Disclaimer: I received a 6 week trial of this product to facilitate a review.

 

k5-learning-review

Over the Christmas break, I received an email asking if I would like to review K5Learning.com. Since we had barely started our break and they were already going a bit nutty, I decided that using K5 would be our vacation boredom buster.

K5Learning

K5Learning.com is an online educational program covering math, reading, and spelling. Once you sign up, you can take an optional reading and math assessment. These assessments will place the child in grade level in several area and determine where to start the program. Intended for kids in grades K-5, it can be used as after school practice or for homeschool.

first-screen-k5-ss

There are 4 different areas inside of K5 learning:

— reading (including phoenemic awareness, phonics, sight words, vocabulary & comprehension)
–math (numbers & operations, geometry, measurement, algebraic thinking & data analysis)
–math facts (addition/subtraction/multiplication/division memorization)
–spelling (with pre populated word lists or those you provide)

If you would like to try it, they have a free 14-day trial.  After that, K5 is $19.95/mo at the time of this review.

Likes & Dislikes

My daughter worked our way through a handful of lessons in each of the areas of focus appropriate to her grade level. She probably did it 3 days a week for as long as she wanted. The lessons were short, taking her (on average) about 17 minutes each. She enjoyed them and asked to do them frequently.

report-overview-k5

I really liked the fact that K5 Learning tests and presents such a varied amount of material. The vocabulary & reading comprehension were the greatest parts in my opinion. She didn’t like the spelling AT ALL, probably because she doesn’t know her keyboard well. She also disliked math facts; this is also not surprising because she hates them in regular math class, too. She didn’t mind most of the math but it’s not her favorite subject so she didn’t do as much of the math.

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K5 Learning tries to be multicultural and tie in a little geography and such. I’m a little ambivalent about it, really. There was a sections about saving the rain forests by recycling which made me want to gag. That kind of thing really irritates me.

lesson-k5-break

I also found it hard as a mom to tell how much they had done, if I wasn’t standing behind them the whole time. The program moves in a linear way with a little policeman between sections, where you can choose to stop or go on. I would prefer something that shows me icons of activities completed and what they cover so I can see at a glance where the student has been & where they are going next.

Summary

Overall, we liked K5 Learning. I thought that the variety of areas covered in reading & math were great. That she was learning to use context for vocabulary decoding & was working on comprehension was awesome. I also liked their math approach. It was pretty similar to how we approach it instead of teaching strategy at the expense of facts.

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If we were going to use this long term, I would upload custom spelling lists for our curriculum into it and would have forced the math facts drills. The biggest part that irritated her was that they were being timed and her computer coordination was not quick enough to do well at them.

If I needed to work on reading and/or math and had little time or energy to devote to it (like another pregnancy or birth), I would absolutely use this again. I liked it better than another similar program I reviewed that includes science & social studies because it does less subjects, but does them better.

You can sign up for a free 14-day trial of K5 Learning and it’s worth it for the assessments alone if you were curious about where your child is.

Do you use computer-based educational programs?

Jen S.

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