Resource Description
Time4Learning.com is an online education program that teaches preschool through twelfth grade curriculum in an interactive, student-centered environment.
Time4Learning combines 1000+ animated lessons, printable worksheets and graded activities to teach math and language arts lessons correlated to state standards. Science, social studies and art are also provided as a bonus for most grades.
Key features of the program:
- Students get individual logins and work on their own schedule and pace
- Parents can set the grade level independently for each subject
- The grade above and below are available for review and additional study
- There are no CDs and nothing additional to purchase
- An online playground rewards and motivates
- Detailed lesson plans available for parents who wish to preview lessons
- An automated system grades the lessons and keeps printable reports
Time4Learning can be used with a broad array of student types, learning styles and homeschooling methods. It is entirely web based, so your kids will be able to access the program 24/7 from any computer with an internet connection.
It has a low monthly price, requires no contracts and offers a 14 day money-back guarantee.
Website: Time4Learning (may contain affiliate links)
(78 Reviews)
Before investing in any homeschooling resources, please read "How to Choose the Best Homeschool Curriculum."
Contributor Reviews
Reviews are solely the opinions of the contributor.
Once they have your credit card number they will continue to charge long after you have stopped using their product. I would not recommend giving them access to your credit card.
Cons: Absolutely Everything.
Grades Used: 8th
I am a student for 8th grade and it is legit the worst thing I have ever seen.
I have read many college-level books in science and language arts and I find the lessons to be extremely slow, the fact that its hard to fast forward just makes itn that bad.
Oh, not to mention VERYTHING about the animations is just... off, uncanny valley and also for anyone under the age of 8 to enjoy. Everything is childish and stupid, answers that ARE correct are marked as incorrect, etc.
Cons: It's childish and stupid
Grades Used: 8th
I'm not a parent i'm a student and let me tell you, do not use this program it is EXTREMELY outdated, like early 2000's type. The animation they use is on the verge of terrifying. The curriculum sucks. You can't save your writing assignments, so if you don't finish writing something one day, you can't pick up where you left off, you have to restart. it's just overall really irritating and not worth even 20 dollars a month. Do not use this curriculum, your children will hate you and the dumb animation characters.
Cons: Video presentations can not be paused
Grades Used: middle and senior
Time4learning has a nice presentation, reporting, parent reports, etc, and looks like it will be a great program for learning. The fatal flaw is that the video pesentations CAN NOT BE PAUSED, or REWOUND 10 SECONDS to allow notetaking.
My student ends up playing the videos over and over, trying to take notes, which ends taking so much time that the courses take forever.
According to our support resource, this is just the way that it is, and can't be addressed.
We are cancelling our subscription, and looking for a delivery that utilizes the technology.
Cons: Practically everything
Grades Used: 3, 5, 6, 8
This site is entirely awful. My mother and I chose it in between grades for mental health problems but it hardly helped due to the fact that it is horribly downgrading and ridiculous. An eighth grader shouldn't be trying to get an education by going to a site where in literature you have talking cartoony characters that make bad jokes about antonyms and word definitions.
I haven't learned a single thing new inside this program since we began. Let's go over what each subject has been teaching me lately...
Language arts: In this we have two absolutely ridiculous cartoons talking about things that I learned in second grade. The "Word Herd" and "The Old Time Word Show". It has been attempting to teach me about idioms, synonyms, antonyms and suffixes. What kind of eighth grader doesn't know what these are?
Science: There is always just one stupid video you have to watch. It's called "The Mind Keepers" and it has a sci-fi kind of theme I guess? But it's extremely cheesy just as all the other lessons are and again, never teaches me ANTHING. So far it has tried to teach me that wow who would've guessed? Rocks aren't living things. Wow. So teaching me basics on what are living creatures + it's just now teaching me about the theory of evolution.
Note: In this you have a character who goes on missions to see teachers in a world that society has broken down and collapsed and education no longer exists. It usually brings you to one specific man (who I forgot the name of) and he tells stories about random things he went through in the past that are totally unrelated. And of course, he's kind of really creepy soo. Yeah.
Okay so now we have math: It's just one woman or one man talking about math that I will never use in my entire life. They explain it in very confusing ways that are really hard to grasp and every time that I enter in a question wrong it doesn't try to help me, it says something along the lines of "You need to get this number first and then make the equation!" which makes zero sense for the problems that I've been working on and how they're being asked. It's been attempting to teach me about basic fractions, exponents, roman numerals and basic algebra.
Social Studies: God, I don't even know how to explain this to the extent that it needs to be. It gives false information on cultures and religions, calls Native Americans indians, and it's just... In really awful quality? They teach lessons in a square box with really sloppy vector "animations" that make horrible jokes in awful quality. I'm not even going to say anything more, just ask another kid past fourth grade what they think of it and they will most likely say the same thing or give you more information on it.
Please do not school your kid here whatsoever. Being treated like this for months has been bad on my mental state and a big waste of my time.
Cons: EVERYTHING.
Grades Used: 10th
I don't even know where to start with this. I'm a sophomore who's been homeschooled my entire life and switched to Time4Learning a year ago. I am so very, very less than thrilled. And by less than thrilled, I mean that if I rubbed a magic lamp and a genie appeared, I would wish this program out of existence. Nothing, repeat, nothing, was challenging for me. As a very gifted student used to an amazing homeschool program, this feels like a Lego hut in comparison to the Taj Mahal.
The lessons were long, boring, and positively degrading. During one science lesson, a pink unicorn suddenly blasted onto the screen for no reason. Two minutes later a badly-animated Cyclops showed up, and I checked out. This is high school, not kindergarten. I am thoroughly disgusted with the cheesy, kiddish, stupid, moronic, idiotic nonsense being shoved down my throat with this program. It is absolutely sickening. At one point, when discussing my religious beliefs, the program offered false and extremely offensive information.
The companion program, Time4Writing, is only marginally better. While it feels more like a high school program (with the exception of comparing paragraphs to cheeseburgers) students who do not struggle chronically with writing will learn NOTHING. I myself am an avid reader and aspiring novelist, and this program was basic. Any writing curriculum could give the same information- in 6th or 7th grade. Not 10th. Run from this entire program.
Cons: Cheesy, insulting material, extremely difficult courses, hard-to-understand format, general stupidness
Grades Used: 10th
I am a high school sophomore doing this program for the first time, and I do NOT recommend it!
Math was WAY too challenging- my mom, who is a Director of Education and in an honor society, couldn't understand it. Everything else was just plain stupid. Animation and cheesy characters may be great for kindergarteners and maybe up to fourth grade, but for high schoolers, it actually feels insulting. I learned nothing except how to zone out during boring, too-long lessons.
The type of math that they use is stuff you will never need to use again, unless you become a math teacher for extremely gifted clones of Albert Einstein. Yes, that is how hard it is. Also, I have lost count of the times when the teacher tells you that you need to do something with a problem and then skips right to the answer, without showing you how to DO the problem. Questions asked on quizzes didn't match up with information learned (read "pounded into my head with the sledgehammer of repetitive facts and the gigantic mallet of boredom".)
The English program was lame at the very best. It taught me absolutely nothing that I had not learned four or five grades ago, and most of the stories and books they had us read was material I had already gone through. The corny animations (especially the "After Class", "Class Notes", and "What the Class Thinks" segments) did nothing to hold my attention and were actually demeaning in a sense. There is no worse feeling than to know you're better than something and yet be forced to sit through it anyway because an online program doesn't think you're smart enough to be taught in another way.
The Earth/Space Science course was a little better, but not much. They focused more on Earth than space, when space was what I wanted to learn about. The characters in this course were actually worse than the ones in the English course (such as a lesson involving "space monkeys".) This is too dumb even for first-graders, and they pass it off as a high school program.
The World Geography section was by far the worst. During one lesson, the program claimed that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all worship the same God, which is NOT true. More brain-numbingly boring characters added themselves to the list: the Duke of Duck, Gee-Oh Tours (let us take you around the world!), and Glurg, a vomiting camel. Yes, you read that right. A. Vomiting. Camel. In high school!
I cannot recommend this program to anyone. It is a waste of time, money, and brain cells. The only thing I learned was that some homsechool programs should be outlawed for stupidity- and this is the one that needs to be run out of town on a rail.
Cons: A bit spendy for 3 kids, needs to supplement
Grades Used: K,1,3,4,5,6
This is our second year using this homeschooling program. I really enjoy how easy it is, no prep on my part. I can log in under the parent's account and see exactly what my child did that day. It may not be a full curriculum, but its pretty close. The only subjects missing from this program, that our state requires, is art and music appreciation.
I recommend to any parent looking into this program, is to first see what your state requires. Yes, this program is not accredited, because it is a homeschool program, not a private school. If accreditation is what you are after, this program is not for you. The only downside is my kids don't get enough time actually writing, so I have them use a writing journal.
I had my older children tested last year, and they scored over a grade level ahead. If it works for us, it can for your family as well.
awful. maybe you can use it to supplement but this absolutely cannot be a student's main source of education
Cons: social studies and science are read only, math lessons need more explanation so you do have to supplement.
Grades Used: 3,4,5
While you do need to supplement some lessons, the program uses Compass Learning which is also used by the school system in my area.
The lessons are engaging and are aligned with common core requirements.