Mindset Works is a company focused on a “growth mindset” – the “understanding of intelligence as [a quality] we can develop.”  Their student program is called Brainology.

Brainology is an online program that teaches students how the brain works, and how it grows when it’s exercised.  There are four instructional units (and an introduction) which together comprise about 2.5 hours of instructional material.  These are to be supplemented with classroom activities.

When you sign up to Brainology, you register first as a teacher, and then you create student accounts under that teacher.  The teacher’s account has access to the online program just like the student accounts do, but it also has access to the implementation guide.  The implementation guide includes scheduling recommendations, technical help for using the program, and the classroom activities.

My (nine-year-old, fourth grade) daughter has loved the Brainology program, so far.  In her words, she has learned that the brain “is the body’s control system,” “that it needs to rest in order to work well,” “that it needs to be exercised in order to work well,” and that “it’s made of neurons.”  This is not bad, considering she’s about three-quarters of the way through, and we haven’t done any of the classroom activities yet.  (I’m not supposed to let her go on, without doing the activities between each lesson, but she literally begs to do more!)  She says she has more notes in her e-journal (part of the online course), as well.

The classroom activities are a good blend of worksheets, hands-on projects, and peer-interaction activities.  (Some of these, obviously, will work better than others in a homeschool setting.)

The online course is narrated by a cartoon-style middle-school boy and girl, Chris and Dahlia.  Information is presented in a way that is relevant to school-age children/teens – there is talk about tests, remembering the necessary information for assignments, etc.   It’s quite interactive, and pauses for feedback/quizzes fairly frequently, to ensure that students are “getting” the information as they go along.

The only downside I see is that the pricing is really not very cost-effective per student until you have far more students than any homeschool family I know.  (The price drops from $79/student to $20/student once you have 20 students.)  This means many homeschoolers would be looking at $300-$400 for all of their children to take the course.  Larger families would be looking at even more.  (I think maybe the Educator’s license has to be purchased separately, but I’m not certain.)

Ariel is certainly learning a lot – and enjoying it.  (When she enjoys doing her schoolwork, that’s always a good thing!)  I would definitely recommend it.

Disclosure: Mindset Works provided us with licenses for Ariel and me to try this together, to facilitate our review.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.