Little Homeschool Blessings: LearnBop for Families {Review}

LearnBop provided us with a 12 month subscription for the Family Plan with access for up to four students of LearnBop for Families. LearnBop is a personalized online math program designed for grades 3-12. Poppa works as an administrator within the public school system. When I mentioned that LearnBop was coming up for us to review, he said that he has seen nothing but good things in the districts that he works with and that we should give it a try.

Ceesa doesn't really enjoy math per say, but she will try out programs that we suggest without dragging her feet too much. So far we haven't found many that she has been thrilled about continuing working on. My biggest interest in wanting to try out LearnBop had to do with the intuitiveness of the program. You choose the child's grade level and the program gives the child a placement test called a warm-up. After the warm-up, the child is promoted or given review work making the entire experience adaptive. So many math programs do not offer such a benefit, although brain research points to the importance of starting with what the child knows and working up.

After doing a little more research on the LearnBop website, I found that parents should see growth after one hour a week and most concepts are mastered by one week.

To begin, each family is given a parent account and that is where the parent sets up the child's account (or children's accounts) and the parent can also work in their own account as a student. This is also where the parent puts the child's grade level or subject and account name and password. In the child's account, the child chooses a character (pirates, astronauts, and fashion designers are just a few) from the options. Then it is off to choose a topic and take the first warm-up.

Since the beginning grade level starts at third grade, review works backwards to kindergarten. Technically a kindergarten aged child could use this program, if the third grade was chosen.

One of the unique facets to LearnBop is the learning roadmaps for each student. These roadmaps are unique and are based on the child's performance and results from the warm-ups. Students are provided with instructional videos, step-by-step guidance, feedback, and hints. As the child continues to work, the program tracks progress, gives positive reinforcements, and shows motivational quotes (which Ceesa loves).

Ceesa generally works on LearnBop when she is looking for something to do or I ask her to work on some. She grabs a pencil and paper to solve the problems and then picks a comfortable spot.

After over 7 hours using LearnBop, Ceesa says that it is fun. She likes how it goes through the problems step-by-step. This tells you what to do at each place so you can understand each part and the steps it takes to complete a problem. She also likes the hints, as they guide her through the problems.

We have been traveling and on summer break and working at camp during this review period and I really appreciate that LearnBop can be worked on with handheld devices, so Ceesa can pull it out to work on easily.

At anytime, I can check up on Ceesa's work. By logging into my account, I can see that she has mastered three concepts during our review time and she is on the way to mastering her fourth concept. I see that she has completed 15 videos and 35 bops. Looking at her road map, I can see where she is in her progress, which building blocks (the gaps in her understanding) she has completed, and where she is in the unit concepts.

Our future plan for Ceesa will be to continue on with LearnBop as she has been working. We've started an account for Li and Jo-Jo, although we haven't completed much work for either of them yet. We will use it as a supplemental for Jo-Jo and starting in September as a full curriculum for Li.

Wishing you homeschool blessings,