By John
(Nanaimo, BC, Canada)
We’ve been using K5 Learning (www.k5learning.com) for a couple of months as supplemental materials for our grade 1 daughter. There are 4 parts to the program, a set of reading lessons, a set of math lessons, a spelling/vocabulary program and a math facts program. All the lessons are animated.
What we like is that the program is very automated and our daughter can work independently through lessons without any supervision; the system even chooses the next lesson automatically so we don’t have to do anything. There are various reports tracking her scores in the quizzes at the end of each lesson.
We also like that the lessons are in small pieces; so if our daughter is spending a 1/2 hour on the program she might work on say 4 completely different lessons in different areas. That seems to keep her more focused.
I don’t think its intended to be a complete curriculum, but is more for providing easy to use independent study time with quality materials.
The math facts program shows the math tables color coded to show how the student is doing on every math fact which is pretty clever. The spelling program is also good – it does one word at a time and makes kids correct mistakes as they go so they actually learn the words.
1 Comment. Leave new
I’ll be provocative and echo I sentmient I read that Ben Domenech’s recent problems might partly be traced to a homeschooling background that didn’t teach him _process_ how things get done in the real world. Does that also hold true for all those that plagiarize and attend public schools? Plagiarism is a big problem in universities after all, and the majority of those students come from public schools. Did public education fail to teach Sen. Biden, for instance, how things get done in the real world? Very sloppy argument. Also, homeschooling does not create “bubble children”. The group mind-think that one must be immersed with ONLY children of one’s own age for 8 hours a day, 9-10 months out of the year, for 15 years or so, in order to deal with those that “are different” or be able to deal with “a world that doesn’t conform to their expectations” is quite frankly, laughable.