With the school year winding down for most of us it’s
important to not fall into the dreadful “summer slide”. You know, when your
children somehow forget everything you have taught them for the last 180 days
and they stare blankly at you with big round eyes at the beginning of next
school year. Yes, because I don’t want to experience that in our household,
especially for my younger girls, we have been enjoying practicing math and science concepts using the Complete Home Learning Suite from Essential
Skills Advantage.
Essential Skills Advantage {ESA} is an online educational program designed for students Kindergarten through 6th
grade. As a small team their mission is to change the face of education by
providing every child with the confidence to pursue their own dreams along with the
necessary skills to do so. Does your child have any weak areas? I know mine do
and with the help of ESA we can focus on reading, spelling, grammar and
language, geography, math or science any day of the week.
We received an online yearly
subscription to ESA’s online Complete Home Learning Suite for two children and I
have been using this programs thousands of skill-building exercises with
Montana, 9 year old 3rd grader, and McKenzie, a 6 year old Kindergartner for the last six weeks. It fits the bill for us because they are visual, auditory and tactile learners.
The Complete Home Learning Suite includes access to the follow subjects:
Reading ~ Phonics and reading comprehension,
K-6th
Spelling ~ Fun with Spelling and Spelling
Stumpers, 1st-6th
Language & Grammar ~ Writing fundamentals,
grammar, creative writing, and vocabulary builder, 3rd-6th
Math ~ Complete math, operations, and concepts,
K-6th
Geography ~ Map and globe skills, World,
American, and Canadian Geography, 3rd-5th
Science ~ Earth & Space, Life, and Physical
science topics, K-3rd
Since ESA is completely
self-paced, your student can choose what subject and level they want to work
at. This is especially helpful if you need to do a little “backpedaling” and
relearn a concept. Feedback is immediately given which is helpful for
reinforcement and progression. As the parent you can log in and see your child’s
progress too and guide them in selecting activities to complete.
For McKenzie, she spent
most of her time within the math and reading sections. She was able to work
independently during her computer/quiet time. She normally spent 30-40 minutes
working or until she got tired almost daily. I never had any complaints from
her though, and she frequently asked to do ESA first after her calendar and
Bible work. We did dabble a little bit in the science portion, but she needed
me by her side to complete the activities. I definitely saw improvement in her
overall reading and math. She enjoys doing math, so at times I had to say that
she had to complete at least 15-20 minutes of reading activities also. Still no
complaints from her and we would just set the timer and she would go about her
lessons.
Montana on the other hand
was not as compliant, which is no fault of this program! She is my child who
likes to do what she can to get done with school as soon as possible, especially
if she is not interested in the subject. But, we are learning and working on
that each day and having a good attitude about it. So once again, I would set
the timer for 15-20 minutes for her to complete lessons. She tended to stay in
the Life Science area working with the animals, but I made sure to add variety to her computer time by
adding spelling and math activities to her schedule.
Overall, Complete Home Learning Suite is a great online
educational program! We give it two thumbs up and encourage you to look into it
to avoid that dreadful summer slide I mentioned earlier. But you know what? It’s
not just for summer slide, this program works great all year around! We will
continue to use ESA daily during the summer and I will be sure to schedule it
onto our schedules during our traditional school year at least 3 days a week. I
am especially excited to really dive into this program during our gymnastics
travel season. I always feel like we don’t get “enough” done as far a learning
during those 3-4 months, even though we do, and this will be great addition for
road schooling times.
Be sure to check out what
my CrewMates thought of Complete Home Learning Suite from Essential Skills Advantage by clicking the banner below to read their
viewpoints.
Company ~ Essential Skills Advantage
Product ~ Complete Home Learning Suite
Price ~ $69.99 a year for 1 student, each additional student is $.99 per month
Ages ~ K-6th graders
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(Summer Slide) Photo credit
Facebook:
Twitter: @SkillsAdvantage
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LinkedIn:
Blog:
(Summer Slide) Photo credit
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