{Affiliate Discloure: This review post of K5 Learning online program does contain affiliate links. If you purchase through these links I will earn a small commission.}
Every once in a while we need to have some school which doesn't feel like school. Or we need something to help reinforce or supplement the concepts being learned in math and reading. Well if that's what you are looking for you'll want to read all about K5 Learning and learn how you can use their online program in your home. You can purchase a monthly subscription or purchase for a whole year and they even have a 14 day trial so you can give the program a spin before you commit!
So what exactly is K5 Learning? It's a supplemental online program for math, reading, and spelling for Kindergarten through 5th grade. Each parent account can handle 4 students. Each student should take the assessment for both math and reading and the program will assign your children a path of study based on those results. The assessments take about 30 minutes to complete and include fun learning breaks with little 'games' within the test to help them stay focused and motivated. The pictures and characters are colorful and help engage the student. After the assessment it will put your child in that grade level and have them start working through the lessons. This means no lesson planning on your part.
You could also chose to assign your child what YOU want them to learn by using their assessment as a gauge and then go into the lesson bank and chose the lessons you'd like them to work on. This might be a little more time consuming on the part of the parent, but it would allow you to have full control of what your child or children are working on especially if they are needing extra practice. There are also use the worksheets that are generated and can be printed for additional work.
Once you decide which way you want to use the program and the assessments have been completed your student is ready to go. When they log in they will come to this beginning screen -- which always has a fun joke or riddle to be answered. My son has loved these so he can try to stump his father when he comes home from work. They can choose their subject from this screen. And then if they choose math/reading they will get another screen so they can choose between those.
Once they start in their chosen subject they will be guided by the computer to continue automatically. The child can not choose what they are to do next and they have to complete ALL of that lesson before they can get to a new lesson. Some of the lessons are about 10 - 15 minutes, but many are shorter then that. The lesson has a little tutorial, practice and then assessments. Some of the tutorials are cut into multiple parts so the lesson can take a little longer. I found this out a little later into the review, but there's a lesson library and can give you an overview of how long each lesson should take both by time and how many actual lessons are in each section.
There is also a progress report so that you can see how your child is progressing along with their grade on each of their lessons. I forgot to snap a picture of these. Sorry about that. But I know they are there. You can view them within the student account or from the parent dashboard.
Now after each segment the child will come to a stop sign with a red light and a green light. They can stop anytime they want. BUT until all the parts of a lesson have been completed their progress won't show up in the progress report. There are also many variations of how both the math lessons and reading lessons are taught. Some speak to you while others don't. We found that inconsistency a little annoying, especially in the reading lessons. My son isn't a strong reader and we thought the program would read it to him for all of the lessons. That was not the case. That then made me have to step in and read either the questions for him or the long passages that would have a series of questions. It may be that he was somehow assessed at a higher level then he should have been ... not really sure.
However, he really loves his computer time on K5 Learning and asks for it daily. Except for the spelling. We haven't really started with formal spelling so this was a challenge for him. I will say that some of the words were hard to hear and understand and it would change from a man's voice to a lady's voice depending on the word. If you get it wrong it does a hangman like example where it will keep the letters that are correct and give spaces for those you missed. It also gave you a definition of the word. After you got through their list any words you missed would be repeated to see if you could remember their spelling. When you finish and then come back another time it will give you your previously missed words again along with some new ones.
You could also choose to use your own spelling lists, but I chose to use their lists since we don't have our own yet. I didn't see a correlation between the words chosen in each list. Just another quirk in the online program. ;)
I would suggest to give their program a try by using their 14 day trial. You can also read how others on the Crew used K5 Learning in their homes. You can also find them on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+. I'd love to hear from you if you do decide to give K5 Learning a test drive - be sure to leave me a comment!
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