educationcity.co.uk

EDUCATONCITY.CO.UK

COST - £29.99 for a year (Standard Price). You can have a free weeks trial, but the sooner you subscribe the bigger the discount you will recieve. If you subscribe on day one or two of your trial you get £5 off, on day three or four it is £3 off and on any remaining day you will get £2 off. This is fantastic value for money as it works out as less than £3 a month at standard price, and since I only paid £24.99 it was even better!

WHAT IS EDUCATIONCITY.CO.UK? - It is an educational website, which schools actually use, it caters for your childs needs and works along side the curriculum. You can even get a homework code from your childs teacher and do extra work according to their class schedule.
The subjects it covers are maths, english, science, french and spanish.

WHAT DO YOU GET FOR THE FREE TRIAL? - The simple answer is everything. You are allowed to use the programme fully so the trial really does give you the true picture of what you are buying.
When you sign up for the trial you first choose your region, for example Scotland. There are various choices but unfortunately you have to be resident in the UK to subscribe. Then you input your childs name and age, after which the programme will generate a suggested level for your child, for example C - for ages 9 to 11. You can agree with this grade or choose your own. I would suggest checking your childs most recent report card and going with that grade. Unfortunately you can only choose one grade which is a bit annoying as a lot of children are better at one subject and not so good at the other. If this is the case I would recommend you go for the lower of the two grades because in my opinion it would be more useful to improve in the one your child is having trouble with.
Then you will be generated a log-in id and password id which will also be e-mailed to you. Make sure you keep this as this is what you access the programme with. This id is not just for your free trial, once you join it is the same log-in details. However they will re-e-mail these details again once you subscribe.

HOW DOES IT CATER JUST FOR YOUR CHILD? - First of all depending on what region you come from the curriculum will be set to match where you are, i.e nine year olds in Scotland would most probably have slightly different learning outcomes to those in Ireland or England.
The ability to choose what grade your child is on means if they are working ahead or behind their suggested age you can programme this to fit your child. If you are not sure and you child finds it too easy or hard you can also re-adjust the grade at any time.

HOW CAN YOU CHECK IF YOUR CHILD IS MANAGING? Once on the website your child clicks on her name. Once she has done this you can check her progress on a clear and simple map. When your child has completed a certain number of tasks they will be offered an assesment. This is a timed assesment and is usually an indicator that they are progressing well.
For each task completed your child can also print out an acchievement certificate telling you exactly waht they have learned and how they did. If they got some answers wrong they can also print out or just look at the corrections list which shows them and you exactly where they made the mistake.
There is also a Parents Tab before your child clicks on his name which gives you hints and tips on how to get the best from Education City and again you can see how you chil is progressing.
You can add more than one child for the same price which means you can keep track of them all at the same time.

FEATURES OF EDUCATIONCITY.CO.UK - Each of the subjects have different branches within them. For example, Maths has Information Handling, Number, Money and Measurement and Shape, Position and Movement. Again this may differ per region. Within each of these categories are a number of educational games or activities. Each time your child completes one, it will be marked with a red, blue or gold star. Gold indicates - 100%, Blue Indicates - More than 50%, and Red Indicates - less than 50%.
The star will represent your childs highest score. Even if they have a gold star the game can still be played again.
For a lot of the activities you will also get the choice of printing out a worksheet. I find that the worksheet is not to be done instead of the activity but alongside it. I find these worksheets are useful for categories you are struggling with or need a bit more practice in.
There are also other activities on the website you can do before you sign in to your name. These I find are fun activities with not so much educational value. They concentrate on fine motor skills and artistic development. You can download mask to cut out and colour or pictures to copy, colour and draw. There are also downloadables such as wallpapers and screen savers.

MY RECOMENDATION - I think this website is fabulous and my daughter has become far more interested in her education since starting to use it at home. She is very keen to please and so likes to have gold stars, and has also improved on subjects which she didn't like as much. It is extremely complementary to what they are doing at school. One way I keep tabs on what they are doing at school is to get a homework code from the teacher. Once this is imputed a list of activities which your teacher thinks your child should practice or complete will be shown. However even if you are not using it to complement there school prgramme it is brilliant to use in it's own right.
I would recommend Education City for any school age children as it increses their interest and enjoyment in their school work.