If you are a homeschooler or a parent wanting to supplement your child's learning opportunities, you are like me and like to keep options open for a program that your child(ren) will love. In the past, I have searched and often times, worksheets from IXL Learning would pop up but it wasn't until I was provided the opportunity to review the IXL annual membership from IXL Learning that I found how helpful it is. One of the things I didn't know was IXL Learning products are utilized in classrooms as well as homes in more than 190 countries around the world. The technology based learning and the long track record of success since 1998 sold me on why I wanted to try this with two of my children. IXL starts with pre-K skills all the way to adult level if one needs help for instance in Math where topics include Calculus and Geometry. Core topics include math, language arts, science, social studies as well as Spanish.
I found getting started was very easy and as a parent, I enrolled my students and then started with the Diagnostic Arena so I could be sure that they began at the right level. The screenshot below is from my youngest and it provides her assessment as well as recommended skills to help her improve in the areas she's deficient in. It also provides the option to print out the diagnostic summary.
Another feature I like is the ease in accessing both my children's progress, results and more with a drop down feature:
To help keep the enthusiasm going, there are even certificates as we know children like to be rewarded!
Both my girls have spent a lot of time working through the various topics and have enjoyed some areas more than others. Math was not a favorite but my middle one enjoyed Science and learned a bit about photosynthesis.
One of both of their favorite topics was Social Studies and we spent a bit more time in this area due to the vast amount of topics that interested both of them. Here is just a sampling of the many many categories under Social Studies:
- Prehistory
- Ancient Egypt and Kush
- World Religions
- The America's: Geography
- Government
- The Constitution
- Banking and Finance
There are many more available and with a year's subscription, we will have plenty to work through. A quick way to see what each skill entails is to hover the mouse over each category and it will display a preview such as this:
That was a summary of the program and how we interacted with the many features. It's a very intuitive and easy program to allow your students to work by themselves or in the case of my girls, I needed to work along side of them to keep them encouraged as they are not good at solo online learning programs. It can even be taken on the go with mobile apps! I really enjoyed the program and the many topics so I will continue to push them forward with using it as I think it's a great way to supplement their education.
There are three packages available:
- $9.95 a month for single subjects;
- $15.95 for combo package of Math and Language Arts; or
- $19.95 for core subjects that include Math, Language Arts, Science and Social Studies.
My youngest enjoyed especially the topic of Roman Numerals as apparently, I neglected to teach her that! They both liked how easy it was to move around the different topics and grade levels. Being able to see where they were deficient also provided a good source to turn to when needed to practice more. They could return to where they left off and next to each topic was a number in parenthesis of how many were answered correctly. I liked the versatility that the program allows the child to jump around if they prefer. Overall, with over 7,500 topics and hundreds of awards, we would recommend IXL from IXL Learning.
Check out what others on the Crew thought too:
