About a month ago, I agreed to give a candid review of Time 4 Learning in exchange for a month free trial. That trial ends tomorrow, so I thought I would go ahead and give my review!
First of all, just as a reminder, the Tweebs are in Kindergarten, and Motormouth is in 4th grade. So those are the grade levels we used. I'll start with Kindergarten, and then move on to the 4th grade stuff.
The Tweebs were really excited to try this out, and in the beginning they thought it was really fun. I like the way it's set up, to where the parent chooses how long the child has to spend on a lesson before they're allowed to access the "playground" part of the site. So they actually have to do their lessons before they can do anything else. You can also go in at any time and choose to change the grade level. This is something I REALLY wish I would have done with the Tweebs from the beginning. Alas, I didn't get it done until yesterday. :( The Tweebs are pretty much right on level for their age....not behind, but not really ahead either. So I was afraid to move them to the 1st grade lessons. I really wish I had, and I'll tell you why. When you go into a lesson (in Kindergarten you have the choice of Language Arts, Math and Science) it explains the instructions. Then it shows an example of how you choose your answer and submit it. It talks fairly slow, to make sure they don't miss anything. Which I like, for the first question, so they can really understand it. The thing I didn't like, and they didn't either (especially Thing 2, who has attention and focus problems, so he is very impatient) was that every time you go to the next page, it repeats the instructions AGAIN, very slowly. If your kids are like mine, where they are pretty proficient in video game and computer use, they don't need the instructions over and over, and just want the voice to be quiet so they can choose their answer and move to the next page! I was afraid to skip to the 1st grade though, thinking they would miss something. I wish I had, because the 1st grade lessons are more on par with what they are learning. Thing 2 did a little of it this morning, and he liked it much better, as it had the short vowel words and such, where the Kindergarten, unless I'm just missing something, didn't get to that. The math they enjoyed a little more, because it was things like patterns, matching and such, but once again, the slowness of it because of repeated instructions really annoyed them. They also enjoyed the science, and would have liked it better if it was faster paced. So, overall, my advice would be to really check out the different grade levels, and don't just assume that if your child is a certain grade, that is the level they need to use. They will get much more out of it if they aren't getting frustrated.
Motormouth used the 4th grade lessons. He LOVED it. I liked the way it was laid out....on each concept it would have a few pages of lesson, and then move up a little to the next step. After a few of those steps, there would be a quiz. You can do math, science, social studies, language arts, and language arts extensions. The extensions are things like grammar and spelling. That is what I had him use the majority of the time, because that is the area he needs the most work in, so it's what I needed to supplement. He also used the science, just for some added fun. I really liked that the spelling lessons included alphabetizing. He HATES alphabetizing, but he really, really needs to work on it, so this momma loved it!
Overall, I really did like Time 4 Learning, and would recommend it. I may use it next year when we start up school again. I just would advise you to really check out the activities for your child's grade level to make sure that they're what you're needing.
Have a great day!
