My life as a home school mom has always been met with complaining from my boys. They really enjoy learning as long as it is not sitting for hours doing mundane work. Neither child enjoys writing and since moving into the T4L program we have been enjoying a calm through the house like never before.

This morning I had a list that we needed to do after they finished T4L. Both boys knew that a couple of the projects included writing and in order to stall they used T4L to their benefit. I was getting some stuff together to work on after lunch and both boys kept putting off getting through their lessons for the day. Finally I had enough and said “Common guys, you need to finish up.” For the first time ever I heard the words, “Is it okay if we go back and do one more in each lesson?” Of course I said yes and let them and as I continued to set up for the project that the needed to do; smiled at myself because they were actually enjoying lessons!

Every day is met with such a nice pleasant mood and it is not until I bring up that we need to do our writing projects that I am met with a little resistance. The writing goes so much better now though, because they have not spent all day working on problems in a work book that gives no satisfaction or interaction!

We have officially completed a year of Time4Learning! While it hasn’t been 12 months since we first signed up, my son has started and completed the 2nd grade with T4L. Yay!! He was so excited this morning when I told him that I had gotten the email confirming that he could officially start the 3rd grade. You’d think you just told him that he was going to Disneyland. Ok…maybe not Disneyland, but you get my point. )

I was SO proud of him today. He does NOT like math at all, but decided to just jump right into math today and that was the first subject he started! Having taken a little time off, he struggled initially but ended up doing well. The difference between 2nd and 3rd grades was very noticeable. The lessons were not (at least not today at any rate) quite as animated as we were used to, but he still seemed pleased. I know I was! We are keeping my 2 nieces for two weeks and they are also homeschooled. They use a different curriculum than we do and were very intrigued and watched my son quite a bit today. It will be interesting to see what the next couple of weeks hold for all of them! )

I can’t believe it’s been five years since my youngest daughter was born. Natalie, now five years old, started Kindergarten this week, but it was towards the end of this years school year that it hit me. She was moving from Pre-School 3 days a week, 3 hours per day to Kindergarten, 5 days a week, all day long. My first concern was making sure that Natalie was ready for school, no only socially and emotionally but also that she was ready intellectually. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t about to make my child spend the entire summer doing school work just so she could be “ready.” But I also did not want her to fall behind, so I did some research for books, online programs and other homeschooling programs.

I came across Time4learning in June and immediately enrolled her. I could not believe how much fun she was having learning. Throughout the summer we worked on several lessons per day, her choice not mine. We still went on vacations to visit family and Natalie generally asked to go on Time4learning as her down time, usually when everyone else was just sitting around chatting. It was so cool to be able to log on no matter where we were.
Since we started I have seen her improve in word recognition, rhyming and her biggest struggle, recognizing coins. I’m glad she had so much fun learning the fundamentals of Kindergarten over the summer. Now that she is in school we use the program as a great resource and support for what she learns in school, besides, she loves the fun activities used in each lesson as well as the playground activities, so as far as that goes, it’s a win-win situation.

I will continue to share her progress as we move through this school year.

Terie