only. I need something for a second grader so I’m taken out of the work load of trying to teach her. We have such a personality conflict that when I sit down to try to teach her, I get so frustrated within two seconds because she does things that really irritate me and then if I try to just tell her what she needs to do, answer her questions and leave her to the work, she’ll sit there for five hours whining about the work.

She works great on computers, so if I could find something that can teach her through computers, then that would be great. I’m just not having any luck
 
tamccrackine said:
My question is if anyone has heard of or used Alpha Omega’s curriculum.
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I’ve used some Alpha Omega. I’ve not seen anything blatantly anti-Catholic. They do have Protestant Christianity built into every lesson. For example, they’ll have a bible verse to memorize or they’ll have a story about a Protestant missionary with every lesson. You can skip most of these pretty easily if you find any not as complete/accurate as you’d like.

I’ve found that Alpha Omega is pretty quick to the point. They say what they want to say in as few words as possible. Which I like. Some textbooks go on and on even when making a very simple point.

I’ve not used any of their computer programs except the early writing and phonics ones. But they were leaders in the field, with wonderful Bible computer games, so I would expect their computerized courses to be pretty good. Could be wrong. Some of my protestant friends have used it. Not heard any raving, but they appear to be satisfied.

I live in a state that has very little hs regulation, so we all tend to put together our own curriculums that best suit our children. So that’s why not many of my friends use set curriculums.

Might I suggest that for second grade that you focus almost totally on reading and math. If that child learns to read well, and starts reading a lot, all the other future subjects will be a breeze. You can kill yourself trying to teach something one year, that would have taken only a few moments to learn if you wait till the child is able to learn it. There should be some challenges, but not every subject needs to be pushed to the challenge level. Learning is fun and natural if it is not made into a monster.

May God bless you in your search.
 
tamccrackine said:
it is but it’s for highschoolers only. I need something for a second grader so I’m taken out of the work load of trying to teach her. We have such a personality conflict that when I sit down to try to teach her, I get so frustrated within two seconds because she does things that really irritate me and then if I try to just tell her what she needs to do, answer her questions and leave her to the work, she’ll sit there for five hours whining about the work.

She works great on computers, so if I could find something that can teach her through computers, then that would be great. I’m just not having any luck
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aop.com/sos/

Switced on Schoolhouse -it’s a cd rom program. You can by used ones on ebay. It is a protestant program so I would probably stay away from their bible curricula and I believe their 6th grade history program covers the reformation (I’m sure from a protestant prospective) so you’d probably want to avoid that too. I use this program with my daughter for English, Science & History.

I believe this is an Alpha & Omega program. I haven’t run into any problems so far. A couple a comments didn’t jive with our beliefs so I covered this with my daughter. She knows it’s a protestant program and we may run into some of that.
 
With all the solid, Catholic curricula out there, I’m not sure I’d want to patronize non Catholics. —KCT
 
Like the previous poster stated my daughter does especially well using the computer. I don’t use it for all subjects and we do use many solid Catholic resources. I started off using one subject of switched on school house. SInce I didn’t see any problems I added more. My daughter enjoys school so much more since it’s on the computer. I wish there was a solid catholic cd rom program out there, I would use it in a heart beat.
 
I have heard of it but have never used it.

I did a search (Google) and got this hit. There are a couple of statements about Alpha Omega. I don’t know who wrote them, but it would make me think twice about using it.

keepingitcatholic.org/reviewintro.html
We screened our history books very carefully to make sure that no hint of good was written about the Catholic Church. We understood even a morsel might lead our children into slavery to the Catholic church and then to hell!
A Specific Example. When Alpha Omega carried a homeschooling book written by a Catholic, they apologized for it in their catalog’s advertising blurb. They explained that they thought the book had some useful material in spite of being tainted. As a fundamentalist, I appreciated the warning and thought it was very conscientious of them.
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Yikes! So far I have not seen anti-Catholicism or Catholicism portrayed negatively. I’ll watch for it though -I was doing that anyway.
 
tamccrackine said:
within two seconds because she does things that really irritate me
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LOL! My soon to be second grader is the same way! We work through it with incintives and lots of praise. That seems to work for us! Then again, she is only 6, so i try to approch things on her level, not mine!👍
 
My first grader loves computer also, so I use it as a reward for getting the school work done. TV time is also tied in as a reward. I try to alternate writing assignments with reading assignments. They get to choose the art project they would like to work on if they have gotten all their goals met by the end of the week. (I browse the clearance items at all the craft stores and department stores for art.) I use recipe cards to write all the assignments down for each day. They get to cross off the work as they complete it.
 
Wow, that statement about Alpha Omega and the person "scanning the history books for “no hint of good about the Catholic Church.” (I just read the entire thing and it’s the author’s view of what they used to do before they converted to Catholicism.) I ended up going through the rest of the site and gained some new information. So thank you for sharing that site!

My friend has pointed out www.time4learning.com and I’ve found the program to be a good supplement to what my DH is learning. It’s very direct and to the point, keeps her engaged and supports what she learns through the book work done with Seton. They use the reward system as well with having to do the lessons first and once complete, then you get a game to play. It’s rather neat. It’s $19.95/month so I might keep it for a few months to see how it works with her. She seems to enjoy it and I have to admit the past two days are the first days in MONTHS that she didn’t fight with me about doing her book work! I showed her the program and told her she has to get her book work finished before using the time4learning program and she had no problem with it. For the first time, she finished ALL her book work in less than an hour! I couldn’t believe it! And it was all correct! 🤷

dk… that’s a good idea about using index cards. I might have to try that one.

Thanks all for all these ideas. I’m starting to feel the excitement again with homeschooling. It’s been a long hard road this past year, but I’m starting to feel excited about it. I can only hope and pray that my DD picks up on it and becomes just as excited.
 
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