Signed Kids Up for Online Summer School

My wife and I decided to try the International Connections Academy Summer learning program for our kids this summer.

This was in an effort to not only get a head start on the next grade level but to experiment with online learning and see if we can help them maintain a part work / part play regiment all summer long instead of them going through the waves of complaining they are bored with nothing to do when they have so much to do it really is that they have no attention span and can’t appreciate just how much they have that we didn’t as kids.

There, rant over.

Meanwhile, the program we signed up for was 5 weeks long 6th Grade Math for Mason and 2nd Grade Math and Language Arts for Oliver.  They start on June 3rd and there is about 42 lessons in each curriculum each has an assigned teacher with lessons, course material and there is one live session per week.  If they like it we may make this an annual summer thing and it gives more options as they have a ton of other classes too like learning languages and other summer programs.

It isn’t cheap, but at $125 for 5 weeks it isn’t that expensive either, they estimated that though it depends on the kid about 2 hours per day should be enough to keep pace with the 5 week curriculum so it isn’t like they are in school for 6 hours a day during summer, it is more like a work before you get to play thing as I mentioned in the first paragraph.

As a method to keep them focused, I even created separate learner profiles on their laptops and changed the password for their main accounts, they start off logged in every morning on these limited leaner profiles which have no admin rights and only have browser with homepage set to Connexus so they can start their learning.  Then after we will let them switch user to their main account for gaming and online play.

There is some parental supervision and assistance needed, they can’t do 100% without some home assistance much like parents have to help their kids with their homework, but I am interested to see how well they do with this experiment in online summer school.

The cool thing is since we travel a lot in the summer they can continue their studies no matter which location we are at.