One of the biggest challenges with being a home ed parent is finding activities that your children can do by themselves while you get on with other things. I spend a lot of the week sitting down with the girls, doing Powerpoint presentations, worksheets and going out on adventures, but sometimes I just need to get on with a task and while I'm doing it, I want the girls to be doing something constructive too.

We've tried many things over the past few years, but not much holds their attention for very long. That was, until we found Education.com. A library of games, worksheets and guided lessons with plenty of parental tracking. It sounded perfect so I purchased it and started to take a look.



The games library is amazing, I can sort by grade and topic, so it's really simple to find games that will help the girls improve on their skills. They love it too, letting them have 'edu time' (what they call it) is an exciting experience, they will happily sit at the computer, headphones on and work through the tasks/games one by one.

Speaking of tasks, the 'assignments' part of the kid mode is exactly what I had been after. I can set 'lessons' including games and worksheets for the girls to work through. When we were studying plants, I had an assignment set up for that and I always have a maths and english assignment running too. You can choose how many times they can complete each task, which child can do it and when it has to be done by.



However my favourite part of it all is the ability to track their progress. Education.com tracks everything they do and puts it all into easy to read reports. Grey means there isn't enough data yet, yellow are areas they need to work on, green they are hitting target and red alerts you that they need support.

There is also a great section which links you to more games and sheets that you can add to the assignments, so that you know they are working on the right areas.



The girls love earning awards as they go and get so excited telling me all about the new story that they've been learning or what word they've learnt to spell. I've lost track of how many times a day I've been told something like, 'Mum, I know what 7+4 is!'

The typing section is great too, it's a fun game that helps them to learn exactly where different letters and symbols are on the keyboard. In just 1 month, this has helped Naminé to be able to use the keyboard with far more confidence.

 

In conclusion I love education.com, we've not really dug into the worksheets as we use Twinkl for that, but the games, assignments and parental tracker make this site membership worth paying for!