homeschooling: why use www.time4learning.com?

[WhimsyLane]

   I am a happy, but very busy homeschool mother of three, totally varied ages, children. Mine range from pre-k to 3rd grade to 8th grade. Due to the economic hardships and job losses in our area, I am also having to reopen a small in-home daycare. This will mean having an extra 3-4 children in our home during our school day, all the while trying to continue with our homeschooling. Its a good thing I already have a subscription to http://www.time4learning/!

 While I would never allow my children to sit in front of the computer all day, there are periods of time when I will be taking care of the "littles" as we call the preschoolers at my home, and cannot be there on-on-one for a few moments. I need to know that rather than halting schoolwork 'til Mom gets back on the scene, my older sons can spend some time online at t4l.com.

 Lest you think T4l. com is all fun and games or just another website with fluff on it, you are mistaken. t4l. com is an online school of sorts, where state standards are met through informative and entertaining flash videos that teach grade-level concepts. You get math, language arts and language arts extensions (additional projects and writing assignments), social studies and science. Moms get  lesson plans, printable worksheets and answer keys, quizzes and tests, and a  progress report that shows you exactly which activity your child completed and his grade, if it is a graded assignment.

 It goes from preschool all the way to eight grade, which introduces algebra concepts, for only $19.95 per month for the first child with only $14.95 each additional child. That's most of your core subjects, completely covered, for less than $15! You'd spend more than that taking your kids out to get fast food!  T4l.com offers free one month trial subscriptions so you can try it out first. If you want, you can set your account to dormant when you know you won't be using the full-month, such as holiday break. Tgsi way you are only charged a small fee to keep the child's files current.  You can also cut the service off and then turn it back on at any time, but your child's progress reports will be lost. 

Parents can also take part in reviewing T4l.com or putting up links on their blogs and getting paid back for their time.

In the younger grades it also has a feature called Peedy the parrot, where an animated parrot with a computer voice, will read select lessons to your child.And also a feature for the younger kids is playground time. Mom, you can set the length of the lesson and reward the child with fun games for a length of time as well. I set my 3rd graders lessons at 30 minutes with 10 minutes of playground. He has to complete his work to earn this time. The clock counts down his playground time as he uses it, so he knows exactly when his game time is ending.

 My sons also have access to a few grades that are lower and a few that are higher. I enjoy this feature because it means reviewing a grade lower in a difficult subject until I feel they have grasped it, but also being able to move them both up a bit lest they get bored. Parents can also give assignments to the children which will pop up on the child's welcome screen under "you have an assignment". So far I have allowed my sons to work about 30-45 minutes in each of math and language per day, with another 30 in either social studies or science. They would gladly do more but I am afraid of eye strain so we try to limit their time online.

 My 3rd grade son loves t4l.com as he is a highly visual learner. T4l.com and Brainpop.com have to be his two favorite online sites for learning.

 I need t4l.com at this time in my life in order to effectively homeschool. I like the fact that when I am free, I can work one-on-one with my children on their unit studies and seat work, but if I'm not free, time isn't being wasted and state standards are being met. I like being able to print off the worksheets and progress reports for proof that my sons are working. And my younger son especially likes to see check marks across each finished section.

Lynn