Easy Peasy

We started with Easy Peasy online when we began homeschooling because it was free and I didn’t want to commit to a big box curriculum. We tried it for three months and gave it up. My daughter was 9 at the time and did not enjoy it. I didn’t like that everything was online and my daughter found it boring and it required more independence on her part then she was ready to give. However, my first grade son excelled in reading using the McGuffey’s Eclectic Primer Readers (revised edition). I personally disliked the randomness of lessons and that subjects were disconnected. In the end, it just wasn’t my style of homeschooling.

We never used the elementary/middle school version, but we used its high school extension, Easy Peasy All-in-One High School, for just one course.  My daughter took an Anatomy & Physiology course through them.  It was very independent, but pretty thorough.  She enjoyed it.

I started using the full Easy Peasy curriculum this school year for several reasons. The two main reasons for trying it out is I needed a less teacher intensive curriculum and my oldest, 8 yr old, DS seemed to be having a hard time with me teaching him since we started homeschooling four years ago, so we both needed a break. The curriculum that we started homeschooling with has a lot of CM, which I enjoy and had planned to make that my only homeschooling style. It doesn’t require a lot of teacher preparation but does require the teacher to read everything to them in the lower grade levels and my throat/voice was suffering from a lot of reading. After praying for help because I was at a point of enrolling my DS in public school so we could get a break, not something I wanted to do but was running out of options. Then I found Easy Peasy when I was searching for classes that my DS could take to learn about animals, his choice of interest. He started doing a few of their zoology class and really enjoy it so I took the opportunity to learn more about the Easy Peasy curriculum since it was free and does have them learn about Christian things, my number one priority inside and outside my children’s education. I’m not giving up on CM just yet, that’s the reason I’m here as I’m reevaluating our school year and in preparation for our next school year.

Here is some information I learned that can be helpful to using her curriculum. I’m going to try to keep this post as short as possible. The creator of the curriculum, her home state is Pennsylvania. Her family and her are missionaries living overseas and she created this curriculum for her family to use and bless others to use it for free. Here is a link to the Easy Peasy About page, it has a lot of information that could answer some of your questions, (if the link is not working, copy and paste it, it is to long to copy and paste the information on here)

https://allinonehomeschool.com/about/#aboutreading

She expects First graders (and above) to be reading well in order for your child to use the curriculum independently. Here is the link to that statement,

https://allinonehomeschool.com/first-grade/

Here it is in case the link is not working, “Note to parents: First graders are expected to be reading well in order to use this curriculum independently. Your child should be able to read McGuffy’s First Reader before beginning the first grade level. This curriculum has children reading above public school grade level. Also, my state, Pennsylvania does not require school until age 8, so I did not require my first grader to do the program year. My son just did whatever he found interesting from what his older siblings were doing.”

Now lets back up to her Getting Ready 1 section, which is her preschool level, she explains why she called it “Getting Ready” and gives her philosophy on “Learning to Read”. It helps to understand why she expects First graders (and above) to be reading well. Here is the link,

https://allinonehomeschool.com/getting-ready-1/

In case it is not working here it is, “I called this “Getting Ready” because I’m not really interested in teaching a lot of different things at this age. I want to prepare them as readers mostly. (You can read my Learning to Read Philosophy here.) Once they can read well, they can do anything.” Here is her Learning to Read Philosophy,

“My Learning to Read Philosophy

When you read, you use sight reading. You don’t sound out words. You see them and know what they say. That’s how you can read quickly. Phonics is a tool for reading words you don’t recognize. I teach my children the letter names and sounds, and then I teach them to read by sight words. It’s after that I teach phonics. Phonics is simple at that point because they can already read. All of this takes two years. I do this before they start “school” so that they can do “school” more independently and more effectively. All of my children so far are very successful readers and can read faster than I can, I who learned with phonics!

We have many testimonies from families that had great success with teaching to read with this method after having struggled with other programs. There are also a lot of EP four- and five-year olds out there reading on second and third grade levels.”

A First grader is typically 6 years old and would have a hard time doing this First grade curriculum independently. Her children start First grade as an 8 year old because of her home state, PA, homeschool law. However, the Math and English portions seem to be on grade level with public schooling, in my opinion. The program year she mentioned contains Bible, History, Science, Art, and PE/Health which has a lot of reading for the student to do on their own.

With all that information in mind, I started my DS, 8 year old, in first grade even though his current grade is third. I looked over a weeks worth of classwork and had him skip what I knew for a fact he knew. Several classes I had him do as a refresher/practice/review. Other classes he was learning for the first time because of the way Easy Peasy curriculum is set up with First graders having to be reading well and 8 years old. Plus this school year I was using it as a test (without his knowledge) to see how he would handle working independently with my help only when he asked for it. I wrote which classes I wanted for him to do and which ones to skip for each day for a week. I even printed out the worksheets I wanted him to do for each class that week and labeled it with the Day # and Subject with #, example Day 12 Math #3. As he worked in each day and saw he needed to work on a worksheet he would look in his folder for Easy Peasy. As I reviewed his daily class work and saw something that he wouldn’t like to do, such as lapbooks, I either skipped it and found a book for him to read or had him read the information on the lapbooks without printing them out. If it was a lapbook that he was interested in but had a lot of pages for him to do in a few days, I just picked the pages of the lapbook that I thought he would enjoy doing, in my opinion he was still learning. So I basically helped make it a bit easier for him if I saw that certain classes requested a lot of work at certain times. My goal was to make it fun for  him to learn when he saw there was a lot of work to be done. I sat in the same room with him the first few days to a week until he felt comfortable enough that he could work alone while I did classes with my other children. I learned that he works much better independently, he has learned a lot, and enjoys Easy Peasy. We both got the break we needed.

I don’t like that it’s online and he spends his class time looking at a computer screen. I do have him several take breaks away from the computer during his class time. For those who don’t want their children spending a lot of time online/computer she does offer a printed version of this curriculum. Like I said it was a test for me and since he enjoys Easy Peasy I may go the printed route for our next school  year.

In my opinion, I didn’t find the classes being disjointed, I agree with Linabean as she stated that Easy Peasy went out of her way to connect several classes. I believe those classes are Bible and History and at other times Science.

I also took the opportunity to pause our other curriculum with my DD, 6 years old, who was struggling with the phonics reading program but was so eager to read. I started her on McGuffey Primer and we are working our way through Getting Ready 2 right now, which is mainly phonics. I can testify for my DD that it helped her learn to read by using McGuffey Primer. After we finished McGuffey Primer we went back to her original phonics reading program and she couldn’t believe she was able to read it all so quick. She was very excited. (She used to cry because she was so eager to read but was struggling with her phonics book. She really liked that book.) Getting Ready 2 is easier for her because she already knows how to read but she still learning from it. What I did for her while using McGuffey Primer is I wrote down all the words she was learning for a week on individual cards and we went over them three times each class day for a week. Easy Peasy tells you to go over a set of  words with your child three times a day and have a new set of words the next day. My DD was not able to remember the words from Day 1 when she needed to read it on a later day. I found out by writing the words to however many classes I was going to cover in a week and going over them three times a day for a week worked for her.

She enjoys learning math and kept asking to do more math. So we started First grade only doing the English phonics portion and continued with the math until I see that she is struggling then we will stop. I don’t plan on starting her on the full First grade until she is 8 years old. Although she is able to read it all she is not able to understand what she needs to do on her own. I learned from my 8 year old DS to wait because at that age they are capable to understand than a 6 year old. Once again I’m choosing what she is able to do and skip the rest. I also print her worksheets ahead of time.

My other DS, 4 years old, has started Getting Ready 1 and we are about half way through. I don’t plan on starting him on McGuffey Primer until he shows signs of wanting to learn to read. He does enjoy his classes so far. I print his worksheets for the week we will work on ahead of time to make it easier for me.

Sorry it was so long but I hope it did help someone about Easy Peasy. She also has YouTube and a Facebook group, plus you can post a comment and she responds to them. If you have any questions for me feel free to ask. Blessing on your homeschool journey. God Bless!

Due to my husband losing his job several years ago, we too used EP for a while. I loved how independently my oldest was able to work! But I had a hard time using it with my struggling reader. Knowing what I know now, I would just “let the system work” so to speak, and just daily work through each lesson with him. I thought he was just not getting it, but when we went back to using only All About Reading, he could “suddenly” read so much better. Guess there really is something to that sight reading! 😉 I am now using a combination of EP and phonics with my younger children.
I began looking for something different in the history and science areas because all of my children were getting bored with the ancient history and science. That is what led me to SCM. We all enjoy the readings and the narration better than what we were doing with EP.
Right now, even though I know that CM works well, I am considering having my oldest use EP again for Language Arts because of the struggle I am having with work ethic, diligence, etc. With EP, he was moving steadily ahead, reading, writing, etc all on his own and was learning. It’s something I need to pray over!

Here are my thoughts on EP.  I think it’s pretty darn impressive.  I have used pieces of it over the years.  I look at it nearly every year, and I think, “Hmmm, should we just do all of it?”  There is so very much excellent stuff offered on EP.  I have been homeschooling for almost 10 years, and I am also a trained teacher (former high school English).  I have tried a lot of methods, and I have researched oh-so-much about education.  We always come back to something pretty literature based.  With that knowledge and background about me, here are my thoughts:

Pros:

Free

No twaddle

Lots of support on their FB pages

varied lessons

rigorous curriculum, but short lessons

interesting topics

huge variety of classes, subjects, choices

fun games, visual things, links, etc bc it’s online

promotes independence, academic growth, and a Christian worldview

uses great books and classic literature/poetry

No planning, so very easy to implement for mom

Kids seem to think it’s pretty cool and exciting to scroll down and see what the next day has in store for them

it looks really fun, but not “fluffy”

no common core or state testing or big box publisher crap

CONS:

It’s all online, so it can be hard to check up on.  I have two kids who aren’t always trustworthy in their work.  So, ultimately, my husband and I have decided that unless I am sitting next to them , this isn’t 100% for us.  E.g., how do I deal with the fact that the kids could say they had done the work on day 82 and visited the link and read the passage or played the game, but might not have.  Then I’d have to go check the history.  But I have one tech savvy lazybutt teen boy, so he knows this.  It is not without possibility that he could go to site, but not read/watch/do/play.  But the history would show he’d been there.  We have to stay on this one like flies on doodoo.

Being online always presents some risk…for distraction, for danger, for brain deadening.

In some places, this curriculum is so advanced (reading especially), where you might have to place a kid significantly lower than his grade, so he might feel bad.  Even thought it says “level” –this type of thing bothers some kids.

Because this is very independent, you could miss out on all that fun family learning together time.  This is a biggie for me, bc it is truly part of my homeschool vision: learning together.  This could be alleviated to some degree via their “program year” studies.  You could, however,  plug your laptop into your tv and do the watching/reading/whatever together for that subject of history, science, music, art etc.  I have actually considered this, but bc that one lazybutt kiddo of mine is about to start high school, I needed a program where he could work with us.

If you don’t have enough computers for all of your kids, you will need to stagger their school times and this could get tricky.

In the k-8 years, they only have 4 program years and the Lower work is not all that different from the Middle work, such that if your kids were to wrap back around and do it over again, there might not be enough variety for those subjects.

Forgive my shifting back and forth between full sentences and bullet point language.  I’m tired. LOL.  I look at EP over and over and over and I really do love it.  My kids will do several subjects there this year: Reading, Ancient Art, and Ancient Music. My 9th grader will do the Foundations Course and Literature & Composition from the high school offerings on their high school site.  Hope this is helpful to someone!

We have been using it since January and for the most part I like it. My oldest in 6th grade is using it fully while the other 2 are only doing reading, LA and the weekly spelling, grammar, thinking games and computer.

I do have to disagree a bit about it being all online as there is much to print out and do offline as there is online.

As for the keeping track it is true that it is hard to know exactly what you child should be doing and if they did it. I have simplified it by print what they are supposed to do and they are to bring it to me when they are done and I quiz them and have them narrate what they learned in each section (it takes only a few minutes each day) to see if they really read it, if they understood it and if they needed help but didn’t want to ask. So far it has been working great for my oldest, there is much more to it than most people think and it’s a bit long and hard for him.

I think if you want to use and or need to use for financial reasons then give it a try, you are not out anything cost wise or curriculum wise. Just be aware you may need to tweak some things to make them fit your family, which really isn’t any different than any other curriculum I’ve tried.