Time4 Learning Review

Thanks to the folks at Time4Learning.com for letting me review their online program. I’ve been searching for homeschool programs that my kids can work on while we’re on our two-month trip in Hawaii. We’ll have some school work but I wanted to supplement with something online too to keep the work engaging.

For the last month, both my 4 and 7 year old have been using Time4Learning. I admit my preschooler has been using it a lot more. He’s been working on lessons on the human body, vehicles, and feelings. Each lesson is short and contains 4-5 tasks such as watching a movie or listening to a story, memory game, match game, etc. There were lots of lessons to choose from, and lessons were split into PK1 and PK2 levels.

I felt like the only thing lacking was more phonics for my preschooler. We’ve tried Reading Eggs, and it was solely focused on phonics, which is why I wanted to try Time4Learning. I wanted a more comprehensive program. I just upgraded my preschooler’s level to kindergarten to give him more phonics and language arts, and was pleased with the options. Since he’s a preschooler going into kindergarten next year, I feel like he needs a blend of the PK work and kindergarten work but I have to choose one or the other.

One other thing is I felt like there may be too many choices from the home screen. Basically, my kids could choose any lesson to start from. The home screen could have 10-15 different lessons to choose from. In the beginning, my kids would choose a lesson but not complete and then choose another lesson. I’d prefer that either they had to do lessons in sequence from the beginning or choose a lesson from the home screen and have to finish it before choosing another. I find that I have to sit down with my kids and watch as they go through a lesson to make sure it’s completely done. It’s do-able but an adjustment from Reading Eggs, which was sequential.

For my 1st grader, he loved having different subjects to choose from. Time4Learning offers math, social studies, and science in addition to language arts and phonics. He really loved the science section. I can already see that we’ll be advancing through those lessons faster than the others. I believe there’s 16 lessons for science, but over 100 for math and 200 for language arts. I wish the program offered the ability to access lessons from other grades but without advancing everything – e.g. science from 2nd grade but math in 1st grade. I think at this point we can only advance all lessons an entire grade. I kind of like the idea of letting my son advance in one area if that’s what strikes his interest at the time.

Our trial is over but we bought a monthly subscription on our own to test it out longer. So far I think it’ll offer almost everything we’ll need to supplement our studies while away. I find that I have the kids using it when they get a little crazy too. It’s a learning activity that’s fun, so they don’t know they’re doing school work necessarily.

Have you tried Time4Learning? Let me know what you think.

Disclosure
I received a free trial of this program, but the review of the program is entirely my own opinion from my own experience. I wasn’t otherwise compensated for writing this review.

Update Feb. 27, 2012
After my free trial, I bought Time4Learning for a couple of months to use while my family was in Hawaii. Honestly, it didn’t work as well for us as I hoped. As I mentioned earlier, there were too many choices and my 4 year old didn’t know where to go so he just stopped using it. My 7 year old had no interest.

So on the trip we got a free trial for ABCmouse.com. My 4 year old loved it. He especially liked getting virtual tickets that he could redeem to buy virtual toys and other things for his virtual room. Even my 7 year old watched his little brother play. They were both more engaged.

Check out my review for ReadingEggs.com too.