Does Funcation Academy include everything you need to successfully homeschool your kids? Is this an online homeschooling program, a homeschooling support tool, or a virtual school? Let’s review the entire program so you can understand what it’s all about and decide if this is what has been missing from your homeschool.
What Is Funcation Academy?
So what is Funcation Academy? Well, it depends on what you’re looking for, because they offer several different services and packages. And the website is kind of confusing. So let me try to break it down for you.
There are basically two main features of Funcation Academy. One side is the curriculum packages that they offer, and the other side is the community and homeschooling support features. You can join Funcation Academy just for the community and support features, or you can purchase the curriculum package, which will automatically include the community membership. So let’s look at what each has to offer.
Funcation Academy Membership Options
We’ll start with the Funcation Academy community membership. The cost of this membership is just $8.99 a month or $100 a year for the whole family. The Funcation Academy community is designed to provide support for homeschooling families, no matter what type of curriculum they’re using. Basically this is a virtual community of homeschoolers that includes live virtual clubs and events. It also includes 2 flexible tutoring sessions a month. They have a virtual campus that is open during the week and you can log on any time during their campus hours.
Next let’s talk about the Funcation Academy core membership. When you sign up for this membership, you get everything in the community membership, plus access to a professional curriculum. For PreK through 5th grade they use Istation. For 6 through 12th grade they use Courseware. Both of these software programs are used by teachers and are not usually available to purchase for home use, but with Funcation Academy you will get a teacher account as well as all the support you may need to set up and use the software.
Funcation Academy Core Membership Cost
For the Prek-5th core membership, it’s $26.99 a month with an initial $65 set up fee, or $260 a year with no set up fee. It includes an online curriculum for math, reading, science and writing.
For the 6th through 12th grade membership, it’s $40 a month with an $85 set up fee, or $425 a year. The Edmentum Courseware software includes over 300 courses to choose from. Both memberships offer a 10-day free trial, but you MUST cancel before the trial period ends in order to not be charged.
Once you first sign up for one of the core memberships, you need to wait for your account to be set up. So you can’t start using it until you get the email that your account has been set up. It says it may take up to 24 hours. I signed up on a Monday morning and got the email early that afternoon.
Additional Membership Options
There are two additional membership options to choose from on Funcation Academy. They offer something called FAFlex curriculum memberships, which are more in-depth courses. Right now they offer Personal Finance and Writing with a Purpose, but they do have plans to add more courses soon. This program is $24.99 a month per student or $216 a year.
There is also their exact path curriculum membership. This membership includes a unique learning path for each student based on assessments in math, reading and language arts for K through 12th grade. It includes a professional curriculum and access to the Funcation Academy community. This program is $9.99 a month plus a one time set up fee of $29.99, or $119.88 per year and uses the Edmentum Courseware software.
Getting Started with Funcation Academy
So once you’re all signed up, there are a few things you’ll have access to. You’ll get an email from Funcation Academy on how to set everything up. Once you do that and have your log in info, it’s time to get started. There will be separate log ins for the parent/teacher and student accounts.
You’ll also have access to the virtual campus. The virtual campus is open Monday through Thursday from 10:30 to 3:30 EST. You can create an avatar and join the campus to get assistance or just chat with others. It’s also where the live virtual events will be held. So this is something that really makes funcation academy a little bit different.
You can check out their news and events blog to find out about the various events and activities on Funcation Academy. In Funcation Groups, you can see a list of different groups that you can join, both for parents and students.
Additional Offerings
You can purchase a one time comprehensive assessment for $9.99 to help with placement and identifying learning gaps in math, reading, and language arts. Funcation Academy also offers an extended trial. So instead of automatically being charged after 10 days, you can pay a smaller fee to extend your trial to 30 or 60 days for the exact path and Courseware products. Unfortunately, I don’t think they offer this for the Istation program for Prek – 5th grade. But it’s just something I wanted to mention.
Funcation Academy – Pros and Cons
So now that we’ve reviewed the Funcation Academy homeschooling program and what it has to offer, it’s that part where I give you my honest opinion of what I like and what I don’t like. This is a weird one for me though, cause I’m honestly not that sure yet how I feel about this program. But I’ll try. We’ll start with what I like. As a homeschooling parent, I do like the community aspect. Homeschooling can be isolating for parents too, and it’s nice that you can feel like part of a community here and get help from real people even if it is in a virtual environment. I really do appreciate what they’re trying to do, and I think it definitely has value. It’s something that a lot of online homeschooling programs are lacking. So while it’s kind of sparse at this point and needs work, I can see the potential there.
I also like that if gives you an opportunity to have access to a learning program that homeschooling parents would not normally be able to use. Istation and Courseware are educational software programs used in schools. So it’s pretty cool that you can use this in your homeschool.
What I Didn’t Like
Unfortunately for me, I just don’t really like the software on Funcation Academy very much. And I think this is because it’s not designed for homeschoolers. It’s a program used by teachers in schools, and so it doesn’t necessarily translate into homeschooling.
I also find the parent/teacher accounts to be complicated and not at all user friendly. Homeschool parents are not teachers, and software that was designed for classroom teachers often just does not work out for homeschool families.
So personally, I don’t think I would choose this program, for my family. It might work fine as a supplement and as a way to connect with a virtual community of homeschoolers, but it’s not the best online curriculum I’ve seen. I do see potential here, however, and for parents who aren’t looking for a full curriculum, this may be a great option for you. It’s just not something that I’ll be using with my kids.
Have you tried funcation academy yourself? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments!
Video version:
