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.

Click in the corner on HD and full screen to be able to see it well.

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

 

 

I had someone write and ask if we still needed money. We have received seven cards in the mail so far, so yes! I added to the bottom of the My EP Assignments page to show how much we’ve received.

I’ve also added a new video that’s eleven minutes long. It’s me talking you through how it works. Hopefully it shows you some more. Over the coming months I’ll make lots of little 30 second videos to show the how-to for each little thing. One thing I wish I had said, the “random” music is random among the choices I uploaded. They are instrumental pieces of varying genres.

Here’s that video.

 

Please watch the video and head to the link. I hope you’ll understand what a big deal this is for me. And I hope it’s a big deal for you too!

My EP Assignments  Please make sure to go to the link. I have a request…

 

If you missed it, I had a very interesting interview with the founder of Hire Cause, David Dvorkin, on the 4 professional skills that employers recently ranked as most desirable in employees. But really, I see them as skills everyone should be working on developing.  Here’s a video of the interview if you want to check it out.

He discussed why these skills cannot be learned in any classroom and why managers are too busy to teach these skills in any internship.  We also discuss why these skills are even more important if your children dream to maybe work for themselves one day.

Lastly, we discuss how the essential key to developing these professional skills is to be surrounded by a supportive community of peers and mentors who are on the same journey.  When your children are working alongside others who want to see them succeed and make a difference in their community at the highest level, this is where the magic happens in helping them pursue their dreams.

If your children want to apply to Hire Cause, just a reminder that the deadline for applications is next Friday, 12/7.  If your children are interested in a fun way to develop the professional skills they need while positively impacting others in their community, then I hope they’ll consider Hire Cause.

Special Note:  You must apply BEFORE December 7th to get the better price for the Hire Cause program. The price of the program is $1,250, but the introductory rate is $500, just for EP! You’ll use the promo code “Easy Peasy” on the last line on the application. If that’s still too much, there are need-based scholarships available. 

 

Join me on Facebook Live today at 1pm EST, as I interview the founder of Hire Cause, David Dvorkin, on the 4 professional skills that employers recently ranked as most desirable in employees.

More than 2,000 businesses were surveyed about these skills.   For those of you whose children dream to maybe work for themselves one day, it’s even more important that they know what these skills are and how to develop them.

These are things we could all benefit from learning about, but he will share about his organization as well and his program from teens. All Easy Peasy users get a discounted offer for their program, and he’s got a special gift for those interested in the program who are in attendance at the live event this afternoon.

You can go there now and click on Get Reminder to be notified when it’s time.

I have a couple of resources for high schoolers that I’ve been learning about and will be sharing with you in the coming months. They both have costs; there are just some things we can’t get for free.  The first one I’ll be sharing about is a company called Hire Cause.

They mentor kids through a project where they work with a local business to raise money for the charity of their choice.

I think this program could really have a long-term impact on kids who participate and see their project through.

If you think EP is awesome, you aren’t alone.

FIRST PLACE
Computer-based (Complete) Curriculum-Elementary School

Computer-based (Complete) Curriculum-Middle School

Computer-based (Complete) Curriculum-High School
Elective-Elementary School

Geography

Homeschool Secret

Language Arts-Literature

SECOND PLACE:

Art-Elementary School

Art-Middle School

Computer Science

Critical Thinking/Logic

Elective-Middle School

Language Arts-Writing (Composition)

Science-Elementary School

Science-Middle School

Science-High School

I told you around this time last year that my family was getting a Habitat for Humanity house, an ADA compliant house that my son in a wheelchair would be able to get around in. Well, it turns out we’re not. When we applied, we told them that we would only qualify financially for eighteen months. They obviously accepted us knowing that. Their program was eighteen months and it all seemed to align perfectly. My husband was in an eighteen-month master’s degree program. Afterwards, he would be working. He would earn more money and push us over the edge of the low-income limit placed on families to qualify for a house.

We were told last year that we shouldn’t plan on our house taking the full eighteen months because they were “getting houses done in a year.” Why they would say that to us when it was so obviously untrue, I have no idea. Even this spring we were told the house would likely be complete this summer because a contractor was going to do it and could get it done within three months.

After hearing nothing all summer and Habitat not calling our required quarterly meeting (again), my husband called a meeting to find out what was going on. He was told that next September was the earliest possible that the house could be done.

When my husband’s final course is finished in December, he’s not going to refrain from working more so we can stay poor enough to qualify for a home. I’m sure you can support us in that decision!

Of course, that doesn’t all of a sudden give us enough money to buy a house; even if it did, there’s no such house on the market. We were going to be getting a brand-new one-level home with four bedrooms, ADA compliant, and something that really excited me – solar panels. It was going to cost around $100,000 for us which we could pay interest free.

We have no debt, so an interest-free mortgage felt much better to us than a traditional one. Still, we were planning to pay it off as fast as possible, though we recently learned that Habitat would own part of the equity on our home for 30 years. We didn’t like knowing it wouldn’t really be ours.

Our current home is my childhood home, which growing up housed just four people, now it holds ten. We live with my parents. The house is on three floors and the changes in flooring between rooms and the cramped space make it so my son in a wheelchair can’t go more than a few feet before he needs help. His special toilet is in the basement (just over a bucket), so he can’t get to the bathroom on his own.

Because my son gets no practice at home getting himself around (he’s working on learning to use a walker), we send him to school. He went to a reverse-mainstream preschool, and now he goes to a mainstream kindergarten class. Thankfully, we’re in a top school district. He gets therapies several days a week at school, but we of course desire to have him home. We were planning to start homeschooling him once we moved into that Habitat house that’s now not going to happen.

So, in some ways my heart is broken. I’ve wanted my own home for the last twenty years. It’s something I had to give up to serve overseas. But now I want it for my child. He wants to chase his brothers around. He can’t. If we had the space, he’d be able to follow them around in his wheelchair. Right now, he’s carried around the house mostly. Obviously, that’s not sustainable.

At the same time, this is a great place to be, reliant on nothing but the grace of God.