Rusty and Rosy – Learn With Me info from Waterford.com Please note – we are not using a touch screen with this package.
Yes, we have been conspicuously absent for a long time. While we’ve not been very good about blogging, homeschooling has been going very, very well for us. We’ve tried lots of different things and we feel more committed than ever to continuing into next year. Around the time that we disappeared, we started using a computer-based curriculum called Rusty and Rosy Learn with Me. The Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op had a killer deal on it and I hoped that it would be something that we could use for a long time to come. The program is adaptive to the child’s learning level. I liked that it required very little preparation from Mom. My goal was for Tornado Boy to be able to use it while I prepped other projects for us to do. The program is supposed to offer “700 hours” of fun learning in reading, math and science for kids 4-8. The program likely works well in a pre-school classroom for computer time, but I really don’t feel that it’s well suited for homeschoolers. What follows is our experience with the program. We paid for the program and are receiving no compensation for this review.
The program has three parts:
- A USB powered metal “box” with the actual software on it.
- An online “manager” software to show you your child’s progress.
- An extensive library of blackline masters worksheets that are included with the online manager.
When you first load the program, you create an account for your child. The account tracks where they are in the program. Initially, the child goes through an assessment phase so that the program can evaluate where to start the content for them. The best that I can tell, this was only done for the reading lessons, but not for the math and science sections. There are also keyboarding lessons that can be done, but we disabled them as I didn’t feel that Tornado Boy was yet ready for them. For us, the assessment phase seemed to last a very long time. Once it was complete, it placed Tornado Boy into “Level 3″. The manager states that “Level 3 is intended for children who are in second grade, or who can read words by blending sounds together and are working on improving fluency and comprehension.” While that accurately describes Tornado Boy’s reading ability, it disregarded his grasp of grammar. The level 3 lessons were clearly beyond his understanding. I was able to use the online manager to put him back to level 2. My only option was to set him to the beginning of level 2 and to lose all of the work that he’d done so far. There is no option to select a specific part of a level. I really would like to have seen more control is in this regard. There were many lessons that we clearly could have skipped. There is a little bit of writing in the program, but not much.
The math and science part of the curriculum are grouped together. Level 2 was definitely too far ahead for where we were. Level 1 takes forever to come up to speed with where we are and does not seem to be adaptive at all. Tornado Boy has spent over 7 hours of work on this section and is still on number sense 1-5. He understands numbers far greater than this, so it can be really frustrating for him to have to work through this for so long. I set the program so that he spent more time on the science and math concepts in order to try to catch him up a bit, but it still seems terribly slow, especially since we’re only using the software for about 30 minutes at a time. The science sections of the program are great. My only complaint with them is that some of the video sections are of poor quality and seem to be pretty “old”. The topics are great though, and level one includes things like the five senses, weather, and living things.
I must say, Tornado Boy has really enjoyed his time with Rusty and Rosy. He likes the characters. He likes the rewards and certificates that print out from time to time. The parent can disable printing if desired. He likes the worksheets. I like the worksheets, too. My biggest gripe is that unless I sit with Tornado Boy while he works with the program, I have almost no idea what he’s been working on. The reporting is pretty poor and not very detailed. You get a comprehensive “score” of your childs work, but it’s not very detailed. You get no feedback on specific lesson, just a notation on the lesson that they’re currently working on. The program gives you a percentile score on “phonics” and some other criteria, but you get no specifics about what they’ve worked on in those areas. You really need to be with them to understand what’s being taught. You can’t use the program to support specific learning endeavors that you’re working on outside of it. You can’t select any specific lessons to work on, though you can print out any specific worksheets that you’d like to work on.
I really wanted to love this program, and it does have a lot of good content, but it’s really way too expensive to not be able to customize what my child is working on. I really hope that Waterford, the publisher, will make some modifications if they really want to enter the homeschool market with what is really a program designed for schools. We will still use it, just not really in the manner that I had hoped.
I am glad to see you back and hope that you will post more consistently
Also thanks for your helpful suggestions on geography and math on my blog, I really appreciate them. I am contemplating signing up for time4learning.com – it seems to have an interesting premise, but I haven’t taught my daughter to use computer yet – something that I plan to do in the second half of her fourth year.
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thanks for the review. i was contemplating using this for my daughter this summer as she loves computer time. homeschool buyer’s co-op, again, has a great deal and i was tempted. i think i’ll pass; thanks for saving me some $$$.
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I have been using Rusty & Rosy for a couple of weeks now with both my rising 2nd grader and my preschooler. I do agree with the comments above about not being able to customize it. I, too, would love to be able to pick and choose the areas that I would like them to work on so that they can correspond to our other homeschool work and have better tracking.
Having said that, however, I do still really like it. My preschooler is crazy about it and all she wants to do is “school” (which IS Rusty and Rosy to her). My rising 2nd grader is very visual and loves the games, activities and graphics. He really likes the science part, as do I.
I was also very pleased with the reading portion of Rusty & Rosy. My rising 2nd grader likes learning the new vocabulary words and we were both excited to see that in the reading part, someone else reads the story, then they give my child a chance to read it while it records his voice. He then can go back and listen to his own voice read the story, which we thought was very cool (and this means he has heard/read this story a total of three times). Very cool. I found the reading level also very appropriate for him at Level 3, which is intended for 2nd graders.
I will definitely keep this as “part” of our homeschool curriculum, although because of the limited functionality and reporting of it, it cannot be my only math, reading or science curriculum. But it is sure a great way to beat the book-blahs and give them something that is still educational and very fun and captivating to their easily distractable minds.
I highly recommend this, despite the inability to customize it if you have children like mine who have a hard time sitting still with typical typical pen and paper learning. But yes, you will want to sit there and do it with them in order for them to get the biggest benefit and to answer any questions they may have before the screen times-out on them.
Tracy -
Thanks so much for your feedback and I’m really glad that it’s working out for you. It’s one heck of an investment!
I’ve heard that they’re about to break this program apart into three different sections and sell it that way. I really hope that they’ll allow homeschoolers some flexibility with how they use it. It shouldn’t be that difficult to unlock it. I understand why they do it for the classroom, but it really makes very little sense for home use. We’ve stopped using it altogether because DS could never use the math/science part long enough to “catch him up” to where his skill level really is without jumping to the next level, which is too high. He’s spent about 9 /2 hours on the math/science part and he’s not halfway through level 1 yet. It’s frustrating to know that he’s spent that much time just doing ‘busy work’ and is still not at the point in the program where he should be.
I’ve found Time4Learning far more flexible, and the content is about equivalent. Their reporting is far more robust. I know exactly what he covered in each section and how he scored. I can go back and cover any topic that he needs more work on at will.
I just went back and looked at the scope and sequence for Rusty and Rosy. I think I may just print out the worksheets for the few items in level 1 math/science that Tornado Boy still needs to cover. I can teach him those things myself and then just set him to level 2. It really is a great supplement and the content is good, I’m just too much of a control freak to be able to use it day to day. I want it to work around MY needs, and not vice versa.
I’d love to have the option to go to specific content at the same time that I want to teach it. Maybe I can hack into the files. LOL