Is Easy Peasy Enough? Review of Easy Peasy Homeschool Curriculum

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What is the Easy Peasy Homeschool Curriculum?

How Does Easy Peasy Work

All lessons are uploaded on the Easy Peasy homeschool website or you can print the pages to use for offline work. 

The work for each grade is presented through printable lesson plans. Parents are provided with daily instructions on these plans with clear instructions. The plans include:

• intrinsic material in the lesson plans and
• links to free coursework on other websites (i.e. the Khan Academy).
• materials lists

There are full instructions on how to do this curriculum. As the title suggests, it’s easy to use and follow. In fact, it’s so easy that it’s designed so children can follow the instructions themselves as a self-paced homeschool curriculum.

Easy Peasy Uses Charlotte Mason and Traditional Homeschool Methods

The homeschool methods used in the curriculum are a mix of several styles, most notably the traditional and Charlotte Mason methods.

For example, Easy Peasy uses:

• living books (exciting and thought-provoking texts that are often stories),
• picture art studies,
• copy work, and
• narration (testing a child through oral methods, not written methods) techniques

These are hallmarks of the Charlotte Mason method ( if you know nothing about homeschool methods, do my free quiz to find out which one would suit your family.)

The writer of this curriculum also uses activity sheets and online coursework that fit more into the traditional way of learning.

 

Easy Peasy is Printable

Lessons have printable activity sheets, meaning children can work offline without computers.

Parents can also print off all the lessons for the year in one go or print out each lesson before homeschool starts.

Can I Buy an Easy Peasy Workbook?

If you’d prefer, you can also buy a book of lessons and coursework from Easy Peasy, which is simple, affordable, and supports Lee’s free homeschool curriculum.

You can see some of the books you can get here:

• Easy Peasy All-in-One Language Arts
• Math
• Biology
• Learn-to-Read
• Writing
• Literature and Composition
• Geography and Cultures
• American History
• Physics/Chemistry
• Modern History
• Ancient History
• Zoology
• KinderMath Printables
• Language Arts Workbook
• Early American History
• Math Algebra

Parents can use the My EP Assignments (more on this below) to track progress in physical books.

What Supplies Do I Need?

Easy Peasy All-in-One is a free course, and it recognizes parents may not have much spare cash floating around.

Hence, parents only need basic supplies. These are:

• A laptop or tablet to get lesson plans
• Paper,
• Scissors,
• Glue and,
• Colored pencils

I love that the Easy Peasy All-in-One curriculum is so affordable!

Do I Need to Register For the Easy Peasy Curriculum?

You don’t need to register with Easy Peasy to use the curriculum.

But, if you register, you can access My EP Assignments system, their tracking tool. (This doesn’t cost anything.)

Using My EP Assignments means you can keep track of your student’s progress. The System is simple and doesn’t give grades or track grading information.

How Does My EP Assignments Work?

My EP Assignments is free. 

Firstly you put your child’s name in and choose their grade. Then you’re directed to a page where you can join others on Facebook using the Easy Peasy curriculum.

You can select a group that is:

• in your area and
• a group with children in the same grade as your child.

When you get into the system, you can:

• customize your child’s unique levels and themes (or use the standard theme) and
• track student progress (only on the same computer, though)

This system helps parents get organized and have something to show for all the hard work they and their kids put into the program.

Benefits of Using the My EP Assignments

There are a few reasons you would register for an account with My EP Assignments.

Registering means you can:

1. customize the level your student can work at
2. go directly to a lesson instead of scrolling through the page to find your work for the day
3. track your child’s progress and easily see their work
4. add or delete courses you like or dislike
5. accelerate or decelerate the pace if your child is moving more quickly or slowly through the course than expected (useful for gifted or special needs students)

My EP Assignments (AKA My EP Portal) can also be used with the EP physical textbooks to track days and award points for work completed.

Kids Can Do It Themselves (Independence is Valued)

Once a child can read, they can do most of the Easy Peasy curriculum by themselves. This is helpful if you’re homeschooling and working full-time or part-time. 

Keep in mind that younger children will need more help than older children.

How it Works (Four-Year Cycle Repeats Subjects)

Easy Peasy uses spiral learning. The subject material is presented in a four-year cycle. Children revisit these themes every four years.

What Grades Does Easy Peasy Offer?

Easy Peasy offers all grades, although they are called ‘levels’ on the website.

Grades from preschool to 8th Grade are on the original EP website.

After this, you go to the high school website, a sister site to the one children will have used in primary and middle school years.

Studying Easy Peasy in High School

Easy Peasy All-in-One has a separate site for the high school homeschool curriculum.

In high school, there aren’t many electives.

However, this doesn’t mean there isn’t a choice at all.

Other homeschool parents have submitted the courses they’ve written, and Lee Giles, the creator of EP, is compiling a more extensive electives base. This is what Lee said about the units and electives:

You can read the full list of what’s planned on the courses page. If a course is listed as “parent submitted,” then it was something sent to me by an EP user. I haven’t worked through it to check content. Some of them are in 180-day format, some aren’t. Some have tests and answers; some do not. They are just shared as a way to help each other out.

What Awards Has This Program Received?

Easy Peasy is one of Cathy Duffy’s top home education curricula. You can easily compare different curricula (free or not) by reading Cathy Duffy’s 102 Top Picks book, which you can pick up for about $15.

How Does Testing Work in this Program?

Testing can put your mind at ease if you’re worried about your children’s progress. In the Easy Peasy curriculum, the younger grades don’t have tests.

This is a good thing as too much testing isn’t beneficial to learning. However, if you want to test children, you can do this informally using narration which is a less stressful option.

While younger grades don’t have examinations, older grades have tests which consist of:

• written exams,
• quizzes, and
• grading criteria.

In this way, this curriculum is quite thorough and shows parents what their children understand in the material.

This said, homeschoolers usually academically outperform their public school peers.

How to Use This Curriculum

Lee has a great video here (second video) that explains how to start using the Easy Peasy curriculum. Listen to this video the whole way through, and then you can get started.

General Points About Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool Curriculum

Some other things you should know about this free program are:

What Easy Peasy Homeschool Review Forums Say About This Free Homeschool Curriculum

When we look at all the curricula on the market, it’s easy to get caught up in the noise of the plethora of competing information and advertisements.

As such, it’s great to ask other parents who’ve used the curriculum to tell us a little about it. Of course, the next best thing besides asking another parent face-to-face is getting this information from different forums.

As such, I looked at about thirty different Easy Peasy homeschool reviews from all over the internet to see if I could find a consensus on this curriculum. The following are the points I found in common among all the reviews.

Pros from the Homeschool Reviews

• Everyone loves a free curriculum. This helped many start home educating as it meant they didn’t have to commit to an expensive boxed curriculum while still deciding if they should teach their child at home in the long run.
• The recommendation to use McGuffey’s Eclectic Primer Readers (book or free version here), which has been around for a very long time, to teach children to read was a huge hit.
• Some mothers liked that the material required a lot of independence from students.
• You don’t need to lug around heavy textbooks on holidays or field trips. Because all the materials are online, you can take the course with you, provided you have internet access.
• Some mothers love an online curriculum…and this is what Easy Peasy is!
• Facebook pages offer support (see below). This support helps parents troubleshoot Easy Peasy curriculum issues.
• It uses a Christian worldview throughout. This is a big plus for many Christians, especially as children study it for years. On the other hand, atheists or people of other faiths will find this frustrating.
• Parents don’t need to plan, as it’s all done for them. Children are prompted to take screenshots of their work at specific points to have a saved portfolio of completed work.
• There is a lot of variety in the lessons, and the topics studied are interesting.
• You’ll use real books that use classic literature – a hallmark of a Charlotte Mason education.

Cons from the Homeschool Reviews

• One mother felt the lessons were disjointed, and she had to skip around to too many places. However, two other mothers said this was a deliberate plan from the curriculum creator. They liked skipping around as this linked lessons together from different subjects together. (This may also be because Lee is only one woman, and it is difficult for her to compete with curricula like BJU Press as she can’t write all the materials herself. Hence, she has done an excellent job linking to many other materials.)
• While some mothers would consider this a positive point, some would say the independence required of students was difficult as their children weren’t always up to (or willing to give) the program the input or attention it needed. As children get older, they naturally become more independent learners anyway, so this point will become moot the older homeschoolers become.
• Some Easy Peasy complaints centered around the assumption that students could read. Some found the reading in First Grade too tricky, although other subjects like math were manageable.
• The program is online, and some homeschooling parents are wary of the adverse effects of the overuse of technology, so they won’t like it.  However, Lee offers a print-out version for parents concerned about this. (Also, another mother said there was as much offline work as online work.)
• Children could say they have completed the work but not have done it. They can visit the link but not do or watch the assignment or video. However, one parent circumnavigated this pitfall by asking her kids to print what they had studied. She then called on them to explain and narrate it to her (see video below on narration) to make sure they understood the material.
• If you’ve chosen to do everything online with only one computer, you have to have your children study at different times as they need a laptop to do the work. If you have plenty of devices, this won’t be an issue.
• Although the Easy Peasy curriculum is eclectic, it’s also based somewhat on a traditional home education method which can be too rigid for some families and cause stress.

Is Easy Peasy Enough for a Complete Home Education Curriculum?

Many people wonder if you can get something for nothing. In this case, is this free homeschooling curriculum trash or treasure?

After reading through many Easy Peasy homeschool reviews on this program, I’ve concluded that it is enough. Parents don’t have to supplement it with other materials. One of the mothers in the reviews forum said, ‘It has everything you could need.’

Lee also answers the question on her blog, saying:

There is no need to supplement this curriculum unless your state requires more, few do. Is it enough? Read this, please.

Knowing this will be a huge relief for many parents!

Other Frequent Questions About this Program

I could deal with these Easy Peasy homeschool review questions in the article, but Lee does it much better. Mothers ask a few other common questions about this program, including:

• Is it accredited?
• How do I choose the correct grade for my child?
• Why is Easy Peasy free?
• What is Lee’s reading philosophy?

We’ll briefly look at these FAQs below.

Is Easy Peasy Accredited?

No. The Easy Peasy All-In-One homeschool curriculum is not accredited.

This doesn’t mean that schools won’t accept the credits you get from Easy Peasy, but they might easily reject it too.

On this issue, the creator of this program, Lee Giles, said:

NOTE! Your local high school does not have to accept your homeschool credits. Putting a child back in school can be difficult. Each school has the authority to accept or reject your credits if they are not accredited (which they aren’t from EP). It’s easier to get your credits accepted by colleges.

Having said this, parents technically can’t get accreditation unless children study in an online school.

And then you’re technically doing online school – not homeschooling. (Abeka Academy and BJU Press Distance Education do this). This is because curricula can’t be accredited unless used in a school.

See the accreditation section in the SOS article for more on this.

The underlying question with accreditation is, ‘Will my child be able to enter college without accreditation.’ And the simple answer to that question is, ‘Yes. Easily.’ Nowadays, you can do the SAT or ACT or have a portfolio that allows you to enter college.

And you don’t need accreditation – it’s just nice to have. You can read this article to examine this topic more. I’m sure you will find it helpful if you’re concerned about accreditation or college entry.

How Do I Choose the Grade My Child Should Be In?

There are some Easy Peasy placement tests (placement guides) that help you choose the level your child is at below:

• Math Placement test
• Reading Placement test
• Language Arts Placement test

These placement guides should help you decide which grade to start your child with.

Why Is This Program Free?

Many people wonder if a free homeschooling curriculum will be trash or treasure.

In this case, why has Lee, the creator of EP, made the curriculum free?

Without writing an essay, Lee is a Christian and trusts God to provide for her needs.

On her website, she has a link where you can donate money to her if you’ve loved and benefitted from the program. This is what Lee said about her curriculum:

I thought I could earn money by making lapbooks and selling them on Currclick.com.  I sent them a sample, and they sent me a contract. Before I signed it, the Lord convicted me. I was impressed not to sell them but to give them away. So, I did. Giving away free lapbooks, I started building a following at my homeschool blog.

There’s more of my story between then and now, but I guess that’s for another day. There was never a question of selling this curriculum. The Lord had already turned my heart on that issue, but I was making the site for my own children, and I didn’t want to have this whole curriculum and have only my children use it. I wanted to help others who needed to homeschool for free. From day one I wrote the assignments to be used by anyone, not just my family. [How Can This Be Free?]

The more I read about this woman, the more I love her! You can read all about her and her journey by clicking this link.

What is Lee’s Reading Philosophy?

Lee’s reading philosophy can be found at this link; although I’ve copied the relevant part, I want you to note below:

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 who had great success teaching to read with this method after struggling with other programs. There are also a lot of EP four- and five-year-olds out there reading on second and third-grade levels.

Other Things About the Curriculum: Facebook and Youtube interaction

It can be great when someone begins a free course until they hit a roadblock.

Then they want help.

The Facebook group gives parents this.

The Youtube channel is also helpful, so connect with both of them.

• Youtube channel. Here’s a link to it. There isn’t much activity, though, and the latest video is quite old.
• Facebook group. Here’s a link to it. It has over 61,000 members and is highly active. Different regions also have different home education groups for Easy Peasy, so it might be worthwhile looking for a group in your state.

Want Homeschool Help?

Conclusion: Easy Peasy Homeschool Curriculum Review

The Easy Peasy All-in-One program is an incredible free homeschool curriculum. I am surprised and encouraged that one woman compiled this quality curriculum out of the goodness of her heart. It gives you a complete record-keeping service (through My EP Assignments) and help through Facebook pages. After reading many Easy Peasy All-in-One homeschool reviews, this program has worked well for many families, and it’s definitely worth using.