Wednesday I signed Aidan up for Time4Learning. I had seen this mentioned on so many blogs and websites and message boards but for some reason never looked it up. However, once I did, I liked what I saw and signed up for it. With the 14 day trial period I thought... why not? Well..... I LOVE it! Really really! The way the website is set up is that each child is allowed access to 3 levels/grades of work. (Aidan has K, 1st, & 2nd) The subjects are Math, Science, Language Arts, and LA extensions. (LA extensions and Science are only for 1st grade and up and Social Studies is added after 2nd grade.) Mostly everything is set up in a game-like format. If not a game... then it's a read aloud book... or a quiz to cover everything learned.
Language Arts:
K level goes through the letters and their sounds.
1st grade level does short vowels, long vowels, digraphs, variant vowels, contractions, plurals, suffixes, compound words, reading comprehension, etc.
2nd grade level does silent e, story elements, sequencing, homophones, synonyms, antonyms, inferences, cause and effect, summarizing, main ideas, etc.
Math:
K level starts out with sorting, colors, and number recognition.
1st grade level has comparing, ordinal, whole numbers, counting by 2's and 5's, place value, odd v.s even, money, beginning fractions, positions and directional words, weight, probability, shapes, temperature, graphing, and the list goes on.
2nd grade level has the same subjects as the 1st but they're harder and more involved.
Science:
1st grade level begins with living v.s. nonliving and has classification, weather, water cycle, etc. There is not a lot on this level however.
2nd grade level has life cycles, habitats, magnetism, astronomy, etc.
Again, there is not a whole lot.
LA Extensions:
(To me, this just seems to be the hodge-podge subject. )
1st grade level topics are planets, pollution, constellations, cultures, neighborhoods, jobs, farm animals, early America, vertebrates v.s. non-vertebrates, weather, biomes, jobs, Native Americans, etc.
2nd grade level topics are spiders, worms, hygiene, health, maps and globes, sound, heat, hurricanes, conflict resolution, laws, nutrition, directions, goods and services, etc.
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The best part is that it's an inexpensive program. Your first child... for a month... is $19.95 and each subsequent child... $14.95. I only signed Aidan up because it's completely unnecessary to give Ainsley her own account. Frankly, Ainsley doesn't do that much and when she does... is doing the K stuff off of Aidan's account. (you also can do each lesson however many times over you wish to) Since they allow 3 grade levels at a time...and if your kids are close in age.......hehe.
I do, however, want to say that except for Kindergarten... I would not call this a complete curriculum. I know that there are homeschoolers out there that use T4L as a complete curriculum but I do not think it covers everything that is needed... nor does it go far enough into depth. It is a wonderful way to introduce topics or just supplement them... but not enough for a whole, complete school year. But that's just my humble opinion.
1 comment:
I too have just started using http://www.Time4Learning.com after reading so many blogs,forums,ect talking about T4L ,lol. My daughter is in 3rd grade this year and we have been using it for about 2 months now and we really love it too! But, I must disagree about not being complete..Even thou I do like to add stuff to it,I think that some one could use T4L alone and their child would get a great education ;)
I think what I love most about T4L is that it grades it self..and I think what my daughter loved most was that it felt more like playing on the computer the school work ;)
hope you didn't mind me adding my review along with yours ;)
Sandra
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