Help
How can we help?
Short, step-by-step guides for every part of Toka. Search, or pick a topic below.
Browsing and your account
Finding resources
- Browse books, videos and courses
Find resources by subject, publisher, approach or author, and narrow any list by type.
- Search and narrow by age or level
Search every resource by title, author, tag or ISBN, and set a level that narrows every list you browse.
- Read a resource page
What each part of a resource page tells you, from its editions and reviews to sharing it with another parent.
- Compare prices from different sellers
See what each seller is asking for a resource, new and used, and how paid links work.
Watching and reading
- Read a book or PDF online
Open a free reading copy or a PDF in Toka's reader, find your way around it, and pick up where you left off.
- Watch videos and play a whole topic
Watch a resource's videos, move between them, and play every video in a subject one after another.
Classical Conversations
- Find Classical Conversations resources
Browse Foundations, Essentials and each Challenge level strand by strand, with the books each one uses.
- Follow Foundations week by week
See which Foundations week communities are on, open a week's videos strand by strand, and choose how much review to include.
Your account
- Create a free account
Sign up with your email and a password, confirm the code we email you, and tell us a little about your family.
- Sign in and sign out
Sign in with your email and password, what to do if you are asked for a code, and how to sign out.
- Reset a forgotten password
Get a reset code by email and choose a new password, which also signs you out everywhere else.
For parents
Adding to the catalog
- Suggest a resource
Add a book, video, course, DVD, PDF or website that Toka doesn't have yet.
- Add a video to a resource
Suggest a YouTube or Vimeo video — an audiobook, a review, a read-aloud — for a book or course.
- Write a review
Rate a resource, share how your family used it, and report a review that breaks the rules.
- Reviews from around the web
Read what trusted review sites say about a resource, and vote on which links help most.
Your family
- Keep shopping lists
Save resources to buy, tick them off, and track a term's booklist from needed to on the shelf.
- Track what your family owns
Record the books and curriculum already on your shelves, so you never buy the same thing twice.
- Invite a co-parent
Bring a spouse or another parent onto your family account, so you can plan and check work together.
- Tell us the curriculum you use
Tick the publishers your family uses this year, add anything else in your own words, and choose whether it shows on your profile.
- Add a child
Add each child to your family, choose the app view that suits their age, and remove a profile if you ever need to.
- Choose what your child can browse
Approve the books and videos a child may open on their own, or let them see everything on Toka.
- Your child's classmates and friends
Choose whether classmates can see your child, approve friend requests, and turn it all off.
Your account
- Your profile and picture
Edit your name and bio, choose a photo or avatar, and control what other families see on your public profile.
- Change your email address
Move your account to a new address, and undo a change you didn't make.
- Language, country and region
Choose the language Toka speaks to you in, and set where your family lives.
- Print page size
Choose Letter or A4 once, on your profile, and every writing worksheet prints on it.
The planner
- Find your way around the planner
See this week at a glance, open any child's day, and reach every part of the planner from one page.
- Plan a child's day
Add tasks to one day, put them in order, and fill in what each one involves.
- What the verification methods mean
Choose how you'll know a task is really done — a quiz, a photo, a shared document, your own check, or nothing at all.
- Make a task repeat
Set a task to come back every day, week or month, and choose whether a change applies to one day or all the days after it.
- Work through what's waiting on you
Approve finished work, absence requests and reward requests from one list.
- See the month on the calendar
Look across a whole month of the family's plans and open any day from it.
- Build playlists and lesson plans
Save an ordered list of resources, add notes for each step, and turn it into tasks or watch it end to end.
- Set up your family's planner
Choose how children see their list, set the household's daily routine, and adjust points and chore settings.
- Plan around who's home
Tell the planner when people are usually around, and arrange cover when someone will be away.
- Choose how you're notified
Decide whether you hear about each finished task straight away, once an hour, or once a day.
Memory work
- Add memory work for your children
Type in a passage or a set of facts, and choose which children it's for.
- Sort memory work into categories
Group memory work onto shelves like Scripture or Poems, and rename, reorder or delete them.
- Practice a passage with the drills
Pick from eight ways to practice a passage, from reading it through to reciting it from memory.
- Add a practice quiz to a passage
Write a few multiple-choice questions about a passage for a relaxed check of what's sticking.
- Share or back up memory work
Download a category of memory work as a file, and import one another family has shared with you.
Learning
- Take a family course yourself
Join a course your family has published and work through it as yourself, with your own progress and your own review.
- Join a course someone invited you to
Open an invite link to join a course from another family for free, what its author can see about you, and how to leave or report it.
Chores and rewards
- Set up your family's chores
Describe your home, pick the chores that fit it, and hand out a fair first share.
- Share chores out fairly
Balance chores across the family by age and schedule, set up turns for shared jobs, and cover a missed chore.
- Post extra jobs for cash or points
Offer one-off jobs your children can choose to take on, for pocket money, points or both.
- Run the family store
Let children earn points for tasks and chores, spend them on rewards you choose, and keep track of pocket money you owe.
Child mode
- Hand the computer to a child
Switch a shared computer into a child's own view, let older children sign in with a PIN, and get back to your account.
For course creators
Courses
- Create a course
Set up your teacher profile and start a new course for your family.
- Add lessons, units and chapters
Shape a course into lessons, group them into units, and split each lesson into chapters and sections.
- Add content to a lesson
Fill a lesson's sections with text, video, quotes, card decks, story slideshows, drills, audio, knowledge checks, PDFs and writing worksheets.
- Add pictures to a course
Give a course and each lesson its artwork, put a hero banner across a section, choose what phones show, or set a photo beside a passage.
- Language practice activities
Edit a lesson's language practice, choose which of its parts each block shows, and place copies of it in other sections.
- Language practice games
Add a game to a lesson's practice, and see what it can use.
- Add PDFs and writing worksheets
Attach a PDF for students to open or print, or make a printable page for writing Chinese characters stroke by stroke.
- Dialogue games
Build the sentence and Role-play, the two games made from a lesson's dialogue.
- Tell a story in slides
Show a scene one picture at a time, each slide with its own recording and caption.
- Trim a course video
Choose where a YouTube video starts and stops, and skip parts in the middle.
- Publish a course
Move a course from draft to published so your family's children can enroll or join it, and remove it when you're done.
- Get a course reviewed to share it
Submit a course for a moderator's review before you invite people outside your family, and what happens when you edit it or it is not approved.
- Invite someone outside your family to a course
Send a link that lets one person outside your family take your course for free, see who joined, and pause anyone you need to.
- See a lesson as a student
Preview a lesson without saving anything, or study it as an enrolled child on a shared computer.
- Enroll children and follow their progress
Enroll your children in a published course or let them join it themselves, see which lessons they've finished, and remove them if needed.
Questions about Toka itself?
Whether it's free, who writes the reviews, how moderation works — the FAQ answers those.
Read the FAQ