Educazion.net is an online, Christian homeschool based out of Mexico created by Hilda Magaña. The website and courses are in Spanish, based on Mexican education standards. The school offers classes at the preschool (preescolar) through junior high (secundaría) level and is in the process of adding high school (preparatoría). My experience with the school has been the preschool level, and that's what I'll be writing about.
Educazion offers Preschool 1 thru 3, with 3 being the closest equivalent to U.S. Kindergarten. First grade is the next progression beyond Preschool 3. I enrolled my 5 year-old son in Preschool 1 last winter. I decided to start with preschool 1 because my son had very limited exposure to Spanish at that point. I figured we could start at the beginning, work on building vocabulary and basics, and still catch up to First Grade in time. We were able to complete Preschool 1 in 5 months with minimal effort.
Preschool 1 covers shapes, colors, and lenth/weight/size comparisons. Preschool 2 begins introducing letter and number concepts, and Preschool 3 introduces beginning Reading and Math. I decided to skip ahead to Preschool 3 because my son already had a grasp of those concepts and I had been working with him on Spanish vocabulary. We just began Preschool 3, and so far I'm very pleased with the Reading exercises from the workbook. The Math appears to be right in line with American Kindergarten starndards.
How the Program is Set Up
Enrolling your child at Educazion.net is extremely easy. Simply send an email to correo@educazion.net to let them know you are interested in enrollment, the name of your child to be enrolled, and the class in which you would like to enroll your child. They will provide you with payment instructions, and I was able to pay with Paypal. The cost per class is 500 Pesos, which at the time I enrolled ended up being just over $37. Once you make the payment, you will receive an email with enrollement instructions, and you can begin classes immediately.
**If you are planning on enrolling more than 1 child, you will have to use a separate email address for each child. This seems like a bit of a pain if you are enrolling younger children, but helps the school to keep each child's account and records separate.
The Preschool is divided into three parts, a printable workbook, multimedia games and activities, and weekly lessons with a culminating, 13-activity online quiz. The monthly quiz is graded to allow you to easily track a student's progress. For Preschool 1 the quiz usually consisted of sorting, ordering, and a puzzle. Even though the lessons are organized weekly, you can go at your own pace. When you're ready to move on to the next grade level, just pay the 500 Peso tuition and email correo@educazion.net to let them know the class in which you'd like to enroll.
My Overall Impression
Overall I'm very pleased with Educazion.net. I feel that the instruction is worth the 500 Peso tuition, and the customer service is excellent. Everytime I've contacted them, I've received extremely prompt responses. The site also provides a means to network with other homeschoolers in Mexico, and around the world. The cake-topper for me though, is the native instruction that my son receives. The instructions for the monthly activity quizzes are, of course, in Spanish. As a non-native Spanish speaker, that is something I am unable to provide my son.
My one, small complaint with the site is that there are only general course overviews listed. The only way to see the specific course standards are to enroll in the class. However, if you email the school to ask about course specifics, they will proved you with a more detailed description.
If you would like more information about my experiences with Educazion.net or if you have questions, feel free to contact me.
---------
Heather Magnuson is a non-native Spanish-speaker, attempting to provide her two sons (ages 5 and 3) with a classical, Spanish-immersion homeschool education. She is documenting their journey on her blog, Aventuras in Homeschooling. They are a military family, currently stationed in Las Vegas, NV.