www.Time4Learning.com
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WARNING: This is one of my lengthier reviews. I felt the extra length was necessary since I do not recommend this program for Christian homeschooling families. This is also probably the most negative review I've ever written. However, I'm not apologizing for its tone. Beware this curriculum, if you value your children's respect of you as an authority in their lives, their kind words toward each other, and value of human life. What goes into the mind and the heart, will also come out.
After my 13 years of going through the public school system myself, and then teaching at a public elementary school for a number of years, I have a long list of reasons why my children are being homeschooled and NOT attending public school. I also have several friends who taught in the public school system and have been homeschooling their children since preschool. However, I was asked to review an online educational curriculum that is designed on the public school model, so here we go!
Time4Learning is an online education curriculum that spans the pre-K to 8th grade years. It covers all core subjects: math, language arts, science, and social studies.
According to the Time4Learning homepage, here’s a bit more about their program:
“Time4Learning is a new approach that takes advantage of today’s technology. It’s a convenient, online home education program that combines learning with fun educational teaching games.
The online language arts and math comprise a comprehensive program for preschool, elementary school, and middle school. Science and social studies programs are provided as a free bonus for most grades.
Kids like using the computer to learn and to develop their skills.
Time4Learning‘s educational teaching games gives students independence as they progress at their own pace.
Parents like that it tracks progress and helps kids advance by teaching through individualized learning paths that assure mastery of the skills and concepts that makes kids succeed. Have a child with math and reading skills at different grade levels? No problem, just tell us in the online registration process.
Time4Learning is proven effective, has a low monthly price, and provides a 14-day money-back guarantee so you can be sure that it works for your family, risk free!”
Registration process for Time4Learning.com:
The registration process was simple and easy, and when I did have a question, customer service emailed me promptly with help and suggestions. The monthly membership fee is $19.95 per month for the first child in a family, and $14.95 for each additional child (*note: prices may have changed since I wrote this review). At the time of sign-up, a recurring monthly payment is set up, and members are allowed to cancel at any time.
Evolution components?
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Because my girls have not participated with an online “school” like this, the three of us sat down together and took a look at a few lessons in the science section for the 5th grade. While reading some of the lessons together, we noticed that there were frequent references to evolution as fact, so I chose to do the rest of the review of this website by myself, when the girls were in bed. My children are familiar with many of the concepts of evolution, but I would not feel comfortable having them sit at a computer just reading through page after page of evolutionary material, without me being right there with them to explain why the reasoning in much of the evolutionary material goes against what our own family knows to be true, from a biblical and scientific viewpoint. It would be helpful for families who choose not to be highly involved with evolutionary material to be able to choose science lessons that have the evolutionary concepts edited out of them. Maybe Time4Learning will choose to do this some day? Most of the homeschooling families we know in our community are adamantly against evolution, so they would not be interested in using a curriculum that promotes evolution as fact.
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I should add here, however, that the science component can be removed from a child’s account, by contacting Time4Learning’s support help. I didn’t see that the price per month would be reduced, though, if a component or several components were removed. It would be nice to have the monthly fee prorated to accommodate those families who don’t want to work through a lot of evolutionary material.
As far as lesson planning goes, some parents choose to print out the lesson plans on the website and then write down in a lesson planner for each child the specific lessons they want their child to do for the day or week. Some parents choose to print out each lesson, in a hard copy, that they want their child to do, although I don’t know how this would be done – screen shots, maybe? I think it would be a huge waste of paper to print out each lesson per child. Some parents even go through the hassle of previewing each child’s lesson the night before it’s done by the child, although if you had more than one child, this would take quite some time, I would think. Time4Learning is supposed to be a time saver for the parent, not something that ends up taking more time from the parent.
The “Getting Started” guide on the Time4Learning website was helpful and informative, as well as their “Hints and Tips” section. Your child’s grade level can be set according to his or her skill level, which might be lower in math, higher in reading, etc. This is a nice feature.
After children have completed a lesson or a set of lessons, they can choose to play in the “playground”, a game reward for the child. The parent can choose a specific length of time for the “playground” so that a child isn’t spending all of their time in the actual “playground” while they are supposed to be working through lessons.
In order for a parent to see his or her child’s progress, Time4Learningoffers some nice features: progress reports for each child that can be printed, extra resource worksheets, tests and quizzes, lesson plans, and answer keys that can also be printed.
As far as lesson planning goes, some parents choose to print out the lesson plans on the website and then write down in a lesson planner for each child the specific lessons they want their child to do for the day or week. Some parents choose to print out each lesson, in a hard copy, that they want their child to do, although I don’t know how this would be done – screen shots, maybe? I think it would be a huge waste of paper to print out each lesson per child. Some parents even go through the hassle of previewing each child’s lesson the night before it’s done by the child, although if you had more than one child, this would take quite some time, I would think. Time4Learning is supposed to be a time saver for the parent, not something that ends up taking more time from the parent.
The “Getting Started” guide on the Time4Learning website was helpful and informative, as well as their “Hints and Tips” section. Your child’s grade level can be set according to his or her skill level, which might be lower in math, higher in reading, etc. This is a nice feature.
After children have completed a lesson or a set of lessons, they can choose to play in the “playground”, a game reward for the child. The parent can choose a specific length of time for the “playground” so that a child isn’t spending all of their time in the actual “playground” while they are supposed to be working through lessons.
In order for a parent to see his or her child’s progress, Time4Learningoffers some nice features: progress reports for each child that can be printed, extra resource worksheets, tests and quizzes, lesson plans, and answer keys that can also be printed.
Our family's experiences with Time4Learning:
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Okay, now for our personal experiences with Time4Learning: Parents who are feeling the need to have their children do most of their schoolwork independently may find this website helpful. For those parents who need to work part time, spend extra time with their other very young children or a special needs child, this website might meet their needs. I spent about two hours completing lessons in math, science, history, and language arts on the Time4Learning website. Some of the reasons my husband and I mutually chose to homeschool our children years ago are so that they would be educated with materials that have a very high standard of learning, are not “twaddle”, for the most part match up with our biblical world view, and allow lots of interaction with Mom and Dad to help with building a strong family bond. Unfortunately, Time4Learning goes against most of the reasons why we chose to homeschool, so this website isn’t going to be an option for our family. |
Time4Learning is basically a public school curriculum gone bad – and animated, for the most part. We have no desire to have our children taught in the same poor methods that we were taught in the 70s and 80s.
Time4Learning is filled with “twaddle”. If you’re not familiar with that term being used in the educational realm, I mean that senseless, goofy, silly, and nonfunctional language, jokes, etc. used to try to entertain a child into being educated. Now, please don’t get me wrong…our family laughs a lot…sometimes, too much! We are goofy at times, silly, etc. We appreciate decent, clean humor. However, we did not appreciate the types of humor used on some of Time4Learning’s lessons.
In fact, if I had used ANY of the crude and inappropriate humor from the Time4Learning website in my classroom when I was a teacher in the 1990s, it would have been reported to my principal, and disciplinary action against me would have been made. I pray that teachers in the public school system aren’t allowed to talk like this in the classroom these days. My teachers never did, even though I had some very poor teachers.
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Read the following from Time4Learning.com:
In the 5th grade Latin Word Roots section of Language Arts: The main character, apparently a youth (?) says, “Babies are gross…” A lot is said about dumb babies. “Stupid baby”…and then…”If anybody tried to hurt my little brother or sister, I would hit them with my big stick, and then I’d barf and I’d barf again, because babies are freaky and disgusting.” At his mom’s prenatal checkup, her baby in the womb speaks with an adult male voice over some type of stereo speaker; mom says, “Oh, it’s a boy!” Dr. says, “Actually, it’s a girl.” Weird. Then the baby says, “I want a pink dress,” in a gravelly male voice. I didn’t even think this was funny. My daughters thought it was very strange and extremely insulting to the preciousness and value of babies. I’m curious why a school site would want to illustrate cross-dressing in an infant? Or to make references to cross-gender issues. Really? |
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In another section, we see: What do you think the word “renaissance” means? a. ceremony to contact ghosts b. cultural rebirth c. artwork Now, I wonder why would the author of this program even want to include seances or references to them in a school curriculum? Yes, I realize that seance looks similar to renaissance, but it is a poor choice. |
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As another example, a Roman Caesar gives edicts, which include no one being allowed to eat cheese anymore, because it causes gas, and then he proceeds to obviously pass gas intentionally, and this is even animated. In another section, a character describes what a dictionary is for, and says that he loves dictionaries because he likes to look up strange words, like “poop”. |
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I was born overseas, and I find this statement insulting: “If you’re born in Australia, you’re Australian, if you were born in …you are … (it continues with a couple more countries), if you were born in a bathroom, you’re a pee-an. Get it? European.” (These are the kinds of jokes that might make me smile, but I would wish I hadn’t smiled. This is inappropriate humor. This is a racial slur, anyway.) |
How about this one I heard on Time4Learning? “I’m writing a novel on my life. It’s about a super handsome man who dates supermodels and fights vampires….” The concepts are all wrong for my family. We encourage our children to not be prideful, to not look on outward appearances when choosing friends, and we don’t even go into vampires. What's the point? There are so many better methods of teaching concepts in fun and interesting ways. Why delve into those areas?
In one of the homophones sections: “It was a perfect night…for….murder.” Yuck. And another section of language arts: “I think it’s my cologne; it’s called, “Eau de Armpit.”
I enjoy good humor! And if I had noticed one or two off-colored jokes or typical junior high boy jokes or innuendos, I might have been able to overlook this. But literally, every lesson I went through on Time4Learning was like this! Yuck.
I also went through some of the history lessons. In “History of the Nubians”, it is one small paragraph per page with one small photo or graphic. Basically, just the same kind of reading from the kind of public school textbook that I didn’t enjoy as a student or a teacher, placed onto a computer screen. Boring history. Here’s where the animation with appropriate lingo would have been really nice. My girls didn’t think it was very interesting compared to the way we learn history in our home, and compared to many of the wonderfully animated historical websites on the internet these days.
Another history section: “Wright Brothers: “glided” misspelled as “gilded”, but this lesson was both appropriate and interesting. I’ll give them the credit for that.
Back to Language Arts: The homophones section took quite a while to get a simple point across. I think that a worksheet page would have been quicker.
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Math: “Symmetry”: excellent! No concerns at all. Great job of being animated and clearly teaching the concept. More Math: Turning improper fractions into mixed numbers: material presented far too quickly. Even though a student can repeat the section and have it retaught, the way it was animated is not helpful to show exactly which numbers go where, and it seems to me that the “teacher” talks too quickly. |
There were quite a few reviewers from the TOS Crew (“The Old Schoolhouse” homeschooling magazine) who, like me, were put off by the swearing (yes, there was swearing, especially in the junior high levels), children and teens talking very disrespectfully to adults in the animations, and so on.
For me, this website is more like twaddle, and it’s something our family won’t be using in our years of homeschooling, nor will I recommend this program to other Christian homeschooling families.
I've been asked about suggestions for online or computer-based curricula that is Christian-based. Here are the ones I've come up with so far:
- Switched-On Schoolhouse/Alpha Omega/Monarch
- http://allinonehighschool.com/ (Free Christian-based High School program) and http://allinonehomeschool.com/ (Free Christian-based Kindergarten through 8th Grade programs)
I haven't used either of these Christian-based programs. However, I was given a large stack of high school level Alpha Omega Lifepacs (the workbook version that isn't online) a few years ago, and I wasn't impressed with the content. My children would find it mostly not very interesting, with little to no hands-on features and very little interaction with the parent. For families who are in situations that need a program like that, Switched-On Schoolhouse/Alpha Omega/Monarch would probably work really well for them.
The Easy Peasy All In One Homeschool and High School look much more like what we've used in our own home. It would require a little bit of work for the parent in the beginning, printing and organizing some of the materials, but it's laid out step by step and would work well for families. It's nice to know there are some biblically-based options online that are free!
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The opinions presented in this review are entirely my own, and the content of this review was not written by Time4Learning, with the exception of some quotes from lessons. I was provided with two months’ free use of the Time4Learning site in order to write this review.
This post was originally published on http://www.JoyInOurJourney.com. If you see this posted elsewhere, it has been illegally scraped, and I'd love it if you would let me know. Thanks!