Victus Study Skills System Review

Everyone needs to learn how to study. Victus Study Skills System is a great option to help your child learn to study correctly. They offer several different levels that so they can start learning to study early on.

Level 1: Primary is for grades K-2/3
Level 2: Elementary is for grades 2/3-4/5
Level 3: Is for grades 5/6- 10/11
Level 4:  is for grades 10/11- college

There is a teacher supplement and a student work book for each level. Additionally you can get a student planner and power point. All of which can be found at https://www.studyskillssystem.org/products/. This system is based on the premise that effective study is best when it is a system of study and when it becomes a way of life.

The Snoopy is doing the level 2 elementary because she is in 4th grade.  Gabby is doing the Level 3 because she is in 6th grade.

The teachers edition for level 3 seems simple enough. It gives a course plan Day 1- 5. Day 1 you are to cover lesson 1-2, day 2 you review day 1 and teach day 3. Day 3 you review he previous day and teach lessons 4-6. Day 4 is some more review and your teach lessons 7-8. Day 5 Your review the previous days and then do lesson 9-10. You finish day 5 with the evaluation.  Each segment is roughly 15 min in length. The hole program is only about 5 hours in length.

The teacher supplement for the elementary is similar to the level 3. I did not see a course plan. But it lays out each lesson and which pages to cover each time you work in the program.

The lessons in the books cover things like: strength and weakness, making a goal, time management, study skills for test, note taking, how to be an active listener, test prep etc.

We have worked through a good amount of this book. It starts off helping the girls to identify there learning styles. It does this with some simple questions they they check off, then they total how many questions they checked in each area to determine which is the primary learning style and the secondary learning style.  The program then offers them some ideas on how to use there learning style to help them study and learn more efficiently. Snoopy scored highest as a doing learner and secondly as a visual learner. Gabby scored highest as a visual learner and an auditory learner. They will learn what a mission statement is and how to create one. They cover a section on setting goals for the school year. From there it explains what the an objective is and then they have to create an action plan for how to achieve that goal. The program has them do this for several different areas in there life: Like Non-school goals, and goals for the summer.

Under the how do I get there section they learn about things like time management. It goes overs how to make an assignment schedule, how to use a planner. Gabby found the staying organized tips to be the most useful. She has implemented several into her current study habits. Savannah found the test taking preparation section to be helpful. It gave her ideas on how reduce test anxiety, and things she can do to prepare her self for an upcoming test.

For the most part we found the work books to be self explanatory. The girls needed guidance on several things but I think this has given them a good jumping off point. I can already see them starting to use some of the things they have learned so far. They are both using the learning styles they identified at the beginning a little more than they used to. Snoopy is doing more of the hands on projects in science class and Gabby has found out that she remembers more if she listens to an audio book as she follows along with it in her text.

I have thumbed through the other books for the different grade levels and I think as a whole this could be a good program to start early on and continue through the high school years. I think the collage level would be great for a student at the end of there senior year and preparing to enter collage.  It's so important for kids to know how to use there learning style to study efficiently to reach there long term goals in life. I encourage everyone to click the link below and take a look at how the other review families used the different levels of the Victus Study Skills System.


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Essential Skills Advantage Complete Home Learning Suite Review

We are testing out a program known as Essential Skills Advantage . They have several options but we received the Complete Home Learning Suite for this review. This is an online supplemental program. It has lessons on different topics, math, science, language arts, reading, geography etc. Has lessons for grade levels K-6th.  How ever not all subjects are offered in all grade levels. The program is composed of 43 individual programs 998 units totaling over 14,000 interactive lessons. Since we are at the end of our standard school year. We have been using this as our summer curriculum. Three days a week the girls do one unit a day under each subject that is available for the grade level that they are in. While this is not a complete curriculum it is a wonderful supplemental program. 

Like I noted above this is an online program so you will need an internet connection to use this program. I felt it covers a wide range of subject areas. All though I would not call this a complete curriculum because it doesn't cover quite everything needed to meet GLE. I do give it high points for a fun supplemental program

 My girls have really liked using this as there summer curriculum. My oldest has a high opinion of the spelling section. It gives her things like word searches instead of just typing or writing the words over and over, and I think that's what draws her to it. I have actually seen an improvement in her spelling and her understanding of what the words mean. 
They have both enjoyed the science units we have tried. We used two of them to go along with what we had just finished up in our regular curriculum. We started with one on the solar system. It was great for filling gaps and brushing up on the topic before we took the end of year test. It covered some things like phases of the moon that our other curriculum did not cover. It really rounded things out well. The girls wanted me to mention that the graphics were great and the activities or experiments were FUN even though they were on a computer.

My little one is my math nut she said the lessons were fun and she didn't mind doing them. She felt they were explained well and frequently ask to do ESA math over a paper workbook. She had no real issues with it and seemed to glide on through each unit. My 3rd grader was a little frustrated at times but we seemed to be able to work though it after I played with the math lessons my self to see how they worked. Her least favorite part was the riddles, but she doesn't like riddles any way so that was no surprise.

Grammar was also an area that my 3rd grader spent some time on. She took to it quite well, She liked the bite sized lessons. She said the smaller shorter lessons made it less over whelming to do. That's a bonus in my book. Grammar can be so over whelming for younger kids. This is broke down about as simple as it can get. 

We hit up the reading section last week. So we haven't been using it all that long and we have only used the story time section. But I like what I see and what I am hearing from the girls. Story time gives a short story then some questions about the story after. The questions all fit the story and the stories are entertaining enough that the girls are not complaining about having to read them. I did find a few things in the first grade reading that I felt were a little below first grade. But you can easily skip over them or just do them quickly as a review. Every child reads at a different level so may be its just my child. 

 I was a little disappointed that all the subjects are not offered for each grade level. But that was my only disappointment and I was only disappointed because we like it so well I want my little one to be able to do all the subjects. 

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