Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Time4Learning Review


As a Homeschooling Mama, I am always looking for quality material to supplement our curriculum.  If you homeschool you can understand how nice it is to have someone else create a curriculum every once in a while.  I had the pleasure of taking a few weeks off from lesson planning to try an online program called Time4Learning.

Time4Learning is a student-paced online educational tool covering preschool through high school. It can be used as a homeschool curriculum or supplement, an after school alternative to tutoring, or for summer skill building.  Their lessons cover all major subject for PreK all the way through High School.  Not everything has to be done online, they also provide printable worksheets and answer keys.

Before trying this program M was doing Kindergarten studies.  However, the Kindergarten LA and science material offered through Time4Learning was not challenging enough and the First grade math was just a tad advanced. The grades may not have totally matched up but I easily changed them from the Parent Dashboard.  It is great that Parents can set the grade level independently for each subject.

What's so great about it?
  • Interactive, Project-Based Activities
  • Detailed Reporting for Easy Record-Keeping
  • Lesson Plans & Teaching Tools for Parents
  • Lessons Correlated to State Standards
  • Detailed lesson plans available for parents who wish to review lesson contents
  • Gives students access to an online playground that rewards and motivates
  • An automated system grades lessons and keeps reports

M absolutely loved the playground and I loved it too because she did not even realize that she is still learning.  And although you can set limits to the time spent in both the lessons and playground, as long as she was learning, I gave her no limits.   I would like to see this program compatible with our Android Samsung Tablet in the future, but for now we may invest in an inexpensive Notebook so I can regain control of my laptop :) .  
My daughter and I noticed a few hiccups regarding some test answers, but they became great teachable moments.  Not necessarily a hiccups but more of questions that were open to interpretation.  One example was a science question.  The question was, “Do non-living things move?”  My daughter answered yes which was marked wrong.  Technically some non-living things do move.  Her 5-year-old response “Cars are non-living and they move, right Mama?”  She was 100% correct.  

As a parent, Time4Learning offers so many helpful tools.  I found the parent community and forum especially helpful.  It was nice to be able to ask for advice, share success stories, and bounce ideas with other parents using this program. 

Overall, we both enjoyed this program and plan on purchasing  a monthly subscription in the near future. What' not to love? The price is right, the content is great, and the program is fairly easy to use. I appreciate that this program allows for academic freedom and builds confidence by allowing you to create and customize the lessons.  Being able to customize each lesson to complement each student’s individual learning is my favorite thing about Time4Learning.  

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