Home School Navigator ~ A Review

Home School Navigator Reading and Language Arts Curriculum is an online program for elementary age students. For the older students there are also Interactive Notebooks available. There are six levels to the Home School Navigator program. They follow to rainbow. 

RED is approximately a Kindergarten level. 

ORANGE is approximately at the 1st grade level.

YELLOW is approximately at the 2nd grade level. 

GREEN is approximately at the 3rd grade level. 

BLUE is approximately at the 4th grade level. 

INDIGO is approximately at the 5th grade level. 

Parents are given access to every single level in order to determine exactly where their child needs to be placed within the color system. You choose which level to start your child on and can change levels if you find that a level is too easy or too hard. Each level has 36 weeks of lessons. Here's what included:

• 36 Week Course
• Daily Reading, Writing, & Word Study Lesson Plan
• 60 Instructional Videos
• Word Study Program
• Activities That Encourage Multiple Learning Styles
• Monthly Skills Checklist
• Portfolio Maintenance 
• Monthly Goal Sheet/Portfolio Check-In
• Review Games

My daughter worked through Level Indigo. 

I was not impressed with the YouTube videos of the Read Aloud Books. The person reading the books stumbles through the words and is not the best storybook reader. My daughter opted for reading the books herself. I agreed with her on this one. A storybook reader needs to be animated and draw the listener in and this was a huge flaw in the program. 

I really liked the Literature/Comprehension part of the program and the variety of  activities. I was not the biggest fan of the randomness of the Writing/Grammar part of the program. I liked the Word Study/Vocabulary section and would have liked the word list to have been longer being that this was 5th grade. I really could have done without the Computer Skills section. Not a bad idea, could take or leave that one. My favorite section by far was the Independent Reading and the Interactive Notebooks. With my older children, at this grade level, I had them write chapter summaries. This was a fun alternative. I liked how the Interactive Notebooking really requires the student to interact with the novel. 

The program is broken down into the following categories:

• Read Aloud
• Literature/Comprehension
• Writing/Grammar
• Phonics/Word Study/Vocabulary
• Computer Skills
• Independent Reading
• Poetry Extension 

Some of the Read Aloud books included the following.

This is a worksheet from the storybook Nobody Asked The Pea.

Word Study/Vocabulary

Interactive Notebooks

If you know anything about lapbooks then you can think of interactive notebooks as a form of a lapbook of sorts. It is a fun way of interacting with a novel. 

I like how everything is laid out in easy monthy, weekly, and daily chart based printables. After completing lesson you can choose to upload or submit to complete the lesson. 

Here is a Scope and Sequence detailing every level.

Overall, Home School Navigator is an okay program. While I am not a huge fan of this program I always encourage others to look into the program for themselves. What isn't necessarily a great fit for one family may be the perfect fit for another. 

To read more reviews click here.

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