This is an on-line educational website for preschool ages through middle school. It focuses on the subjects of Language Arts and Math, but also has some Science and Social Studies units as well. I signed my son, finishing grade 4, up for the free 2-week trial period. On set up, I decided to set the timer for 30 minutes of lesson before he is allowed to go to the "playground" to just play games. The playground actually amounts to links to child safe places on the web including PBSkids.com and games from Clever Media. There are even two-player games available with both students using the same keyboard. I set the "playground" for 15 minutes and then he would have to quite or go back to another lesson. Also on set up, I was asked some questions about my son's abilities so as to place him in the appropriate level in each subject.

My son absolutely loved the site. He would work on a lesson and often ignore the timer, going beyond the 30 minutes until it would be finished before going to the "playground." I was gone for a couple days after he had been on the site for a week or so and he went to some friends during the daytime, another homeschool family. The first day when he worked on the site, their daughter watched everything intently. She was so interested her mom signed her up for the two-week trial and then went to monthly subscription despite limited finances. She absolutely loves it as well.

After a week or so, I went onto the site and signed in as parent. I was able to view a list of the lessons he had worked on, whether completed or not. I was able to see what was completed, quizzes he had completed including score, and the amount of time he spent in each lesson. If I wasn't able to determine exactly what a lesson covered, a simple click and I would see the actual lesson. The content of the lessons is licensed from Compass Learning, reorganized and configured for homeschool users to increase the flexibility and control given to the parents.

Limitations: In my opinion, a lesson should be repeated if the child did not seem to learn the lesson. I asked John, the owner, about this and said he had that feature originally, but parents objected to this. Children are, however, able to redo exercises as many times as they like, though not quizzes and chapter tests. Another limitation, in my opinion, is that if a child is having trouble, it repeats the same verbal tutor each time instead of changing to go at it from another angle. I don't know if it would be feasible to repeat the tutor x number of times, and then change to y tutor assuming the student isn't going to get it with tutor x instructions.

I do recommend this site highly and after I extended my trial period and he did it for two months, I liked it even more.

Review updated May 2008 to reflect changes in Time4Learning's product offerings.

-- Product Review by: Nancy Wagner, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine