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Thrively Review: A Free Resource for Making Learning Fun!

The kids and I had loads of fun reviewing Thrively!

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Thrively is a fun assessment and delight-driven database of educational activities for students and parents.

Here’s some basic information about how it works. You can also find this information on Thrively’s site.

  • Thrively is completely free! You simply go to their site and create an account. You create a parent account and then set up accounts for your child(ren).
  • Each child completes a Strength Assessment. This assessment asks questions on a variety of topics. The child reads each question and then marks the answer that best expresses his/her opinions or likes and dislikes.
  • After the Strength Assessment has been completed, you (the parent) receive by email some information about your child’s assessment results. Also, the child (or the parent) can then go to the website to view recommended activities specific to each child according to his/her Strength Assessment results.
  • In addition to lots of recommended websites and “in real life” activities, there are also some great inspirational videos of “a range of dynamic personalities and young achievers pursuing exciting goals and careers.”

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When I went to the parent dashboard, it let me set up a profile for myself and each of my children. From there, I can friend other parents and get recommendations based on their likes. I like the feature that allows me to create and share boards with themed activities. Inspiring videos, creative and fun websites, and unique activities are recommended to me on my dashboard. Each of my children has her own dashboard with her customized interests based on her assessment. I sat with my girls and we explored their recommendations together.

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We did a virtual tour of the Louvre. We checked out some grammar sites. We watched some neat videos. This was fun school time!

I immediately recommended Thrively to my unschooling friends, and they loved it and signed up and are regular users. I just knew they would. This is a great hackschooling, unschooling, interest-led, delight-driven way to do homeschool. Even if those aren’t your homeschool methods, it’s fun to allow kids to explore once in a while to keep things fresh. And you might be surprised what their interests are and how they answer some of the questions in the assessment!

What I love about Thrively:

The results for my daughters were spot on. I wasn’t surprised a bit by their interests or talents.

  • Elizabeth (age 13): “Creative Thinker”

You think outside the box. A flexible thinker, you have no problem coming up with a plan B. You can always work yourself out of a jam, thanks to your quick mind. Strategizing is a snap for you, and you can get tasks done in a smart and simple way. You always focus on the bigger picture.

You tend not to worry about petty details, but rather the important stuff that really matters. You are great at coming up with ideas and can brainstorm countless concepts and inventions. Robots, holograms, and fancy gadgets and contraptions come from minds like yours!

You are an innovator. If there is a problem to be solved, you have good, creative ideas, and can find solutions quickly. You have real potential to contribute to this world through your ability to see the big picture and to consider novel options!

Strengths are: compassion, worldly, creative thinking, morality, memory.

  • Tori (age 8): “You Are Analytical With Particular Growth Potential Around Your Academic Aptitude And Ability To Think Creatively”

You care about your grades, you get your schoolwork done and have a strong memory. You are a conscientious, college-bound student who won’t be intimidated by a test.

You have a gift of being able to focus on details and create solutions in a step by step manner. You consider the variables at play and are a natural problem-solver. You rely on your ability to quickly understand systems and bring your existing knowledge to bear to make decisions and break the pieces of a puzzle apart one by one, carefully analyzing each. You are a rational thinker with a powerful mind.

You are a creative mind, and if there is a problem to be solved, you have good ideas and the ability to find good, workable solutions. You have the ability to see the big picture and to consider novel options in any situation, and this ability will serve you very well!

Strengths are: morality, compassion, patience, analytical, appreciation.

  • Kate (almost 7): “You Are A Student Of The World With An Analytical Mind”

You have a gift of being able to focus on details and create solutions in a step by step manner. You consider the variables at play and are a natural problem-solver. You rely on your ability to quickly understand systems and bring your existing knowledge to bear to make decisions and break the pieces of a puzzle apart one by one, carefully analyzing each. You are a rational thinker with a powerful mind.

To you, the world is a constant fascination. You like to look outside your day to day and consider big thoughts and ideas. You realize that the world extends far beyond the radius of your immediate experience, and you want to be an active part of all of it. You have a curiosity and zest for people, places, travel, culture, history, and very much enjoy learning through experience.

Many of the activities suggested were similar for my girls which makes it much easier to explore websites together. We can change the criteria to search for local, regional, and national events.

Strengths are: worldly, analytical, appreciation, creative skill, creative thinking.

Kate loves learning about languages. She’s probably my most creative child and she thrives on exploring and learning all the time. She retains new information quickly. She’s never bored!

Working on Fun Websites

The girls were concerned with the word “worldly” since in Christian circles that has a negative connotation, so I explained that I think with this assessment “worldly” means  “having a lot of practical experience and knowledge about life and the world.”

And that’s a great skill to have.

How Thrively could be better for homeschoolers:

The language for the assessments could be updated. My older daughter completed the assessment just fine on her own. My younger daughters needed me to sit with them and I had to explain some of the language that was school-friendly and didn’t apply to most homeschoolers. My concern is that it affects the assessment results since we didn’t really have an applicable answer for a few of the assessment questions that didn’t apply to us. So, perhaps a homeschool portal and a school kid portal with appropriate language for the questions? (One example of such a question has to do with whether the student is excited about running for Student Council and for President of his/her class.)

I’m still exploring Thrively with my girls. We love all the additions we keep seeing to the database for fun sites and activities I wouldn’t know about on my own. They send me weekly updates with ideas they think we’ll like. This is like a free online homeschool mama sharing resources! It’s similar to when a bunch of homeschool mamas get together and share about resources and sites and curriculum and activities they’ve heard about or tried. Thrively is very particular about which activities and resources make it into their database, so it can be trusted as a reliable educational database. Also, it’s good to know that Thrively is not associated with any of the sites/camps/resources they recommend. They simply recommend resources that they truly believe are beneficial and worth exploring! 

Check out the video below to see our interview and hangout with Thrively!

I’m so sad we’re leaving the States next month and won’t get to utilize all the fun IRL activities. Luckily, there are many websites listed for each of my girls, so we can explore those based on interest.

If you’d like to learn more about Thrively and create your own free account, just click this link to go there and get started!

NOTE: This product was reviewed by a Hip Homeschool Moms team member. She received no compensation other than her free account and agreed to post her honest opinion in this review.

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