Time4Lerarning Homeschool Review

As promised in an earlier post I got an invitation to try out the Time4Learning website in return for an honest review on my part. I know it's been awhile but things have been crazy busy here! The good news is we liked Time4Learning enough to keep our subscription going for three months now. So, for the most part we do give it a thumbs up.

However, there are few spots I'd like to nit-pick about. First is the Language Arts sections. My 7 year old son finds them far too easy. He has phonics down and is reading to learn, not learning to read. So the Language Arts section is hardly even touched by us. Most of the introduced vocabulary words were too simple for him in this section as well. The L.A. Extensions section, which has interesting categories such as pollution, biomes, or early America have too much review of the same story.

For instance let's look at the complete lesson for planets. It starts with a background info section which is a puzzle you solve by listening to the clues about each piece. The next steps are: Story: I Wonder Read to Me, Story: I Wonder Read Along, Story: I Wonder Read By Myself, Story: I Wonder I Can Read. Now he would really lose interest if I made him the same story four times (he doesn't mind with real books at all, but these have a sort of "beginning reader" feel to them that he finds dull if read more than once). Of course, if your child could use the extra practice then this will be a great plus for your family. :) So we only have him do the "I Can Read" one, and then the last part which is the story comprehension. This is fine but it leaves the other story lessons as not finished, which means the green check mark won't show up on the main lesson page to show that lesson as fully completed and we tend to forget which ones he's completed without opening each one to check.

Math on Time4Learning has been a great help. He really enjoys seeing everything visually. It's a great compliment to what he's currently learning in his Singapore Math book or a wonderful refresher on previous lessons we've covered to keep it fresh in his mind.

He's completed all of his grade level Science and Social Studies. We both really wish they would of had larger sections on these as they were done really well and he enjoyed them very much.

If I had to give Time4Learning a starred review I would give it a solid 4.5 out of 5. I recommend it to anyone as a solid supplement. On the days when I had come down with a cold and felt miserable it was a real benefit to have him do lessons on the computer and know that at least something still got done.