Time 4 Learning ~ the results

Well, our review period has ended.  We are thankful for the opportunity to review the product.  I will be honest that we did not get to review the product as fully as I would like.  I don't know about everyone else, but sometimes life just happens...  circumstances and situations not on your calendar and not in your plans just happen.  They don't work out like you expect.  I had planned on us using Time4Learning as our curriculum for the past month.  Abandoning other curriculum so we could use it fully.  Well, that just did not work out as planned.

Right now we are having internet issues.  (Thanks ATT!!) We are not getting the broadband service all the time.  They are supposedly upgrading or something I don't know.  So, sometimes it takes forever to load and sometimes the pages won't load at all.  That threw a wrench in our plans. We also had a death in the family and traveled out of town for a funeral.  A few other things happened too.  You know the old saying when it rains it pours...  Well, hopefully we got it all out of the way for a while.  If only the trial was for 30 days, not 30 consecutive days...

My oldest (a 7th grader) really did not even get to try out the product at all.  She is really a technology lover and I felt it would go over well with her.  So, unfortunately we won't know about her.  My 4th grader did try the product.  He too is a technology lover and can almost be fooled into school work by it being on the computer (notice I said almost.....)

The 4th grader really liked it.  He would sit and work for much longer than a normal time for sitting with school work.  He enjoys working on the computer.  My kids get limited computer time (with almost no internet time).  Most of their computer time is with games loaded on their computer, music, or creating videos.

The cost for the subscription is moderate.  Our family is on a tight budget and search for bargain ways to obtain curriculum. I am not sure that we could justify paying the price.  But it is not as much as some products.  Also ~ there is no contract.  You are able to cancel and they do offer a 14 day money back guarantee. That gives you an opportunity to check out the program and see if it works for you.

I like that it is all set up for you.  You can see log in records and progress made by the student.  It is little effort on the part of the parent.  I guess you have to determine what works well for your family.  I have mixed emotions about everything being online.  That ties you to electricity and internet leaving you less flexible.  We enjoy working outside on beautiful days or taking work with us when we need to go somewhere.  So, that is one downside to this.

Overall, I would recommend the program.  We did like it.  Maybe we will have an opportunity to use it again in the future.  One thing I am disappointed about  is that I do not have the availability to see my child's records since our review time is over.  I have seven days to convert the account to a paid account and if I do that ~ I will have it all.  If not, they will be deleted.  I thought I would be able to print/save the records at the end of the trial period.  Guess I should have checked a few days earlier...

Thanks Time4Learning for the opportunity.  Maybe you will let us try it again sometime.

***Update****  we will be trying this for one more month to give it a better review...Stay tuned...

Time 4 Learning...waiting

We signed up for a free trial with Time 4 Learning with the promise to blog about it.  Well, it has been six days and the accounts are still pending....  I have sent an email to the support and we will see what happens next.  Stay tuned to see if we get to try it out or not??

Happy Monday..

Time 4 Learning Curriculum Review

I've been invited to try Time4Learning for one month in exchange for a candidcurriculum review. Time4Learning offers an online curriculum for prek-8th, and resources that help with things like homeschool portfolio reviews. This can be useful as an afterschool curriculum as well. Be sure to come back and read about my experience.

My Kindle

I love to read.  Both my kiddos love to read.  Our house is full of books.  We also love our local public library.  I was skeptical of this whole e-reader thing.  I have tried to read a book on the computer and didn't like it at all.  I do well to read a long article on the computer.  I really wasn't sure that I would ever like an e-reader.

For my birthday, my mom gave me a Kindle.  I started shopping on Amazon's site for free books.  I loaded it up with plenty to read for our beach trip in May.  I first had to read the newest Karen Kingsbury book, Leaving.  After that was finished I picked up the Kindle.  I had all my books right there.  As soon as I finished one book, I started on the next one.  I didn't have to dig in my bag or go back to the room for another book.  I think it was easier on my eyes than a real paper book in that bright beach sunshine.  I am totally hooked!  I will never fully abandon books, but the Kindle is awesome!

My kids beg to read my Kindle.  I set up collections for each of them on the Kindle as well.  My 11 yr old started reading Great Expectations because it was on the Kindle.  I don't think she would have even considered it if she saw the print copy. 

For those of you that homeschool or take long car rides, the Kindle is a great solution.  One device with the capability of holding 3500 books vs. a bag of reading material?  You can hold all your books in one small place.  It easily fits in your purse, backpack, etc.  It also has the feature to rent textbooks for college now.  Stuck in traffic, waiting for an appointment, whatever the case may be you have your books right there with you.  I even have several translations of the Bible loaded on mine and have used it for church and Sunday School.


The Kindle is now available for as low as $114.  I know that even that amount is too much for some families.  For families that have avid readers, I think it would make a great gift for an older child.  An initial investment, then for other birthdays, Christmas, etc. give a gift card so they can purchase additional books and / or games.  There are so many free books available that you don't have to actually purchase books at all.  They range from old classics to plenty of contemporary books.  All genres have offerings for free books.  A great site to help with this is www.pixelofink.com .  They post  freebies and bargain books every day.  Better act fast though, because some of these are only available at free or bargain prices for a day or even a few hours. You can also load pdf files on the Kindle. 

There are only a couple negative things I could say about the Kindle.  But, even these things are not necessarily negative ~ depending on your preferences/use.  Currently, the Kindle does not support the format used for reading of library loaned e-books.  However, Kindle has announced that it will support this feature sometime later this year.  While this will be a nice feature to have, I have found that most e-books that I want to "borrow" from the library are rarely available and have such long hold times, I opt for the print copy of the book instead.

The other negative feature is that while the Kindle does have web-browsing capabilities, it is difficult to get used to.  If you are wanting to use your device for lots of web-browsing along with reading books, you might want a different device.  If you are using your device primarily for reading books ~ Kindle is the way to go!