IXL Learning ~ Review

I have so many cool neat reviews coming up.  Today I have one to share that started a little bumpy in the beginning, but has proven to be a real game changer in the way we start our homeschool week.  I'm talking about the annual IXL membership to IXL Learning.  We have had access to Math, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies and even an intro to Spanish.  IXL is an online supplement program that is easily accessed by your web browser.  Or by downloading their IXL app on a device, you can have access to the Math and Language Arts portion.  This is wonderful for us because Kaden takes his tablet on errands so he feels like he's being productive even in the van. 

This resource has all these subjects listed by grade levels, but you can also search by topic.  Math and Language Arts is K-12 and the Social Studies and Science is 2-8 right now.  I appreciate that all of the grades are available to Kaden because there have been a few times when he has asked if he can do something different just because he was feeling overwhelmed with what he was working on.  It gives him a bit of control and he feels like there are choices or options available to him.  The topics are also divided up by skills, this has been nice to pin point a specific skill he needs to work on.  Just to also add, during the lessons if Kaden doesn't know something there is an icon he can click that says he isn't familiar with the question and he can see what they would suggest him to go over in order to complete this skill.

As always when we start anything new it's hard for Kaden to transition and regulate his outbursts.  This was a big daily change and the first one really for the new year.  With that said it started out rocky, mainly because there were a ton of questions in the diagnostic portion.  It took several days for him to get through and then I just decided to let him go forward and start on the actual lessons.  The diagnostic is wonderful to point out weaknesses, but for Kaden it was too long, I should have known better.  But, once we actually started working on the lessons he was very pleased.  He said the Best thing he liked about this program was that when he missed a question an explanation was given, not just the right answer.  Step by step with pictures and explanation, this makes it a learning experience. 

I asked him if there was something he would change about the program.  He said the timer with some of the questions, but he did like knowing how many more questions he had left and what his scores were.  He likes tracking his progress, but the timer makes him nervous and every time he would ask me for reassurance that I wasn't counting the time against him. :)

One thing I found so helpful was that you can create a family account for multiple users along with a parent account.  Everything was very simple to set up and easy to log in.  I love that you can switch easily between accounts, so you don't have to log out and then log back in.  Something I also liked was the reward system in place.  As Kaden works on mastering his skills he can earn little badges or stickers along your journey.  They have different collections that you can work on so there is that fresh new got to have it motivation to do one more lesson.  Also, they have certificates too that you can print.  I was more into it then Kaden, but I think most kids would totally be into it.

As for how we used this program, it was easy.  After setting everything up, I would basically let him log in and work on mainly Math at first.  I wanted to do 20 minutes every other day, but for him longer stretches of time with multiple topics works better and just once or twice a week.  Hopefully we can increase it as time goes on this year.  We are working on animal classification in Science and we were excited to be able to use the Science tab and quickly find corresponding lessons so that Kaden could do review work of what we are reading about.  The Social Studies is another goldmine that we have picked through.  There truly is so much packed within this amazing supplemental program.

Overall this program has been a winner in our homeschool.  If you are looking for a way to supplement what you are already using in your homeschool this is for you.  This will give your child the ability to review, fine tune and master the skills they have been working on.  It's a unique program that can work for the whole family no matter what grade level they are.  Even if you don't homeschool this would be awesome for the summer or to go along with what they are learning in school.  Especially since they do offer common core and is aligned with your state's standard.

Make sure you check out IXL Learning on social media today and click below to meet other Reviewers to see what they have to say about this Homeschool family's amazing review and mastery resource.
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