Time4Learning Homeschool Curriculum Review

SUMMARY of Time 4 Learning Homeschool Curriculum Review:

Grades: PreK-12th
Subjects: Core subjects (Math, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies), Foreign languages, and electives
Category: Secular
Format: Traditional online
Price: PreK-8th: $24.95/mo for the first student, $14.95/mo for each additional student; High school: $34.95/mo per student for any four courses; additional courses $5/mo

How to Use Time4Learning in Your Homeschool

Even before a homeschooling parent considers pricing or electives, they need to determine whether the program will even work for their family and their lifestyle. The question is, how does Time4Learning homeschool actually work? Is it hands-off, or will parents need to teach their children directly? What sort of planning will Time4Learning involve?

To start, parents should know that Time4Learning is a completely online homeschool program. While certain curricula may combine digital elements & physical books, Time4Learning is completely digital. With Time4Learning, your students can access their courses and assignments simply by logging in, regardless of which computer they are using. For that reason, parents may find it helpful to have access to schoolwork from their phone, tablet, laptop, or family computer. Therefore, families interested in using Time4Learning will need an internet connection.

On another note, parents may enroll multiple students in the Time4Learning program, regardless of varying ages. For Pre-K through 8th grades, parents will receive a discount on each student following the first student signed up. The program for each enrolled high school student will retain the same monthly cost, however, parents still have the option to enroll as many high school students as they wish.

Lesson Planning

With Time4Learning, the program is completely student-led. Because of this, your students can progress through the course as fast or as slow as they need and they won’t get behind with the program. However, if the homeschool parent would like for the student to complete a course during a semester or full school year, they may want to assign a certain number of daily lessons. Consequently, homeschooling parents may want to spend some time lesson planning for the year.

However, Time4Learning offers a few tools to make this process easier. They share the number of activities in each subject per grade level and then provide a formula for deciding how many lessons to plan per week. With this knowledge, parents can assign and check off lessons as students complete them through the week to ensure their students are on task for completing the course at the desired rate. Additionally, when one skips a lesson or there is a need to push it back, parents can adjust the schedule accordingly.

Recordkeeping

When homeschool parents look into recordkeeping, they must first define what “recordkeeping” means. What exactly are you looking for? Prepared reports, transcripts, and a diploma upon graduation? Or recorded grades available for easily printing reports and transcript or diploma templates?

Time4Learning is not a school, but rather, a homeschooling curriculum. Consequently, they do not prepare transcripts, transcript transfers, or diplomas, and a student does not “graduate” from Time4Learning. However, the Time4Learning automated system does automatically grade your student’s lessons, record said grades, and keep easily accessible reports. Further, they offer resources for transcript and diploma templates.

Teaching

With Time4Learning, the homeschool parent will assume full responsibility as the teacher. Many students find themselves capable of working through the Time4Learning program on their own, however, the parent is still regarded as the teacher for helping their students through concepts, problems, and explanations. Time4Learning is the curriculum through which the homeschool parent teaches their student. Additionally, Time4Learning offers a number of solution guides, answer keys, and online teaching tools for homeschooling parents.

Support

The Time4Learning customer support team is available via email daily and by phone Monday-Friday. You can contact them here. There is also a Facebook Families Group, which is a great place for reading about others’ experiences, suggestions, and to post your own questions!

Time 4 Learning Highlights

Time4Learning homeschool reviews often cover how well the curriculum worked for their child or how they liked it overall for their family, but they don’t typically discuss the actual features of the program and how it will work from day to day.

To start, Time4Learning is student-led. We’ve stated this previously, but what does it actually mean? You can start this curriculum at any time during the year and end whenever the courses are finished. This means that students can even start Time4Learning if they get halfway through a public school semester and switch to homeschooling mid-year.

Each membership begins upon the registration date and you can pause or cancel at any time through the parent’s account. Access to curriculum and reports will be available until the end of the billing cycle.
Grade-level program packages are as follows:

Pre-K – 8th
- Preschool
  - Time4Learning preschool focuses on the middle ground where play & learning meet! Children learn pre-reading and pre-math skills.
- Kindergarten
  - Time4Learning offers fundamental concepts for math, language arts, and science. Students will learn letters, sounds, words, reading sight words, and even begin to construct simple sentences with the language arts program. With math, the program provides a good foundation with counting, sorting, recognizing more or less, patterns, and basic addition/subtraction. As for science, Time4Learning provides members with access to the Science4Us kindergarten curriculum at no extra cost. Students will learn basic science concepts through interactive activities, songs, and projects!
- 1st – 8th grade
  - The membership for these grades includes the primary subjects: math, social studies, science, and language arts.
  - Social studies is specifically offered for 2nd-8th grades. However, first graders can have access to 2nd-grade social studies.
  - Time4Languages is available to all grade levels, even Kindergarten, as a foreign language option for an additional monthly fee.

High School
- Membership includes any four courses
- Electives Available
  - Time4Languages can be added for an additional fee
- Add courses for an extra $5/course per month.
- The high school membership program includes:
  - Lesson plans, resources, and teaching tools.
  - Answer keys, tests, quizzes, and worksheets (both online and in print).
  - An Activity Planner for planning out the entire year, or even just a few months or weeks at a time.
  - Automated grading and reports for tracking your student’s progress.
  - Curriculum customization options for multiple grade levels on various courses per your student’s skills.
  - A secure online learning environment with 24/7 access.

Pros and Cons

One of the best ways to determine whether a curriculum is a fit for your family is to narrow down the list into pros and cons. Determining the highlights of a program can help provide a snapshot of the whole and show whether the most important options for your family are provided by the curriculum. Time4Learning reviews typically reveal how the program works for each family, but not necessarily a comprehensive list of the merits or cons.

With this chart, we aim to break down the good and not-so-good aspects so families can perhaps move closer to a decision. It’s far too easy for homeschool curriculum choices to become overwhelming and it can seem daunting to lay out all the options and pros or cons of each. While each point is relative to the individual family, we hope this list is helpful for homeschool families considering Time4Learning.

Pros:

Fully Online. Time4Learning is a completely online curriculum. This may be a good option for families who like to homeschool on the go, don’t have a lot of space for extra school supplies, or need a program that’s easily accessible with a login rather than a downloaded program specific to an individual computer.
Student-Paced Time 4 Learning Courses. Your students have the option to work through the course as fast as they like. Whether they want to get ahead for an early break or need to take longer on certain lessons, they have the flexibility to do so. It really is time for learning and fun!
Available Customer Support. Parents aren’t left to figure everything out for themselves. Time4Learning offers weekday support via phone, chat, and email, and even weekend support via email!
Flexibility for Time 4 Learning Homeschool Supplementation. Time4Learning offers four core subjects, which allows for a lot of flexibility with supplementing certain electives or studies in addition to the main courses.
No Accreditation. Many curricula raise their prices due to their coursework being accredited. However, several homeschoolers realize that accreditation is not always necessary and would appreciate paying less for a curriculum rather than paying more for a non-essential label.
Secular Worldview. The Time4Learning curriculum is presented with a secular worldview, which could be a great option for families looking to avoid religious-based coursework, or even for Christians who would rather use a curriculum with a secular worldview.
Set Lesson Plans. Time4Learning has many tools available for parents to lesson plan, however, there is no need to create lessons with Time4Learning. Parents simply need to plan how slow or quickly their students should work through each course.
Recordkeeping. The program creates reports with student grades, which parents can easily print. Lessons also include timestamps on activities for attendance purposes.
Automatic Grading. As students work through the coursework, their assignments are automatically graded and recorded by the program, saving parents both time and effort. This could be especially helpful for parents homeschooling multiple children, or working parents.
Electives Available. Foreign language electives via Time4Languages and powered by Rosetta Stone are available for an additional fee for all students (elementary through high school)!

Cons:

More Screen Time. Since Time4Learning is a fully online program, the amount of screen time may be a concern for parents wishing to cut back on screens for their kids. This is really the only Time4Learning bad review.
Limited Support. While Time4Learning does offer weekday support via phone, chat, and email, at the end of the day, there isn’t academic support for your student’s progress due to Time4Learning being a curriculum and not a school. Additionally, support is limited on the weekend to emails, which may be an issue for working parents during the week.
Only 4 Core Subjects Offered. Due to Time4Learning only offering 4 core subjects, homeschooling parents may feel that their student needs to study more topics and perhaps need to research and add a supplemental curriculum.
No Accreditation. Time4Learning is not a school, but rather a curriculum provider, and its coursework is not accredited. This could be a con for parents who’d prefer the label of accreditation if they are worried about strict state standards or selective colleges.
Secular Worldview. Christians may consider the secular worldview a con if they are looking for a biblical-based curriculum.
Set Learning Material with Time 4 Learning. Though the comprehensive lessons cover essential topics to avoid learning gaps, if parents are wanting to create lessons themselves, Time4Learning coursework may not allow for such flexibility. It is a curriculum with pre-created lessons.
Restricted Recordkeeping. Since Time4Learning is not a school, it keeps grades with printable reports, but it does not offer full records, such as transcripts, diplomas, and so on.
Automatic Grading. The Time4Learning program automatically grades the student’s work, which could result in incorrect grades when the context is not considered by a program. However, parents should be able to alter grades as they see necessary.

Time 4 Learning Reviews from Users

“We used Time4Learning for the first time last school year. This year, we are using the curriculum again, as well as some other resources to meet all the requirements of our state. We love the material provided and the interactive nature of the curriculum. We also like the ability to choose courses that are behind and beyond the current grade to make adjustments for the learning abilities of our children. Time4Learning provides a number of resources to help you get up and going and they are used by a large number of homeschoolers. We agree it is time for learning and fun!” – Phil

“My son is very reluctant when it comes to school. He just doesn’t care for school. Homeschooling was becoming a fight every day, and it was draining both him and me. We chose homeschooling because my son has a health condition that requires so many doctor visits, treatments, hospital visits, etc. He would miss so much school.

Homeschooling allows him to school anywhere and everywhere. I was at the end of my rope. We had used Time4Learning in kindergarten, and it wasn’t a fit then. Now in 2nd grade, it is just what my son needed. It removed me as the one driving and forcing him to “do” school. Now he sees his weekly list of things he needs to get finished and he chooses. Time4Learning has put him in charge of his own education, and in that way empowered him. The tests and quizzes show him his progress in real-time. Thank you for making it easy for both of us.” – Jennifer S., Maine

“We have used Time 4 Learning for many years, and it’s one of those homeschool curriculum options that truly simplify life for mom. We enjoy customizing the schedule and assignments, and, of course, the automated grading is a huge benefit for homeschooling families with many children. We’ve used both the elementary, middle, and high school portions of Time4Learning and though we do enjoy supplementing with extra reading and other projects this online homeschool curriculum has been a lifesaver over the years. It is time for learning with Time4Learning! Rae G., Tennessee