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Home | Articles | AČ Curriculum | AČ Reviews | Speed Reading | Phonics | FAQ | Contact Us | Support | Products | Search |
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Frequently Asked QuestionsDoes A2 really cover Kindergarten through 12th grade? What do I need to buy in addition to A2? How do I start Home Schooling? How hard is it to teach children in a Home School? How much time does it take to Home School? What about teaching several children in different grades? Is your home school curriculum accredited? Is Home Schooling for everyone? Where can I get help with teaching my children at home? What kind of support do you offer for home schooling families? What makes your product Accelerated, as opposed to using another product Faster? Is A2 Home School Curriculum, just a CD, or are there any books? Does your Curriculum include any tests? Does your Curriculum include daily lessons? How do I know where to start my child? Why is the price so low? It is almost like it is too good to be true. Do I have to know a subject to teach it? What is the best way to teach a child to read? How do you teach writing and grammar? What is a classical education? What about socialization and home schooling? What is the purpose of education? How do I teach my children character? What do you do when relatives oppose home schooling? What are the advantages of home schooling over public schooling? Does A2 really cover Kindergarten through 12th grade?Yes! It covers Kindergarten through 12th grade. It really does cover all the subjects mentioned here. What do I need to buy in addition to A2?A2 does not cover higher math, science or history after WWI. We cover all other core subjects. You will need to buy math books from Pre-Algebra on, science books, and a history book covering history after 1922. What is your return policyAll sales are final. Unfortunately, technology has made software piracy too easy. We used to have a return policy, however, some treated this as if it meant our software was free. This web site is filled with information on our products. You can order a demo CD for a nominal shipping and handling charge. (The demo CD is an abbreviated version of the full curriculum, where printing has been disabled). We replace all defective CD's. Your total satisfaction is our goal. With all these resources available to you, you can purchase risk free. How do I start Home Schooling?When I was a boy I used to stare at the water before swimming. I would ease myself into the water because it was always cold. I knew that I wanted to swim however I did not feel ready to just dive in as some of my friends did. After I had been swimming for a while, and was used to the cold, I loved it and my parents had a hard time getting me out of the water. Home schooling is like that. Most of us sit at the edge for a long time thinking about it and testing the waters. Consider this, you are your child's first and most important teacher. You have already taught them to walk, talk, feed themselves, tie their shoes, etc. One of my favorite movies is Family Band. In this movie, Wrenchler Bower (played by Walter Brennon) is a substitute teacher for his granddaughters school class. One boy asked him "Are you a regular teacher, I mean did you pass the 8th grade?" Wrenchler Bower told the young man that he was not a regular teacher, but that he had taught men to ride and shoot in the war. He also said:
Keep this in mind. There are only three subjects, reading, writing and arithmetic. Everything else can be taught in the reading materials. Take a look at the overview of A2 curriculum and see what we offer. We have excellent materials for teaching every core subject except Higher Math and Science. How hard is it to teach children in a Home School?Teaching your own children can be an absolute pleasure, especially if you start when they are young. It does take time. Depending on how well organized you are, it can take a lot of time. Our children love to read. We have some children who have to be told "Stop doing your homework and go to bed." Our educational philosophy is simple: There are only three subjects, reading, writing and arithmetic. Everything else can be covered in the reading materials. With this philosophy and children who love to read, the parent really only needs to be available to monitor their progress, answer questions, and provide guidance. We make a point of teaching several mini classes on any number of subjects. Home schooling is easy if you keep it fun and flexible. Don't try to duplicate a classroom environment in your home. Your children will hate it, and it will not be as effective. How much time does it take to Home School?Home Schooling takes about two to three hours each day, particularly in the early years when your children are learning to read. As your children get a little older they become more independent learners, and less and less of your time is required for some subjects. Math and science may require more of your time as they get older and the subjects become more challenging. In general, two to three hours each day will place your child well ahead of their peers in public school. What about teaching several children in different grades?This is much easier than you would think. Many subjects can be spanned across several grades. We use the same spelling words, history, grammar and English composition lessons for our 11 and 14 year old daughters. Some individual attention is required for each child. A few minutes of one on one instruction has been shown to eliminate hours of classroom instruction. Our math work sheet generator is a marvelous tool that make it a snap to create individualized worksheets, with answers. This whole curriculum is designed to make home schooling easy. Is your home school curriculum accredited?A2 is not accredited. Most home schooling families follow an eclectic approach, taking a little from multiple sources. Accreditation is a very political process. I graduated from a very conservative university, a university with an excellent reputation for the their elementary education program. They were just put on probation this last year because of political reasons. It seems that they did not provide enough of a multicultural experience for their students. Never mind that the university has students from more than 150 countries. It didn't matter that a very high percentage of the students have lived overseas, and speak languages other than English fluently. Accredited programs usually must conform with some left wing agenda. A2 will not do that. Our purpose is to empower parents to take control of their own child's education. More Is Home Schooling for everyone?Unfortunately not everyone will be able to successfully operate a home school. Many people have just become too busy. Others lack the required competency and self discipline to succeed. Most people, however, do have the right stuff. Most loving, patient parents, who really want their children to succeed, will succeed. Remember the challenges faced in the modern public school classroom. Many teacher spend far more time preventing disaster than teaching. In Washington State, when a child cannot attend public school, the State is required to provide the equivalent of a public education at the child's home. This translates to a tutor coming to the home for one hour for all subjects except math, and a tutor for math for one hour each week. Two hours of tutoring replaces 30 to 36 hours of class attendance. To discover what factors lead to educational success, click here. Where can I get help with teaching my children at home?Help is everywhere. Almost every community has a strong home school support group. Many have web pages and are listed in the search engines. Just search on "Home School Groups" and type in the name of your State and/or town. It is quite likely that you will find more help than you could imagine. What kind of support do you offer for home schooling families?We operate a user group at Yahoo groups. It is unlisted; however, if you would like to join, please send me an email and your request shall be granted. Technical support is available by phone and email, as well as assistance with home schooling and educational issues in general. We enjoy talking with our users. We also know that your success is our success. What makes your product Accelerated, as opposed to using another product Faster?Learning should be a fun activity. When learning is fun, kids cannot get enough. Our phonics product, including the sentence building cards can be engrossing. Children cannot get enough. This aspect accelerates learning. One Syllable Books also Accelerated a child's learning. These books make it possible for a young child to read material that would otherwise be years ahead of their reading skills. In the early years a child's spoken and understanding vocabulary are generally much higher than their reading vocabulary. One Syllable Books help to close this gap. As a result children can read much more interesting and substantive materials than they otherwise would. Is A2 Home School Curriculum, just a CD, or are there any books?Our curriculum consists of a single CD. No other materials are provided. While we supply a CD with 800 books on it, we do not recommend parking anyone, a child in particular, in front of a computer. It is intended that the materials will be printed out so you can still enjoy actual books. Does your Curriculum include any tests?Not at this time. We hope to add them in the future. Tests have two purposes. First, for grading, and grades are used by teacher to communicate a child's performance to their parents. This type of test is not necessary when the parent is the teacher. Secondly, tests are used as a diagnostic tool. These test are used to determine strengths and weaknesses, as well as to find problems. It is strongly recommended that parents have their children tested annually. Be sure the test is a Norm Referenced Standardized test. Any other kind will not yield valid results. Remember, the purpose of the test is to inform you, the parent, how your child is doing. Each of the Arithmetic worksheets can be used as tests. We recommend that you spend a few minutes with your child, looking at the different kinds of problems, to find the proper starting point for your child. Does your Curriculum include daily lessons?Yes! Most of the text books that we use are divided into daily lessons. Reading: We begin teaching the very young to read with solid phonics activities. Once a child can read simple three letter words, with short vowels only, we move them on to the McGuffey's Readers. These readers are divided into daily lessons. Each lesson through the mid point of the third reader, has new words at the beginning of each lesson. We use these for spelling words. The McGuffey's Readers cover through the sixth grade, and include some Shakespeare. As their skills develop, we require our children to read at least one book every two weeks, then a book each week. Some have even required a book each day ( a little ambitious). Writing: The Books we use for writing, Lessons in Grammar, Higher Lessons in Grammar, Word Lessons, and Word Building, are also divided into daily lessons. We require our children to write one essay each week (full page) while in grades K-6. For very young children we have them copy words from any printed source the child selects, just to teach them how to form the letters, etc. We also have them write a report on each book that they read. The grammar activity we created is a problem, the kids don't want to stop using it. Arithmetic: The math program creates excellent worksheets. There are over 60 standard worksheets, and they can be customized. This program uses random numbers so no two worksheets will ever be the same. Again, we print one worksheet each day. We move them on up to the next, more difficult worksheet when they have mastered (100% for 3 to five consecutive days) the current worksheet . It is important to review different types of problems to keep their skills sharp. History: There are no daily lessons for history, just excellent books. This is true of all other subjects. We recommend reading one chapter each day. This amounts to a daily lesson. How do I know where to start my child?It only takes a few minutes to find where your child should start with our curriculum. The new web interface divides the curriculum into grades. Grade levels differ radically from state to state, so this should only be considered a rough starting point. General Strategy: As I child, I played a game called 21 questions. One person would leave the room while another selected an object. When the person came back into the room they had to guess what object had been selected by asking yes and no questions. They could also only ask 21 questions. We quickly learned to cut the options in half with each question, asking: "Is it in the north half of the room (or south, east or west)? We could find a single item, out of one million with 21 questions. Do the same thing when finding a starting point for your child. If you have a 4th grader, just test (have them read aloud from the McGuffey's reader for example) them with our 4th grade materials. If it is too easy, jump them ahead a full grade. If this is too difficult, drop back to the middle of 4th grade. Keep doing this until you find material that is not too easy or too hard. Repeat with each subject. Reading: We recommend a review of Phonics for all children. Phonics is not typically taught in public school, hence, most children need to go through the rules at least once. (This could be as simple as reading the rules on the screen) Phonics is a key to developing spelling skills. There are seven McGuffey's readers. The first is a primer, the others are numbered. The 4th reader, is approx. at the 4th grade level. Spend a few minutes reading from the readers, in various locations. The stories are wonderful, and it will not hurt to start slightly below your child's reading level. Writing: Most public schools do not teach grammar, some don't even teach spelling. I recommend doing one lesson each day from the grammar books, beginning with Lessons in Grammar, for all students. (Follow the Language Arts Flow Chart to place your child at the appropriate level). Glean spelling words from your child's writing. This prevents you from wasting time working with words your child already knows how to spell, and concentrates on strengthening areas of weakness. Arithmetic: We recommend that you spend a few minutes with your child, looking at the different kinds of problems, to find the proper starting point for your child. The preview window makes this very easy to do. History: Most public schools teach very little history, and what they teach is usually revisionist in nature. I learned so much history, just preparing this curriculum that I would recommend that everyone start at the very beginning. At age 45, I found out how much the colonists were effected by the stamp act, by reading American History Stories Vol. II, a 3rd grade book published in 1882. Why is the price so low? It is almost like it is too good to be true.I am not a businessman. By day I am a research engineer at the Boeing Company. I am a home school activist. I believe in it. I want to help people succeed. I have probably priced this product far below the optimum selling price. When I was in college, I bought and sold automotive electrical parts. I could buy voltage regulators for GM cars for $0.75 and I attempted to sell them for $2.95 to parts houses and garages. I could not sell any. The price was too low. People thought that there was something wrong with them or that they were stolen. I raised the price to $9.99 and sold out. Most companies would sell this product for $300 or more. I could probably sell more if I increased the price. It gives the impression that the product is more valuable. It inspires confidence. If you would prefer to pay $300 for this product, e-mail me, and I will send you a special html file that will help you do this. The morals of the market place are almost gone. Almost nobody asks what a fair profit is, it is always "What will the market bear?" Do I have to know a subject to teach it?It is of course very desirable to be an expert in the field before teaching, however, most public school teachers teach classes outside of their field. Many high school math and science teachers do not have a degree in either subject. My father taught a college level welding class. He had not done any significant welding for more than two decades, had never taught welding before, and only had one welding class in college and got a C in that class; yet many of his students went on to become certified welders and landed good jobs using this skill. Teachers just need to stay one step ahead of the student. There is nothing wrong with telling your child that you are learning right along with them. This will make them feel very smart, and build their confidence. Home schooled children typically test between the 80th and 90th percentile, regardless of the parent's level of education. When your child can see the importance that you place on education they are usually anxious to follow suit. Many home schooling mothers regard teaching as an opportunity to strengthen weaknesses that they perceive in their own education. The teacher always learns more than the student. What is the best way to teach a child to read?Children love stories. Start by reading to them at an early age. Get two copies of the book so you can both read along. Use books for entertainment rather than TV or other forms of passive entertainment. (Our family uses the piano and singing for a good portion of our evening entertainment). Phonics is critical in teaching a child to read. A2 offers an excellent phonics product, as part of our curriculum.
How do you teach writing and grammar?A2 curriculum comes with excellent texts on grammar and composition. We use text books that were once the main stays of America's public schools. More What is the trivium?A classical education is divided into three parts, grammar, logic and Rhetoric. Grammar: The study of facts. Logic: Understanding the facts, the background and the underlying basis for the facts. Rhetoric: The powerful expression of ideas. To see how A2 builds a solid education based on the trivium, read the overview. What is the quadrivium?The quadrivium is the follow on to the trivium. It consists of the following elements.
A well trained mind will have a supreme command of the language, a through knowledge of facts both in the liberal arts and the sciences. The trivium and quadrivium both date back to the days of the Greek philosophers. A modern quadrivium would include a significant body of science and mathematics. Accelerated Achievement offers a solid classical education covering the trivium and a part of the quadrivium. Don't miss the overview. What is a classical education?A classical education is one that follows the trivium at the very least. It should also include the quadrivium. What about socialization and home schooling?Home school actually creates children that are better adjusted socially than the public schools. More! What is the purpose of education?Education in
America has historically been designed to preserve liberty. The Object and Design of Education is Liberty
The European model, which is now replacing our traditional system, is designed for two purposes:
Home schooling may be the last line of defense for traditional American values. How do I teach my children character?The three keys to teaching character are example, example and example. Your actions will speak volumes. It will have a profound effect on your children when they see you go to great lengths to make things right with others. Just returning to a store to make things right when they undercharged you will have a powerful effect. Another method is the use of copy work. A2 offers a huge collection of quotes and Bible verses that can be printed on ready to use copy forms. More! What do you do when relatives oppose home schooling?This is a difficult problem. If you are thinking about home schooling your children, you have probably already become aware of problems with the public schools. My father is a retired school teacher. He was adamantly opposed to home schooling and vouchers for many years. After living two doors down from a family that home schools their children, he has completely changed his mind. When people see how well behaved home schooled children are, and can see their academic performance for themselves, their positions almost always change. What are the advantages of home schooling over public schooling?Answer: Accelerated Achievement has put together a list of reasons to home school. Read it here. |