Elephango Review: a Quality Homeschool Curriculum Companion

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Looking to easily spice up your homeschool curriculum with some multi-faceted curriculum companion activities? Want to give the kids a better sense of ownership over their education while allowing them a safe way to search the internet? Don’t want to spend hours upon hours falling down random rabbit holes of homeschooling tips while trying to achieve this? I mean, that sounds like a pretty tall order, but…I gotchu!

Ahem. I stand corrected. I’m merely the messenger because, really, Elephango’s gotchu! Let’s hang out a bit and I’ll share my Elephango review with you below.

This is a sponsored post. I have received complimentary access to this product and have been compensated for my time reviewing the product and producing this review. I have not been influenced in any way and my opinions on this product are my own.

About Elephango

In a nutshell, Elephango is a web-based program providing their members with access to over 3,000 k-12 lessons.

Let’s dive a little deeper though, shall we?

Built by homeschooling experts for homeschoolers, Elephango encourages kids to take charge & ownership over their education by allowing them to learn independently and steer the direction of their educational areas of focus while utilizing educational videos, related websites, downloadable worksheets, and more. In addition, those of you living in states with specific standard requirements will appreciate being able to search for lessons aligned to both state and national standards.

Even more? Elephango takes the beauty of being able to customize a homeschool education to heart with their proprietary personalization tool. After you start your Elephango membership, I definitely suggest completing their “Total Assessment” before diving into the lessons. A quick 3-part questionnaire, the “Total Assessment” provides members with a insight into the optimal learning style & environment for each person as well as a personality report. Once those details are discovered, kids and parents can search through the Elephango database for the lessons that best suit their specific “Total Assessment” results. So cool!

Including Elephango in your Homeschool Lesson Plans

Because Elephango includes lessons in a variety of subjects, and on a variety of topics, it’s super easy to include their activities as a curriculum companion. Whether activities are selected by a parent or child, my kids and I all agree that the lessons were fun, interesting and (very important) not intimidating or overwhelming.

If you, or your child, are looking for a specific level or lesson topic, Elephango makes it super easy to sort through lessons by utilizing the following categories and subcategories:

While Elephango doesn’t seem to have a designated “to-do” section for students to see lessons assigned by the parent, lessons can easily be found by searching keywords or selecting from a category (or subcategory) from the table above. In fact, if a student happens to open a lesson that seems to be in the middle or end of a unit study, Elephango will actually suggest they check out the previous lessons.

In addition to using Elephango to provide extension activities and lessons for your more formal unit studies and curriculums, I also love that kids are free to explore the plethora of lessons on their own.

For example, my oldest enjoys logging onto his Elephango account to see the various “suggested lessons” on the sidebar of his screen. He absolutely loves learning about amusement park rides and was so happy to see a lesson entitled “The Physics of Roller Coasters!” as a suggestion. Wouldn’t you know he took that as an opportunity to learn something new…on his own?! So cool, right?

Get It? Got it? Go!

While younger children may need the assistance of a parent (or older sibling) to help them out with reading & completing their Elephango activities, I certainly appreciate that there is this opportunity for student self-evaluation in each lesson.

Get It?

In the “Get It?” section, students are introduced to the lesson through reading activities and often printable worksheets and videos accessed through links to outside websites.

Got It?

In the “Got It?” section, students are given the opportunity to show their understanding of the information learned in the “Get It?” section by completing a number of low-stress assessments like multiple choice questions, short paragraph answers and more. I love that students are able to input their answers and get feedback immediately by clicking the “check” button. No waiting for an outside source to check and provide feedback at a later date!

Go!

In the “Go!” section, students are encouraged to go even more in-depth with lesson understanding by completing a hands-on project of some sort. After the entire lesson is complete, students can collect digital badges. These badges can be viewed in the student’s “achievements” section of their dashboard and can serve as encouragement to continue completing lessons.

I’m Excited for This!

I’m always trying to include more reading into our days. I grew up reading a bunch of books (and enjoyed it) and am trying to encourage the same activity for my boys. While I’m totally ok with casual reading, it can be nice to turn a book into a unit study by having comprehension questions an extension activities.

You guys…book studies can be expensive and time consuming to create! Just a quick search in the “reading” and “dig deeper” categories of Elephango resulted in book studies for the following:

• The One and Only Ivan (we read this last year – totally recommend!)
• The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
• Book Scavenger
• Front Desk
• Hamlet
• The Red Badge of Courage
• The Sun Also Rises
• Charlotte’s Web
• Of Mice and Men
• The Outsiders
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I could go on and on! Niching the search by grade level would result in even better age-specific suggestions, but I am thrilled to see so many book studies available through Elephango!

@thathomeschoolfamily

We’re so excited to include more from Elephango in our homeschooling days this year! #ad #elephango #homeschoolreviews #homeschoolcurriculum #homeschoolcurriculumreview #homeschoolcurriculumplanning #homeschooling #homeschoolunitstudy

♬ original sound – Liz | That Homeschool Family

Safe Searching

Included with the Elephango membership is an optional chrome extension which, if your kids spend a lot of time searching Google, should totally come in handy! The Elephango Chrome extension creates a safe search Google landing page where kids can search both Elephango and Google and receive safe, kid-friendly search results.

In addition to loving roller coasters, my oldest is also a big fan of garbage and recycling trucks. This kid can talk for hours about all the different types of trucks, identify the older models vs. newer, and is even our designated household “trash & recycling” man. Using the Elephango Chrome extension, I had him search for “recycling” first within Elephango and then within Google to see what would result.

The Elephango search resulted in a number of lessons that could, in some way, be connected to recycling.

The Google search, using the Elephango Chrome extension, resulted first in Elephango lesson suggestions and then in Google suggestions. Notice the absence of ads, click-bait, and potentially unsavory links!

Money-Saving Offers!

If you’d like to give Elephango a try with your own kids, you’re going to love the offers I have for you. (Assuming you like to save money…wink wink). Use the code 33off1yearblog6 to score 33% off a Elephango yearly subscription. That’s like scoring a 4-month membership for free!

I’m really looking forward to incorporating even more Elephango lessons into our homeschool days this year! If you have any questions about Elephango, or anything homeschool related, go ahead and send me an email and I’ll do my best to help out!

Until next time, stay safe and enjoy quality time with your family,