day 195: summer academic help for the final month of summer—individual LifePacs

Summer is winding down….and you might want to dig in during the last month and work on getting ready for school. I have written extensively this summer about building your child’s reading skills (foundational to most all other learning). Today I want to introduce a company that is a homeschool provider—but has an added benefit to those desiring work on skill building in any subject area for a month or so.


The company is a huge publisher called Alpha Omega. Many homeschoolers and private schools use their material for their entire curriculum. But for our purposes here, I wanted to tell you about them because they have a workbook approach in which you may purchase one month of a subject at a time for only $4.50 a booklet in any subject area. This is an especially good avenue for working on specific skills in a specific subject or two.


This program is called LifePacs, and as I said earlier, is used in its entirety for entire curriculum. Here is how they can help you with your student’s summer “school” help:


1. The full curriculum for each subject area is available in ten worktexts. This means that each worktext has the teaching text and the student’s workbook in one.


2. Each worktext takes three to four weeks to complete.


3. A little known fact is that you can go to your child’s grade level (from this past year if you are looking to review), click on the subject area you would like to work on, and look at the titles and skills lists of each of the ten “LifePacs” for that subject area. Then choose the one that you think your child needs to work on the most, as follows:


a. If you can tell by the contents of each LifePac which booklet would best help you with the skills that your child needs work on, do it that way.


b. If you are unsure of the exact skills your child needs, but you know he didn’t have trouble until mid way through the year, considering getting one of the middle worktexts. (Or ending ones if he had trouble near the end of the year.)






4. You will probably need to call to order individual ones. (I didn’t see it as an option, but I called, and the saleslady told me that it is definitely possible.) So once you know that you want say 5th grade, LifePac for math #6 and 5th grade, Lifepac for grammar #8, you can call and just order those two for $4.50 each.


5. The worktexts are short and not the least bit overwhelming.


6. You might need to purchase the inexpensive answer keys for the entire year in order to check your child’s work, but those are not pricey either.


7. The first link here will take you to the LifePacs, then you choose the “look at this curriculum,” then the grade level, then the subject area: http://www.aophomeschooling.com/lifepac/overview.php

 If your child seemed to drag near the end of the school year in a specific subject area, this is a great way to focus on just that in an inexpensive, non-stressful way. I highly recommend it!