Any “school” done during summer vacation needs to be a lot of fun!

Now that summer’s here, we need to keep this academic ball rolling, but any “school” done during summer vacation needs to be a lot of fun!

Enter Time4Learning.  Time4Learning is an online learning system that we used when Wenxin first came home from China.  I needed something he could do independently while I worked with my other homeschooled kids, and when he first came home, I couldn’t get Wenxin to do anything independently.  At the recommendation of our social worker, we used Time4Learning for a couple of months, and were pleased with the results.  Because Wenxin enjoyed playing on the computer, Time4Learning was a stress free way for him to learn the English alphabet and all the consonant and short vowel sounds.
At the homeschool convention last weekend, I decided to renew Wenxin’s Time4Learning membership — just for the summer — to give him a fun way to keep honing his academic skills.

Here are some things I like about Time4Learning:

  • It’s solid academically, covering all areas of language arts along with math, science and social studies.
  • You get access to activities for 3 grade levels:  the grade level you choose for your child plus one grade above and one grade below.  This helps us because while Wenxin was a 2nd grader this year, he did 1st grade language arts and 3rd grade math.  There are lots of kids like that.
  • As a parent, you control the amount of time your child has to work on academics before he gets a set amount of time on the site’s “playground.”
  • You monitor written reports of your child’s activities.  You see what he attempted and his percentage correct.  I print these reports for Wenxin’s homeschool portfolio.
  • Their customer service is impressive; I e-mailed them this morning and got a response within a few hours.
  • Last of all, Time4Learning gives you a two week money back guarantee.  You can cancel for a full refund any time during your first two weeks.  So trying it is risk-free.