Category: Time4learning

Hey... Today Happened

9/12/2013

Ah.... today happened.   That's what I can say, it happened.

Our household has been somewhat lacking in the sleep department lately what with the humidity and heat... we needed a thunderstorm to cool things off and FINALLY we got that early in the morning. :) WOOT WOOT!

So my tired boy wasn't quite as tired today, but was still highly distractable... much like his momma.. so we did well to get things done.

FIRST OFF we did Target the question.   I did a review on this program oh.. back in March. You can find it here.    The lad needed to think abit and wasn't happy that I made him read the questions for himself today. BUT MOM.. why? you ALWAYS read it for me.   But son of mine, if you read it, we don't need to read from the yellow book. Oh.. okay. but if I read now I won't have to read later right?   Yup. :)   So he read, he though and he figured out his math word problems.   It was good. :)

Oh.. almost forgot. One of the lad's friend caught a garter snake today and asked if I could sell him mice for it as he wants to keep it over the winter. This lead to the lad (who was quite excited by this news) and I learning a bit more about garter snakes.    This site was VERY useful.

Then we went and did some art. Last week we worked on a fresco and today we decided to take a good look at the frescos that we did and turn them over and see what it was like to paint on the opposite side.    The lad was MUCH happier with his efforts today.

mine is the one with the tree and the birds and cold snow falling... and the lads is the one with the monster pig and the regular angry bird pig. :) I think the lad did a better job....

We had some paint leftover so I submitted to the lad a challenge... draw/paint ANY sort of picture, but add some fall colours to it. This proved to be a challenge, but this is what he came up with.

it's actually NOT black, it's a dark greenish brown that he worked hard on to develop with a whole whack of colours... but he added in some orange (Cause that's a fall colour right mom?)

this is what I came up with.. I'm not terribly unhappy with it but I wish I knew more about art and how to make transitions better from one thought to the next. The lad really liked how I did the clouds and made the day look like it was going to rain. :) And the birds totally impressed him.

I had hoped to portray a windy autumn day.... not sure if I succeeded.. what do you think?

While the lad was finishing up this picture we did another chapter from "a child's geography". The lad scoffed at the Greek myths and wondered why people would make up such stories. He doesn't quite understand that people always have a need to connect with God and when they don't know him, they make up their own gods. If you want to know my thoughts on "A child's geography" I did up a review on it last week. You can find that here.

We made some zucchini bread (recipe to follow) today for HOPE days tomorrow, and I had the lad do four lessons from Time4Learning. That review is here. He did well on today's lesson. He's a picture of him working away.

and yes, my desk always looks like a cyclone has recently come by.

We got in some phys ed later by going for a bike ride, the lad continues to gain confidence in this skill. We also cut the lawn, cared for bunnies, and kept ourselves occupied. Overall the day went much better than I had anticipated. God held us up nicely today. :)

Review: Time4Learning

9/5/2013

One stop learning. That's what Time4Learning provides. Over the past few weeks my son and I have been reviewing a program called Time4Learning. My son has been learning math, science, language arts and social studies. I received six months access to the program in exchange for letting you know what I think about it. :)

Vendor: Time4Learning
Product: I tested grade 3
Age range: k-8, they also have a new highschool section. :)
Price:
K-8 $19.95/month, each additional student $14.95/month.
For highschool $30/month each student

Screen shot photo time4learning2_zps231ad6e5.jpg

Time4Learning is an award-winning, automated, web-based learning system that provides interactive education to students in grades preschool - high school. Students can use it as a complete or supplemental homeschool curriculum, as an after school program, or as a summer school program.

Some of the facts about Time4Learning.

24/7 access to 1000's of interactive lessons for prek-12th grade
A safe, private, ad-free, online learning environment
Detailed lesson plans, automated reporting and guides for parents
Flexibility to start, pause, and cancel your account without penalties
Time4Learning staff will answer questions by phone or email

Those are the basic facts.
But what do you get?

You get a child learning.
We started out with everything at grade three, found some sections too difficult so I simply switched them to grade two. It was so easy.   If you sign up for a level you can go up or down a grade level for each specific area.   This worked well in our household. :)

You get helpful staff.
We got such immediate assistance anytime I asked for help with something. I found that quite impressive.

Detailed Lessons.
It was good to see how much my son could learn. One day we learned about measurements and he was running around looking for things to measure.    And you do get the option to print some lessons out to do them.   This caused my lad to grin.   The lessons are short, one lesson feeds into the next.   I could say "son, I want you to do three lessons today" and he would simply work across until he completed them.   Sometimes he was so interested that he simply kept going, but having the lessons short meant that when he wanted to go feed his bugs or take a break he could do so easily.

From the ease of login for the student, to the variety of lesson plans (see below) this is a comprehensive program for children of a variety of ages. They use a variety of characters and methods of teaching. Some pages are animated, others are straight reading, quizzes, tests, affirmation when correct and removal of wrong answers when incorrect. Parental reports and so much more. I can't think of a whole lot this program doesn't have. It is well done.

Scope and Sequence photo time4learning1_zps32c9d4c1.jpg

We really liked the LA extensions because they covered language while combining the learning with the different subject areas.

One day the lad learned a valuable skill. Reading something over and over again helps you to read it better. He saw his speed increase amazingly. He was so astonished. (see pic below) I LOVED this lesson for the affect that it had on my son. He was so close to the goal he was "Mom, LOOK! no mom, LOOK GOOD, you have to see it mom!" (I was sitting right with him so it's not like I needed the insistence...but it did show how happy he was). :)

Look mom look, I'm almost at the line. LOOK!

Time4Learning has a playground section. It's a place where children can go after they finish their lessons. It is seen as a good reward area. BUT my son had absolutely no interest in it at all. I had him check it out, but he was mom, can I go do something else now?? His own reward of being able to get out of the house and hunt bugs or go for a walk was way more intriguing to him than playing games on the computer. :) I know from checking out other reviews that my son was not the norm in this. Most children loved the playground section. :)

I loved how, for doing lessons, when you were completed it would show a check mark over the area that was finished. it was a good indicator for my son and a quick visual for me to know when he completed what I asked of him.

see how you get a checkmark for where you completed a task?

it is a program that you can use as is, but I plan to continue to use Time4Learning as a supplemental program, where I can plug my boy on to do his language arts in a different way, and to pick up on some science type things that it can do in an easier or different way that I can. Variety is the spice of life you know. :) This is a good program that will fit well into how you do your schooling, either as a comprehensive program, or as a supplement.

If you'd like, you can try a personalized Time4Learning demo. Time4Learning was reviewed by a group of people from the Schoolhouse review crew. There are some amazing reviews. You can click to read more reviews from the Schoolhouse Review Crew or click on the link below.

Reading and learning

8/28/2013

We read three more books at lunch today.

The amazing world of spider by Janet Craig
Jillian Jiggs to the rescue by Phoebe Gilman
The grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle

The Amazing world of spiders taught us new things about spiders. The fact that they have an oil on their skin that keeps them from sticking to their web. And that there are two main kinds of spiders...hunting and web-building, and we discovered a new type of web we didn't know before called a dome web.

click on picture to go to source of image. Spider Web images.

The Jillian Jiggs book made us laugh out lough. It was fun, filled with rhymes, and had a surprise ending. The lad says "this one is a keep book mom".

The grouchy ladybug was okay to read. It wasn't great, it wasn't horrid either. It would be excellent in a teaching situation to learn about sizes and also as a remind that being nice is not a bad thing to be. Grouchy doesn't really get you anywhere except perhaps wet, tired and hungry.

What else have we been doing lately?

We continue to do some math drills... no more than 10 minutes, so far the lad is beating most of the drills easily. It is giving me a good sense of what he knows and what I need to work on a bit with him.   Good to do now before we get to set on what we are doing.

We're are working on Time4Learning.   This is a review that we are doing.   He was happy today to very much improve on his reading speed for a piece that he needed to do. :)   It helped him to see that practicing does help when it comes to reading.   I'm happy that he's gotten a boost of confidence.

We continue to work our way through Bible study guide for all ages.   This is a product we reviewed a bit back.   It is a good fit for our family...and has gotten my boy willing to sing. :)   The only issue I have with it, is that it is geared for groups and sometimes working around the group aspect is beyond me.

Beyond that, we are just getting into the swing of things again on a more formal basis.    After not doing much official homeschooling while we had our international student here it's been good to be a bit more organized again. :)

Randomness in August

8/10/2013

Right now we have an international student staying with us. He is a nice lad and we are really enjoying having him stay with us. I'll be doing a guest post for Dusty about this. Below the two lads are checking out a tractor.

Today we'll be heading out to aquafest held in Grand Bend. To learn more about that GO HERE.

My son's been working on Reading Kingdom and Time4Learning. Reading Kingdom is going well, Time4Learning has been a struggle. Mostly because everything we have looked at he already knows OR finds very boring. So I'm punched up his grade level a bit and we'll see if that makes a difference.

I wrote up a couple of guest posts for a couple of bloggers this morning. It's my first foray into doing guest posts so we'll see how that goes. :)

What else?

Been busy taking stuff down from our vacation.
Trying to sell some bunnies and