My son recently had the privilege of trying out K5 Learning for 6 weeks. K5 Learning is an online program that teaches reading and math. It is meant to be used at home as a supplement to school or homeschool to help build skills. It's not a full curriculum. Caleb absolutely loved it. We had been using regular workbooks for math and phonics and I had to watch him closely to make sure he would stay on task. However, the K5 program really held his attention. He loved that he could play games in between lessons. I like that you can change what level he is working at without going out and buying a new workbook.
The first thing we did when we signed up was a math and reading assessment. Caleb did not like this although it was not long. He's not used to test taking so we figured out were going to have to do some practice before his end of year test. Anyway, the assessments took him about a half hour and if he were a good test taker he would have done better. However, he complained the whole time for the first test. The second was
a bit better, maybe because he knew more what to expect. When we got the results of the assessment they said this:
Caleb has done exceptionally well on his assessment, scoring well above his grade level in all skill areas. To be conservative, we do not automatically place kids more than one level above their nominal grade level. In Caleb’s case, this may not be sufficient, and we would like to adjust the placement based on your feedback.So after Caleb tried it at the level it was set at, he was very bored. So I emailed K5 Learning and asked them to set his assignments at a higher grade. They are very nice and did it in less than 24 hours. The program is very easy for Caleb to use and to understand. It explains things well and is intuitive most of the time. He likes the characters and the stories. He likes that it will read to him if he presses a button. If he doesn't understand a request he can press a button and it will repeat it to him. Sometimes the program wants the kids to answer questions quickly which is understandable but sometimes it tries to hurry them and Caleb has said ahhh I need time to think. Caleb also doesn't have a lot of experience with the keyboard so it's hard for him to be fast even if he has the answer. So some of the things he just can't get fast like the program wants him to. Some of the Math things he worked on:
- Fact Families
- Meanings of Multiplication
- Three Digit Multiplication
- Two-Digit by One Digit
- Multiplication Facts
- Ordering and Comparing Numbers
- Place Value
- Problem Solving
- Rounding
- Sight Words
- Cause and Effect
- Compare and Contrast
- Reading Comprehension
- Vocabulary
- Phonics
Lastly, the reports for parents are nice. This is the first program of it's type that we have used so I don't know how they compare to other programs. They have detailed progress reports with graphs and charts. They show things like grade level, time completed, lessons completed and percentages.
