Time 4 Learning Pros and Cons
by Kristy
(Big Sur, California, United States)
Time4Learning Visitor Reviews: Schooling my son has been a varied, exciting, and sometimes very difficult experience. We have used many, many different curiculums and methods over the years. And, I can say, without a doubt, that Time 4 Learning has been the best, most stress free education we have used thus far.
We have been using Time 4 Learning for a full year. My son is in third grade. At this grade level, Time 4 Learning has Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, and Language Arts Extentions.
Pros: For the most part, my son is able to move through the lessons by himself. The lessons are fun and entertaining. I sometimes hear him singing along to the intro or laughing at the videos. He actually looks forward to most of the lessons and will do EXTRA lessons just because he LIKES them!
My son is, like most in his generation, a tech-head, so learning via the computer is easy, fun, and perfectly natural for him.
Each lesson only takes about ten to fifteen minutes, so he is able to do a few lessons in both math and language arts on his own in just a short period of time each day. I like that he is keeping up with the grade standards without sitting in front of the computer all day.
The cons: I have noticed a few lessons are too short. In other words, they teach the concept once, with one example and then quiz him. They did this with two digit multiplication and division and my son was utterly confused. I understand that as a homeschool mom, it is obvious that I will need to teach him and help him understand the concepts, but I would like to have seen a little more instruction time on these difficult concepts.
We do not use the Science and Social Studies in Time 4 Learning. We tried in the beginning. But, he was not able to read it himself (it wasn't written on a third grader's reading level), and we soon discovered it was too time consuming, dry, and boring. I am a firm believer in science and social studies being interesting and hands on, so sitting at the computer reading page after boring page did not work for us. The web offers so much incredible potential for this area of education, but I have yet to see someone really tap into that potential for our children's education. I digress...
We will use it again next year for fourth grade. It is fun, easy to use, and well done. But, we will probably use a different source for Science and Social Studies.
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