Skwirk in the Homeschool

I wanted to share some of my thoughts on using Skwirk online as part of our homeschooling environment.

For our family the busyness of homeschooling is seasonal. There are periods throughout the year that we have a heavier load outside of the home.

During these times we often find it difficult to cover some of the subject areas, such as Science and SOSE in a more formal way.

Skwirk has made it so easy for us to include these subjects, with no work or preparation on my behalf, all at an age appropriate level.

This week at the Grade 5 level we looked at the SOSE unit on Australian Symbols.

The unit included a reading component, several images of various Australian Symbols, a vocabulary activity and spelling quizzes.

Here Lego Lover is completing the Cloze activity within the unit.

Towards the end of the unit, an interactive animated activity is included. This time, creating your own find a word. Firstly he needed to choose his topic and the words that he would be finding.

The system did the rest. The find a word works on a simple click and drag operation.

The entire unit is completed with a short quiz for the student to take.

When it comes to a busy homeschooling life Skwirk has certainly helped in ensuring we are covering a wide variety of topics within a small amount of time.

I technically still have a toddler in the house and we all know how demanding they can be. Many a time, with even the best plans, I have had to ditch activities and lessons due to toddler demands. But with Skwirk I can easily search for a topic and find a unit on that topic that the children can do independently.

So even if we are having 'one of those days' with Skwirk I don't have to feel guilty that the children have missed out.

At the Grade 2 level the units are entirely animated. no reading ability required. For all of the reasons I have already mentioned this is a blessing. Skwirk is an independent program no matter what level you are looking at.

We chose the unit on Environments, here the animation is discussing the features of a desert. Further into the unit it looked more closely at Australian environments.

This is such a plus for me, generally we find ourselves making do with American programs that are clearly not written with Australian children in mind. Skwirk is!

Once again each segment of the overall unit ends in a small interactive game type activity. This particular activity was a game of memory.

As you know this year we have our focus on all things Australian and so Skwirk is working as a fabulous supplement. When we are here at home delving more deeply into Australian topics I know I can jump onto Skwirk and find a supplement for that particular topic.

This has also added another element to the children's learning - elearning - so whilst the majority of what we do is covered by great books and hands on activities, once again adding this style of learning has added a whole new dimension to our weeks.

Whilst we are only a few weeks into to using Skwirk I can see that for so many reasons it will be an important part of our program this year.

Skwirk have very kindly offered my readers a 50% discount on subscription rates. Until the end of May you can get 50% off Skwirk with the discount code skwirkclass

Click here to visit the Skwirk website



Disclosure: I was given a family subscription of Skwirk for the purpose of reviewing. All opinions on this blog are my own and were not in anyway influenced by the product provided or by the company.