Time4Learning

Any number of questions rage through Genius's brain in a given day. When she wants to know something she will generally look for information on the Internet. She is a product of this generation through and through, and knows how to work around technology at its best.

When we started homeschooling I hesitated bringing computer curriculum into our days, because Genius spends most of her time outside of school on the computer, and selfishly I admit, I prefer books. The paper and ink kind!

Through the TOS Homeschool Crew, we were able to try out Time4Learning, an Internet based approach to educating.

We opted of course for the Upper Level of teaching, since Genius is in 7th grade and up in all of her subjects. I will also tell you that we primarily focused on the Language Arts section of the site, just because our other courses are so intense this year, I didn't want to dabble with other curriculum choices at the moment.

They offer the core subjects of Language Arts, Math, Social Studies and Science, from K through 8th Grade.

The one thing I did not like about it at all, is that in order to see your child's report you have to log into their account to see the activity. I'd much rather see a parent account where you could monitor that information from.

That aside, Genius really likes using this. She thinks its fun, and giggles a lot. It's a pleasure to see her learn and have fun at the same time!

Time4Learning uses the The Learning Odyssey as their gateway. The lessons are quite interactive and appeal to the visual learner.

The lessons have type and audio files to give instructions to the students and explain the concept. My only complaint with that is the teaching is done mostly through "cartoon characters" who have different voices. While Genius was doing a lesson the other day, both my husband and I understood the word "ferrets" as being said as "parents". Yes, both of us. If Genius had not seen the word in text, I wonder if she would have thought the same....

The lessons are somewhat short, an introduction to the concept, some questions (due to the nature of the program most being multiple choice), and perhaps an additional section of questions to review and then they're done. Genius finishes about 2 or 3 sections a day in 30 minutes.

For some of the sections you need to identify words in a box, if a student accidentally clicks on white space it is counted as wrong. That was quite discouraging to Genius, as she was trying to choose the correct answers but the mouse was being flaky...

While most of the material surrounding the teaching topic is benign and we have what might be considered an immature sense of humor in our home ( so we laugh a lot at the jokes that others may think are silly or inappropriate to discuss such as burping and what not), there are things that we chose to skip due to the way it was presented. One of the middle school simulation tests on reading comprehension was about Hip Hop Artists. While I'm sure there may have been nothing wrong with the test reading itself, I pulled my daughter out of public school for just such "fluff" and felt no need to have her do it at home either. There was also a vocabulary section that dealt with the word "Subterranean" that they felt the need to explain and illustrate using zombies. Not up our alley.

In any case, this program has made me rethink about bringing computer activities into our homeschool anew. I really think that for the right student, computer based learning can be as beneficial as a paper and ink book.

While it is stated that this can be used as a core curriculum, I would hesitate to use it as that. For our reasoning, it would be due to the fact, that it is patterned very much after a public school approach. We decided to homeschool Genius because we thought we could offer her more at home than the school system was able to, so this program while great for supplementary activities wouldn't cut it for us as a complete option. If one would choose to use it as their entire curriculum, it is affordable priced at $19.95 per month for the first child, and each child you add is only $14.95 a month. They also offer a "hiatus" program, where if you know you won't be using it for an extended amount of time you pay less, but the status and reports of your children will be kept, so when you do return they can start where they left off.

If you are willing to spend the money for a supplement to your main curriculum, and monitor the lessons while being taken or in advance, I'd say Time4Learning could be a great addition to your homeschool. If you are interested in this program you can try it for 14 days risk free, and they also offer some lesson demos for you to see.