Review: Essential Skills Advantage

Get ready for a VERY cool product that I am recommending with great gusto! I'm always big on a product that I love and my boys equally love, and this is one that fits the bill. Not only did we all love it, but it is also extremely affordable! The Complete Home Learning Suite from Essential Skills Advantage (or ESA) provides a fun way for your child to work on vital skills like reading, spelling, language, grammar, math, science, and geography. And FUN is the key word. If they don't roll their eyes when I say, "Do your ESA" than I know I have found a winner.

I really had trouble as I prepared this review because the concept of this program is so incredibly simple, so well laid out, and so easy to use. How do you say "This is awesome" using different words? :) Your student simply logs in and chooses an area to work in. Areas that they can focus on include:

1. READING: K-6 
2. SPELLING: Grades 1-6
3. LANGUAGE & GRAMMAR: Grades 3-6
4. MATH: Grades K-6
5. SCIENCE: Grades K-3
6. GEOGRAPHY: Grades 3-5

The student can choose the topic they want to focus on. Then they can choose the level that fits them at that time. The entire program is a one year online subscription for kids in grades K-6. There are over 14,000 programs providing nearly unlimited options for your student.

Here is my son Isaac telling me what program he just finished that day:

Here is a sample screen for Geography. Once you say you want to do Geography, you get the choice of what grade you want to participate in.

Some subjects, like Language & Grammar have more grades available than others:

Here is an example of one of the math problems in the 1st grade Math section which my son Sidge was working in:

Each screen is colorful, fun, entertaining, and engaging. Both my boys used this program for about a month. I really let them choose what they wanted to work on that day and plan to continue doing that through the summer. The problems and questions seemed very grade appropriate, and they really seemed to be benefitting from what they were learning. Here is an example of some of the bright and colorful screens that would face them each step of the way:

Afterwards, I can go into the teacher side and see how they did on certain subjects -- getting full reports!
I was also incredibly impressed with the customer service we received. There were a few glitches on some of the pages (that I later learned were due to the fact that they were on a MAC interface.) They were minor issues, but I emailed the company and heard back within 24 hours and by the next day, the problem was corrected! 
The lessons are short, incredibly interactive, keep their attention, and they do NOT complain about doing them! What I especially loved was that the program was easy for them to do completely on their own. They didn't need my help in figuring out what the instructions meant or what was required of them. The Complete Home Learning Suite was incredibly popular in our house, and it will definitely be something we will be utilizing in the future.
The program is incredibly affordable as you can see on their Pricing page. 
Essential Skills Advantage is all over social media! Check them out at the places listed below:

• Facebook
• Twitter @SkillsAdvantage
• Pinterest
• Google+
• LinkedIn
• Blog