Doug Dohring's Tumblr Blog

I'm thrilled to announced the launch of Homeschool+™, a new program from Age of Learning that provides home educators with resources and tools to guide their child’s education and inspire a lifelong love of learning. Developed for children ages 4-8, Homeschool+ offers a comprehensive curriculum, adaptive math and reading learning programs, and robust home educator tools for planning lessons and tracking progress, customizable to meet each family’s unique homeschooling needs.

“Age of Learning spent more than a decade developing research-based programs that engage children and accelerate learning”Tweet this

The Homeschool+ curriculum features Age of Learning’s research-validated digital learning solutions My Math Academy, and My Reading Academy. Based on well-established principles of learning science research, these programs enable young children to master essential math concepts and build foundational literacy skills. They help accelerate learning by identifying each child’s strengths and growth opportunities, then dynamically adapting the selection and sequence of learning experiences to meet each child’s needs.

In addition to math and reading, Homeschool+ offers art, science, social studies, language arts, music, and Spanish. These additional courses, all designed by education experts, feature content from ABCmouse’s award-winning, research-validated curriculum, augmented by lesson plans that take full advantage of the learning opportunities of the home environment. Home educators can select from a broad variety of lessons to address their children’s interests, each one offering online and offline learning activities.

In addition to its curriculum, Homeschool+ supports home educators with tools that enable them to effectively manage their child's learning journey while providing insights into their child's progress. This includes a Lesson Planner that gives educators complete control of their child’s program, with options to create custom lessons to complement their child's interests and needs, to reassign incomplete lessons, and to repeat lessons for extra review.

Homeschool+ also features a Progress Tracker with individualized dashboards that include detailed information about each student’s progress. The math and reading dashboards provide insights on each child's progress, including time spent, skill mastery, and areas of struggle. The Arts, Sciences & General Knowledge Dashboard tracks lesson progress and completed activities.

Prior to release, Homeschool+ was extensively tested with veteran homeschooling families, earning very positive reviews. As one parent put it, “It was just so simple. It didn't just fit in our day, it made our day easier. And there is so much there that he's learning that I want to teach him.”

A colleague, friend, and National Teachers Hall of Fame inductee, Dr. Rebecca A. Palacios has served as a Sr. Curriculum Advisor and member of our Curriculum Board at Age of Learning, since 2009. She has worked with us on strategic curriculum planning and the design of age-appropriate learning activities for our digital learning programs, including ABCmouse.com Early Learning Academy and ReadingIQ.

She recently became a contributor for US News & World Report, and today her first article was published.

"9 Ways to Make Sure Your Child Loves Reading" offers parents essential early literacy tips to help foster their children's love of reading and help them develop the skills needed to better navigate the future as adults.

Children from low-income families begin to fall behind their peers in vocabulary development before they’re even two years old. By the time they reach fourth grade, 80 percent of these children are not proficient readers (Source: Campaign for Grade-Level Reading). This learning deficit has long-term effects on children’s academic future, including their likelihood of graduating from high school.