Dollar Homeschool: Review

Share

Dollar Homeschool allowed our family to download a copy of the Eclectic Education Series, you may order the same thing on a set of CDs for $159.

The Eclectic Education Series is a set of textbooks that was used in American schools from the early 1800′s to the early 1900′s.  These include McGuffey’s Readers, Ray’s Arithmetics, Pinneo’s Grammars, Thalheimer’s Histories, Norton’s Sciences and more.   This was American education during those years.  If you had all of these texts and the no-how to use them, you could educate all of your children from Kindergarten through graduation.

Since the majority of these books are available for free download on the internet, I’m going to do this review a little differently and focus on the service that Dollar Homeschool provides by gathering these titles for you and packaging them in a more easily usable format.

I think it is quite valuable to have Dollar Homeschool gather all the necessary text books for a complete education and put them in a more usable format.  Dollar Homeschool has done a good job collecting texts from the days of early American education and compiling them onto a CD with an index that enables you to jump from one text to another and even search for different terms.

I was intrigued by the science texts and McGuffey readers, so we decided to use those products for the review period.

First Year Science

First Year Science is a complete science program with no additional library or resources needed.  So the children and I began making our way through the 453 page text.  Unfortunately when we reached page 5 we discovered that there was no page 6 or 7 the PDF text simply skipped to page 8.

I immediately called the Dollar Homeschool representative and asked about the missing pages hoping that they would rectify the problem.  I spoke with Aaron Jagt and explained what we found.  He said those pages probably got stuck together when they scanned the original text into the computer.  Then he promised to email me a copy of the missing pages.   I have still not received a copy of the missing pages.

I asked if there was a way that I could get a copy of the whole book file with the missing pages included and he told me, “no”, he was not willing to do that.  So in order for our family to use the book First Year Science offered and advertised as part of the Eclectic Education Series we must open the original PDF file and then when we get to page 5, we go find the file with the 2 missing pages and read from there, then back to the original file.  There is no way to search the complete text and many of the advantages of having everything in one place are eliminated.

First Year Science is not the only text missing pages.  There are also pages missing from “Successful Teaching in Rural Schools”.

McGuffey Readers

Our family did use and enjoy the McGuffey readers.  I used the first reader with Sadie (6) and Savannah (4) and the second reader with Alyssa (9).  The readings were simple enough for all of the girls to practice using expression  and inflection as they read.  The out loud practice was wonderful for my, always-reads-to-herself, 9 year old.  I pulled the girls copy work directly from the readers for additional practice.  The girls all enjoyed their experience with the readers.

If you are interested in incorporating the McGuffey readers in your homeschool, I suggest you read this excellent article.  Mrs. White has many helpful posts and articles on her blog, The Legacy of Home, about using the early American methods of education.

One thing to mention about the copy of the McGuffey readers in the Eclectic Education Series is that the pictures are so dark as to be mostly unrecognizable.  There are several places in the readers that have questions or refer to the pictures, so this is more than an aesthetic problem.   I found the same readers available for free download with much better quality pictures, so I’m not sure why this problem has not been remedied.

The bottom line:

If the problem of the missing pages and picture quality is resolved and you are interested in using these classic textbooks in your homeschool then you may wish to consider the Dollar Homeschool Eclectic Education Series. However, at this point in time I can not recommend this product.

You may be interested to read more about how we schedule our day, incorporate family worship, or you may wish to see how our children help clean the windows.

Share

You may also enjoy:

1. America’s Heritage: An Adventure in Liberty – Review
2. Presidential Penmanship: Review
3. Educational Diagnostic Prescriptive Services – Review