DreamBox Math for Homeschool: A review

I decided to let Bug (10 years old, 5th grade, gifted) try DreamBox math for a semester and see how it goes.  With a toddler in the house, I have been really needing programs that take the teaching load away from me.  About two months in, I am extremely pleased with this program.  It is completely game-based and designed to be used indepedently.  He seems to enjoy it, and it has identified some areas that we had not worked in sufficiently (mainly geometry concepts).

It is common core based, and it "forces" children to learn and use a variety of strategies.  I think it's developing his number sense and mental math skills, so that is great with me.  It does a good job of assessing his level in various concepts and keeps track of what standards he has completed.  I will be able to print out a graph at the end of the year for his portfolio to show what work he has done.

It's very visual and uses a lot of virtual manipulatives.  He can work at his own pace and doesn't have to repeat things that he already knows.  I'm happy to use this program through middle school if he continues to enjoy it. 

Time4Learning: A Review

With Bug being homeschooled full time this year, along with his older brother, we've all had a lot of adjusting to do.  At first I thought that he would do things alongside his brother, doing something similar but age appropriate.  I am finding that it helps to use the computer to keep Bug busy at certain times, and everything goes a lot more smoothly if he can play on the computer.  PBSkids was an obvious choice.  Looking at Homeschool Reviews, I came upon a program called Time4Learning, which has many, many rave reviews.  I guess I'm going to have to be the oddball, because I didn't care for this program. 

I should have known that I would not like it.  It offers a lot of things like lesson planning and grades, which would be a big time saver for me if I made a lot of lesson plans or grades.  I don't, especially not for a 4-year-old.  Instead of lesson plans, I tend to provide options to him.  I've never understood how homeschoolers can do extensive lesson planning when it's impossible to predict how easy or how hard a concept might be, or how interested a child might be in it, or what else might come up that week.  And I never use grades.  If I feel they need correction, I will usually ask them to fix it.  Sometimes their answer is equally right or even better.  I always tell Bee that it's good if he's not understanding everything right away.  Otherwise, it would be pointless for him to be doing the work, if he's already mastered it! 

The other problem I saw was that, based on most of the concepts taught, Bug really needed to be in their 1st grade program (he knows his numbers to 100 well, and is becoming more proficient up to 1000).  However, he didn't quite have the reading skills to do the activities.  The lessons seemed boring to me, and there was constant multiple choice quizzing.  It observed that each activity consisted of a boring explanation, followed by a boring worksheet type activity, followed by a boring quiz.  For insteance, my son knows how to sort, but he had to sit through a lengthy explanation on the sorting process. 

Time4Learning is rather expensive, at $20/month/per child. Fortunately, they offer a free trial period of 14 days, and I was able to get my money back. The company seems to have good customer service, refunded my money hours after I had cancelled, and sent me an email asking for feedback.  They also offer monetary credit to those who leave reviews, which makes me think that the abundance of rave reviews are possibly not as genuine as they could be. 

I think it was mostly a philosophical problem that I had.   This is probably a good program for parents who value their children checking off objectives on state standards lists and want more test prep.
In our homeschool, we emphasize critical thinking, logic, following our intellectual passions, asking probing questions, and so on.  This program is just not a good fit for us. 

I'd rather my 4-year-old occupy himself happily with PBSKids.  We'll also be trying CBeebies, published by the BBC.  These sites won't help much with my lofty educational objectives for Bug, but they will keep him happy at no cost to me while I read to his brother from our history book, and Bug may learn a little something in the process.

Note to commenters:  I've noticed that several negative reviews of Time4Learning have the same people commenting on them, as if they are affiliated with the company in some way.  If I suspect you being compensated by the company, then I will not publish your comment if you have not disclosed your affiliation. 

Homeschool Day Book: A Review

Record keeping is not my strong suit.  As I've written before, I've been experimenting with Evernote to keep of a monthly list of our activities.  However, I was not completely satisfied with it because it took time to get the table formatted, and it couldn't be easily separated out into other types of reports.

Our school year "officially" started on Tuesday, and Monday night I stayed up getting things organized and planned for the week.  I decided to take a new look at homeschool record keeping software and printable planning pages.  

I came across a number of options, most of which I did not like. The programs I looked at had features that were not relevent to my family, such as grades and detailed lesson plans.  I am sure that these types of programs are invaluable to parents who make detailed plans well in advance and want to keep track of grades.  I looked at paper planners, but I was able neither to find or make something that looked like it would be easy to work in the moment and convenient to look back on at the end of the year. 

Then I came upon Homeschool Day Book.  I downloaded the free trial.   I think it's a keeper.  I like it much, much better than my own Evernote system, or any other system I've tried.  I've made a daily checklist to keep on a clipboard to check off through the day what the children do, and then I can quickly enter it into Homeschool Day Book at the end of the day, week, or month (yikes, hopefully not a whole month at once). 

Here are the pros for Homeschool Day Book:

• It is extremely intuitive to use.  It didn't hurt my brain to figure out how to use it.   A person with basic computer literacy will figure out how to use all the features of the program within 5-10 minutes. 
• It is easily customizable.  You can enter your own subjects and categories how you like. 
• If you enter an activity for the day, then it automatically updates your "attendance" record, marking that child as present for the day.  
• When you enter an activity, you can enter it for one or more children at the same time AND one or more subjects at the same time.  This is awesome, because we have so much overlap.  
• To create a report, you select the time period that you want, select the child or children, and select all subjects or one particular subject. 
• At first, I was sad that there was not a "book list" or "field trip" option because I wanted to keep track of  books I read outloud to the kids and print that out separately.  Then I realized that I can just call them subjects, so that I can print out separate reports for them.  Each time we finish a book, or go on a field trip, I can check that field.
• You can also keep track of how much time is spent on a particular activity/subject, but I'm not interested in that.  It would be useful for states where parents are required to log the hours children spend in "school."  

Here are the cons:

•  It's pretty bare bones with few frills. This is a good thing in some ways, but it also means that there just aren't that many features to figure out.  
•  I am not crazy about the way the reports look.  If you create a report for both your kids, for instance, it doesn't indicade which kid particpated in which activity, nor does it indicate the subjects that you checked.  You can print out reports by kid and by subject, however.  Also, there is a lot of white space that shows up if you create the report with description.  

Overall, this program is fun and easy to use, very customizable, ideal for relaxed, eclectic, and/or unsnchoolers.  I think it would be invaluable to someone who needs to keep track of how much time their children are spending on "school" to meet state requirements.  It's definitely more fun, faster, and convenient to enter data into the program than it was to enter it into a homemade table or spreadsheet.  It costs $39, which is not cheap, but it is comparable or less than similar programs.  If I have the time, I will use the reports to create my own, prettier reports of our homeschool.  If I don't have time, the reports generated by Homeschool Day Book will suffice, printed by child and by subject.

I'm happy about this convenient way to keep track of what we do.  Like I always say, the children learn the same whether or not I write down what they do, but it certainly gives me a feeling of satisfaction to be able to look back and see all that they accomplished. 

Disclaimer:  I received a free copy of Homeschool Day Book in exchange for writing a review (positive or negative) on my blog.