Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Time4Learning.com

I had heard about Time4Learning through other homeschoolers. I was never really interested for several reasons. 1) I wanted to be more hands on and do the teaching. 2)It's a secular program and I prefer Christian based curriculum. 3)Didn't want to pay the monthly fee of $19.95.

So, why am I now using T4L? Main reason: I got stressed out about being behind because of a busy month (see March Madness post). I am also realizing that, while I have some really GREAT programs/curriculum now, everything is very hands on and requires heavy teacher involvement. Which is what I wanted. I didn't realize what I was doing to myself though. I'm teaching TWO kids, have a toddler running around, and living a real life. What can I say? I'm still in my first year and learning alot about the hows of HS.

Math is my biggest challenge. Number 1 hates math so I hate dealing with her hating it. Catch my drift? Everything else pretty much rolls smoothly but not math. So to take some of the pressure off of myself, I decided to try T4L's math. The program offers Math, Language Arts, Language Arts extensions, Science, and Social Studies. It can be used as the core curriculum or as a supplement. I was thinking to use it as a supplement.
After using it for a week now I will be using the Math as our core. LA will be a supplement (even though it's thorough enough to be a core). Number 1 doesn't love the Science. It's a lot of reading. That's fine with me since it's secular based anyway. We haven't checked out Social Studies yet.

I'm just so relieved to have some pressure off me. And I'm willing to pay a monthly fee for some breathing room! :-)

March Madness!!

Truly, March has been crazy for us! We are normally a very laid back family. We're not the type to always be on the road. Normally. This month has been the opposite. I hate that feeling of being behind. I keep having to remind myself that we are year around schoolers for this very reason. We can break any time we want. Still, I pushed hard this week to get caught up.
The biggest help to me this week has been to try out Time4Learning. I normally research things to death before trying. I had heard of T4L before but wasn't that interested. I wanted to be more hands on. Neither did I want to pay the $19.95/month fee. But at the height of feeling stressed out about being behind, I decided to try it out. Without tons of research. After all, there's a 14 day trial period so I wouldn't be out anything if we hated it.
We don't hate it! We actually love it. Well, I love it. Number 1 likes it. Tolerates it. As she does most of her school work. ;-) I love it because it takes some pressure off of me. We're mostly using the Math and Language Arts section of it.
The Math section is my BFF. I've found that I don't love teaching math. I don't know if it's the program, the child I'm teaching (she gripes so much about math!), or if I'm just not good at it. I understand math pretty well (though I'm much more of a English girl) but may not be so good at teaching it. Whatever the reason, I'm thankful for T4L's math. It's so nice to be able to send #1 to the computer while I work hands on with #2.

Anyway, March madness has been mad but it helped me find a better way of doing things. So I guess it wound up being a good thing after all.