Grace

There is a blog post I wrote on this site called, “The Key.” The key was the grace of God. There’s a page in my prayer journal that has scrawled across it: Everything is Grace. When you are teaching your kids to read and to multiply and to recognize the difference between mitosis and meiosis, don’t forget to teach grace.

You aren’t going to raise perfect children because you are human and they are human. There’s no perfect way you can teach them. There’s no perfect way you can raise them. Teaching them rules and enforcing them may create a nice family picture on the outside, but it will never teach your children grace, and we are saved by grace. Do you want your children to act good or be good, act like a Christian or be a Christian?

The Old Testament is two-thirds of the Bible. Its main point seems to be humans aren’t perfect and can’t be. God is God and we’re not. God is good and we’re not. God is all things wonderful and we’re not.

And it would be a sad story, but for grace.

Grace gives God’s goodness and all things wonderful to us, namely Himself. He gives us the grace to be patient, to love, to understand, to teach, to learn, to live, to laugh, to forgive, to try again, to turn back, to heal, to help, to rejoice when our world and our life is far from perfect. He gives us the sun, and the rain. He provides for our needs and then some.

One of our family expressions is: God provides cake too. For a time, about a decade ago, my husband decided he needed to leave his job. We decided we would live by faith and trust the Lord to provide. One evening right around the time we had made our decision, a Roma man, just an acquaintance of ours, stopped by with all the leftovers from his fruit and vegetable cart that he hadn’t sold that day. It was the only time he ever did that. And on his way over, he had picked up a cake for the kids from the store. We feasted on the fresh fruits and veggies—and the cake. We said to our kids, “God doesn’t just make us eat our vegetables. He gives us cake too.”

So let your kids eat cake, the sweet grace of God. Teach your kids grace, the good God who knows we’re human and can’t do it on our own and so made a way to be there with us always to help us out. Make sure your kids know they will never be “good” apart from Christ in them, but that God sees them perfect in Christ Jesus. And make sure they know that God doesn’t just give us what we need, but cake too, just because He can, just because He loves us. God loves your kids more than you do. Make sure they know it.

Webucator

Webucator users! We have free accounts. We DO NOT get support. Please do not call their support lines. Those are for paying customers. You can scroll down at this link to read their FAQ to get most of your questions answered.

They will have to stop giving us access if we keep costing them money in support time. They said the most common problem is people signing up multiple kids under one email address. Every student needs to have their own account.

Also, please do not contact them for advice. That’s not what they are there for. You can discuss advice in our facebook groups.

Thanks for your help in this. It’s an amazing resource and they give it to us free where others pay hundreds for the same resource. I want us to respect what they’ve done for us.

Webucator is an online resource for computer courses. It’s linked on our high school site on the computer page.

Growing Pains

I’m sorry that I wasn’t prepared for the surge of new people starting My EP Assignments this week. I’m wet behind the ears with a lot of this stuff. At first we were lumping all reports of problems together, but now we’re starting to sift through them and seeing that the one fix we applied earlier in the week wasn’t covering all of it.

We increased our capacity in one area but realized there’s yet another we need to work on. To that end, we will be moving to another server tonight it looks like. That will help with anyone getting DNS server not found messages.

We won’t have that switched before tonight, so if you can hold off on school until later in the afternoon, it would ease our load. This week it seemed around 11AM people start having trouble with getting that error about a DNS server not being found. It just means traffic is too heavy at that time. That’s what will be fixed tonight.

It shouldn’t be asking you to re-log in, only after you have closed the browser page and come back in fresh, not in the middle of working on the site. Also, you shouldn’t be having a Student 1 appear mysteriously. Those are things you can let us know about if those problems keep persisting. We’re working on solving them.

If you can’t log in and know it’s not because of your email or password, then please email us, allinonehomeschool@gmail.com. We want everyone to have a good experience with this. It’s supposed to make things easier peasier, so we don’t want anyone having trouble.

Tips for Getting College Money

I just read this article and thought it was good info on getting college money. Some things I had never heard before, and all were very practical. My daughter got into one of those elite schools on a full scholarship for merit, but I certainly don’t expect all my kids to be able to follow that route. This article is NOT about savings or investing or applying for tons of outside scholarships; it’s about pursuing what is offered by the schools you are accepted to.

 

Low-Cost College Credit

I was contacted by Ed4Credit and Study.com to write a review of their products. Usually I turn down such requests, but as there aren’t really a lot of free college options out there for me to offer you, I wanted to learn about these online low-cost options. I told them we’d have to try them. Ed4Credit gave a free course to two of my children. Study.com gave us one month. That’s a big difference between these options. For the same price you get one course and four months, or one month and unlimited courses. My kids got one course done in that month (and barely — stress producing!)

Summary: Ed4Credit is the  better option if you are looking for a low-cost college option. These would transfer likely to your community college and certainly would be taken by an online school like Thomas Edison State University to finish off the degree. Study.com seems like the cheaper option if you are taking EP’s courses. I describe below one idea for how to use them together.

Ed4Credit

For under $200, you get a college course along with all materials. In this way, it’s cheaper than community college, even with discounts for high schoolers. It’s in some ways like EP, just not as fun. It’s online readings, videos, quizlets. You go through the online course at your own pace over four months. At the end you take a test and get approved for ACE credit if you get just 50% on the test. You can even retake the test. Our experience is that it’s basically full-proof to get the credit if you put any effort into the course. My 11th grader did his course in a month. My 8th grader took the full four months. They had no trouble with the final. The one older son knew every answer and finished in minutes! The final is taken AT HOME! They were proctored online.

This is basically teaching to the test, which isn’t what you want if you are seeking a career that’s really based on a college education. If you are looking for quick, easy, cheap college credit, this is a great way to go. It’s not a college. It just gives you credit, like taking a CLEP test. They list on their site the colleges that guarantee that they accept these credits, though some may only accept certain courses.

Study.com

For the same price as Ed4Credit you get just ONE MONTH instead of four months to complete a course and take the test for credit (ACE credit). It can be done. My 17-year-old had no trouble doing that. It was very STRESSFUL fitting in the course for my 13-year-old. We had it planned out and then he realized it said you can’t take the final during the last three days of your time! BE WARNED! He squeezed it in, but the month-long time limit is a lot more stressful than having four months through Ed4Credit to complete a course at your leisure (for the same price). The lessons on this site are based on videos and follow-up quizzes. There are placement tests that are supposed to show you what you already know, but you can’t skip lessons. You have to pass each quiz before it lets you take the final exam. One benefit of these ACE credits is that you get to take the final exam at home! It is proctored online.

There is another option with Study.com. They have CLEP prep materials. You then take the test elsewhere when you are done. This is cheaper. We have an Easy Peasy discount for just the first three months. Our coupon code is All-In-One-Homeschool. It’s good on the CLEP and DSST membership of $60 a month and is good for 20% off. (so $48 a month).

The CLEP test itself may cost $85 to take. This is the cheaper option (around $135 for a course). One course of action to consider: at the end of each high school year, buy a membership and focus full time on studying for these tests, using the placement test to just study what you need to and taking the tests for each core high school course you took, hopefully taking all the tests within a month. This would involve cramming, but would be the cheapest course of action. Each summer you could pay around $500 total for 12 college credits.

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I got so frustrated with Study.com’s pricing that I looked into what it would take to have EP be a place like these! The answer is a lot, but I am going to continue to look into it.

The Ed4Credit link is an affiliate link.

EP Tees!

It’s that time of year again. Actually, I almost forgot about our EP-tees this year. Ordering is open for TWO WEEKS. The last day is the 19th (May 19th). The shirts will be shipped directly to you. The cost is $15.

ORDER

ep shirts
An Old Family Photo! The two oldest are now taller than me. Can you tell how much our kids love getting their picture taken?

Short Story Contest

$500 in prizes!

The first EP Competition is open!

We’re taking short story entries from today through May 15th. There are two age divisions 8 – 12, 13 – 17, unless we get enough great entries, I’ll divide it up more and hand out more prizes!

Please share with your homeschool communities! It will be more meaningful the more entries we have. Registration is open to homeschooled students, but they don’t have to be using EP.

Short Stories Contest — Get the Details

EP Competitions Page

EP Competitions

Learn about them here!

Growing up I participated in National History Day competitions, where you research a topic and present your research. I was in the Media category and did slide shows. Very old fashioned now! I also did speech competitions. So, here’s me trying to recreate a piece of my childhood. 🙂

Right now I have chosen three competitions: science, history, writing. There’s a cost to enter because I want quality submissions and I want to offer prizes!

They will be held throughout the year. The dates for submissions are on the EP Competition page, found under the About in the menu. The first up is the spring competition, short stories. In the fall, there will be a science fair. In the winter, it will be history, where you will make a video on your topic.

Start brainstorming! And share the news! It will be better the more we have involved. It’s for homeschoolers ages 8 – 17.

In one week I’ll start accepting short story submissions for our first EP competition. Submissions will be accepted from April 15th to May 15th and can be made by any homeschool student, so spread the word! I’m planning cash prizes for eight winners.

Details are on the site.

2018

A Year of Thanks

Thanks to everyone who helps EP grow by just loving it and sharing the love.

Thank you to my faithful helpers who are there for me and for everyone using EP day in and day out. This couldn’t happen without you!

Thank you to everyone who has donated to EP this year, those who gave one-time gifts, and those who support our ministry here with monthly donations. You cover EP’s costs and keep this running. Everyone appreciates your giving whether they know it or not!

The Year in Comments…

We may be different than some families, as we use your curriculum over any other, not because it is free, but because it is more thorough, motivating, fun, and ADVANCED than any other big box curriculum we could buy.

Nancy

I’ve had such great success teaching my kids to read using GC and EP! I am a teacher as well, and have taught probably 100 kids to read, and used many different curricula, but this, by far, is the simplest to use and most effective curricula I have come across.

Natasha

What a blessing this curriculum has been for my family!

Tiffany

The excellence with which you have put together the daily lessons makes it one of the very best I have ever seen. Educationally, your curriculum is sound and very rigorous, while at the same time attainable for all children.

Debbie

Easy Peasy All-in-one High School has made what seemed impossible, possible! As a bonus, my kid has aced all of her subjects, something she always struggled with in private school. Thank you!

Marcie

The Year in Numbers…

More than…

1.8 million visitors

180 countries

1000 free books