Looking into Elephango? Curious if it’s worth it? In this Elephango review, I share all the details about this online homeschool program so you can decide if it’s a good fit for your family!
Can I tell you a secret?
I LOVE online homeschooling programs.😍 I really do.
When I first started homeschooling, I was so excited about the idea of teaching my kids directly, spending tons of time reading and exploring, and going where our interests took us.
Fast forward to homeschooling 3 kids at once and 2 part-time jobs, and while I still think that’s a great way to homeschool, I need something that makes teaching my kids more doable with my busy schedule. Hence my new love for online homeschool programs.
In this curriculum review, I’m going to share all about one of my new favorites, Elephango. I’ll cover all the details of how it works, what we’ve thought about using it so far, and what you need to know to decide if it’s a good fit for your homeschool.
Let’s dive in!
I was compensated for my time reviewing Elephango and writing this post. This post reflects my personal opinion about the information provided.
Elephango: Ready-to-Go Online Homeschool Lessons
Elephango is an online homeschool program that offers ready-to-go lessons for students in grades PreK-12. Their program allows parents to combine some of the best parts of homeschooling, such as personalized learning, character development, and curiosity-driven learning in an easy-to-use online platform.
All of their lessons are designed to meet learning standards and come with detailed instructions, activities, quizzes, and more.
The curriculum is designed to help keep students engaged, motivated, and challenged. Each lesson includes interactive activities such as videos, games, virtual labs, and more.
What’s included with your purchase
With your purchase of Elephango, you’ll get access to their platform. This includes:
- Over 3,000 lessons for PreK-12
- Up to 4 accounts for each family
- 24/7 access to lessons
- 24/7 customer support
- Daily updates and new content each week
- Individualized progress tracking
Price
Elephango is a very affordable program at only $19.99 a month with the monthly plan or $16.67 with the yearly subscription. That includes everything I mentioned above including up to 4 accounts for your family.
Plus, my readers can get 33% off a yearly subscription with the coupon code 33off1yearblog4 at checkout!
Subjects included
Elephango has lessons on a broad range of topics. I feel like they offer more subjects than a lot of other programs out there.
They go beyond the main subjects like math, language arts, history, and science. They also include social studies, fine arts, life skills, and more.
Here are the categories they offer:
- College & Career
- English/Language Arts
- Fine Arts
- Geography
- Government
- History
- Life Skills
- Math
- Reading
- Science
- Social Studies
- Teaching Tips & Tools
- Technology
Don’t want to read? Watch my review here!
How Elephango Works
Now let’s dive into how Elephango works. At first glance, their platform seems similar to other online homeschool programs.
Both the parents and each child get their own separate logins. The parent login allows you to search through lessons, assign them to each child, and see your child’s progress.
You can search for lessons by category, grade, learning style, personality style, content type, lesson type, and by how long the lessons are. I feel like this setup by itself sets Elephango apart.
I’ve gotten overwhelmed with other programs that offer a large number of lessons simply because it can be tough to search through everything to find what you want. The extra effort put into making the lessons more searchable makes the platform a lot more accessible for kids and parents.
Depending on your homeschool philosophy and style, you can assign lessons to your child or your child can independently search through the lessons and choose which ones they want to do.
Lesson structure
Each of the lessons is broken down into 3 sections. The first section is called Get It! This is where they are introduced to the topic.
The lesson has plenty of pictures, asks questions throughout, and often provides some sort of example or video to help teach the lesson.
The second section is called Got It? This is where they start to practice some of what they learned in the Get It! section. It often includes practice problems, games, or sometimes an offline activity.
The last section is called Go! This section is where they’ll further demonstrate what they’ve learned from the lesson. This might be more games, more practice problems, or more in-depth offline activities.
The lessons can be taken at your own pace and you can freely go back and forth between the sections if you need to review information. When finished you click on the button that says “Claim My Points” to finish the lesson.
Assigning online lessons
Assigning lessons works very similarly in both the parent login and the child’s login. If assigning lessons from the parent’s account, here’s how to do it:
- Search through the lessons. When you find one you are interested in, click on it.
- On the lesson page, click on the yellow “Favorite” button directly below and to the right of the lesson cover picture.
- From there you’ll get a dropdown menu listing each child account with an arrow next to it. Click the child you want to assign the lesson to.
- From there the dropdown menu will show a selection of lists you can assign the lesson to for that child. Either select one of the lists provided or click on “Create New List.”
When your child next logs in, they’ll click on the “Favorites” link at the top of the page. From there they can see their assigned lessons.
This process is pretty much the same when assigning a lesson from the child’s account. Your child will click the “Favorite” button, but instead of a list of the student accounts, it will just offer a selection of lists for that child.
They click on the list they want to put the lesson and it will show up on their Favorites page.
Badges
Another feature of Elephango is their badges. badges are essentially a collection of lessons around a certain topic.
For example, one of the badges recommended for my son was the Addition and Subtraction Frenzy badge. This badge consisted of 5 lessons:
- Addition Strategies: Number Lines
- Building Ten with Ten Frames
- Subtraction with Pictures 1
- Addition Strategies: Counting On
- Subtraction with Pictures 2
All of the lessons reinforce the main concept of addition and subtraction.
The badges provide another way to structure your lessons for your child. I like this feature because it allows the parent to create a more cohesive lesson plan if they want.
It also cuts down on having to spend a lot of time searching for related topics. Badges can be assigned the same way that individual lessons are assigned.
Jumpstart
Another way to search for lessons is through the Jumpstart page. On this page, you can search for badges that cover topics to help your child start a new school year on a solid foundation.
For example, when I click on my son’s profile, it shows badges that would help him be ready to start 1st grade. This section would be a good place to explore over summer break or to help your child tighten up any learning gaps from the previous year.
Learning style and personality quizzes
One of my favorite features of Elephango is that they provide learning style and personality quizzes. These quizzes assign a score to each of the 3 learning styles: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.
It also assigns one of four personality types: beaver, golden retriever, lion, and otter. Based on these results you can search for lessons that will help your child learn in a way that is best for them.
Considering how much learning styles can impact how effective a homeschool curriculum is, I think this is a huge feature. You don’t have to waste your time fighting with your child to get through a lesson.
You can pick lessons that work best for them and that they will be more likely to engage with.
Elephango Chrome Extension
Another feature of Elephango that really sets them apart is their Chrome Extension. Elephango offers an extension for the Chrome web browser that helps create a landing page where children can search Elephango and the internet safely.
When you install and activate the extension it changes the opening page on Chrome. When you open a new tab, the screen below will appear instead of the regular Google search page.
From here your child can log in to Elephango or use the search bar at the top of the page to search Google. However, the search results are filtered and tailored based on the interests you’ve set up in Elephango and Google Safe Search blocks any unsafe or inappropriate results.
The extension allows your child to follow their interests and learn independently without worrying they’ll stumble onto inappropriate sites. You can learn more about it here.
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Who Elephango Would Be a Good Fit For
Next up on this Elephango review is who it would be a good fit for. Some curriculum works better for certain homeschool styles and goals than others.
Here is who I think this one would be a good fit for:
- Bigger homeschool families: I think this program is super affordable. Add in the fact that they allow up to 4 students for less than $20 a month, this is great for larger families.
- Busy parents: You guys know I love a program that allows me to be hands-off. This one fit that bill nicely. My older kids were able to use the program completely independently. I did help my son, but he’s at a stage where he’s not ready to work independently yet.
- Child-led learning: Elephango is built for families who want to let their children follow their curiosity and interests. If I were to unschool, I would want something like this available for my kids.
- You want something to supplement your main curriculum: Because the lessons are focused on specific lessons, Elephango would work well as a supplemental curriculum. Anytime your child needs to spend a little more time learning a specific concept, this would be a good option. It would also work well as a more relaxed approach to homeschooling.
What We Loved About This Online Homeschool Program
I’ve used Elephango with all 3 of my children and we really like it. It’s definitely one of the top contenders on my list of online homeschool programs that cover a full range of subjects.
Here are some of the things we liked best about Elephango:
Engaging Lessons
The number one thing I liked is that the lessons were engaging. All 3 of my kids enjoyed them.
Even my son, who is the most easily distracted during schoolwork was able to stay focused. Between the questions throughout the lesson, the different elements like videos and games, and the offline portion, he was able to stay on task.
Easy To Navigate
My kids and I could all navigate the website without any difficulty. It’s easy to access lessons and progress reports, and I found it straightforward to assign badges or individual lessons.
The kids also found it easy to get through each lesson without any trouble. I had to show the girls how to do it one time and they were good to go.
Variety of Subjects and Grades
Another feature I really liked is that Elephango offers a wide variety of subjects and grade levels. There are lessons for PreK-12th grade, and they cover all the main subjects plus subjects like art, drama, college and career, and life skills.
This makes it easy to find lessons that captured my children’s interest.
Multiple Learning Styles
I loved how Elephango includes learning style and personality quizzes, as well as the ability to search for lessons based on those results.
This makes it so much easier for parents to find lessons that will work best for their child. It ensures that the child is actually learning in a way that works with their natural strengths instead of just trying to force them into specific methods.
Offline Tasks
The last thing I really liked is that Elephango includes offline activities and tasks frequently in their lessons. Because I’m such a big fan of online homeschool programs, I know that my kids don’t get as much practice doing pen and paper work.
So I love that Elephango requires them to do some of those types of activities too. It helps sneak in some more handwriting practice, plus it provides a nice break from staring at the computer screen all day.
FAQs About Elephango
Still have a few questions about Elephango? Here are some frequently asked questions:
How long are the lessons?
The length of lessons varies. They have everything from lessons that last 30 minutes to 5+ hours. It depends on the topic.
My son’s K-2 lessons lasted about 30-45 minutes for each topic. The online portion was usually about 15-20 minutes. The rest of the time was the offline portion.
How many children can be on a family membership?
Each membership includes up to 4 students.
Does Elephango offer lesson plans?
They don’t offer full-fledged lesson plans. The program is designed more for child-led learning where kids can explore topics that spark their curiosity.
However, I think it would be easy to quickly put one together yourself using the Badges and Jumpstart section combined with a list of learning standards for the year.
Is there any grading?
There is no grading with Elephango. As you answer the practice questions or problems throughout the lesson, the program will tell you if you got it correct or not.
However, no official grade is provided. The lessons do encourage the student to share/explain what they learned or share their offline projects with someone else.
This would be the time when the parent could check in and see how well the student learned the information provided in the lesson.
For example, in the Animal Classification lesson my son did, he created a 9-page book about animal classification over 7 lessons. At the end, he was encouraged to share his book with someone.
What are the points for at the end of a lesson?
When you complete a lesson, you click a button that says “Claim My Points.”
Those points are added to your overall Elephango score. Your score is used to determine your place on the leaderboard.
You can look under the Achievements page to see your child’s place on the leaderboard as well as any awards they have received.
We haven’t paid much attention to this feature since my kids are more interested in completing the lessons and earning badges than anything else. But it’s a nice incentive for those who like to compete.
Where can I learn more about Elephango?
To explore their large collection of lessons and learn more about Elephango, you can head to their website. If you decide to sign up, don’t forget to use my coupon code 33off1yearblog4 at checkout to get 33% off a yearly subscription!
The Bottom Line: Is Elephango Worth It?
Elephango is a great online homeschool program for families who want an engaging and interactive approach to learning. If you’re looking to supplement your current curriculum or allow for more child-led learning, you should definitely give it a try.
Their program is easy-to-use, affordable, offers a wide range of topics, and the lessons are fun and engaging. It has quickly jumped to being one of my favorite online homeschool programs.
What do you think about Elephango? Let us know in the comments or email me at admin@atouchofhomeschooling.com.
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Candice is a mom of 3 who has been homeschooling since 2013. She has an A.A.S. in Early Childhood Studies and cares deeply about helping other parents get the information and resources they need to help them homeschool their children with confidence.