Starfall.com has been my most visited site since 5 years ago, ever since I needed to entertain and educate my daughter. I stumbled upon it thanks to google and both my daughter and me have been delighted with it ever since. Only at our place, it’s referred to as ‘Me, me,me’, thanks to this activity – All about me. “Mama, let’s do Me, me, me,” says my daughter and I always open Starfall. Ditto for daughter 2 who now knows it as Me, me, me only.
The site comes with a free version and a paid version. For very young children (read non-school going), the free version is totally adequate and comprehensive. On the home page, there are 4 basic sections – 1) introducing the alphabets with their phonetic sounds 2) reading practice – vowels, combinations, funny videos to clarify concepts cleverly – I really love the one on vowels and con3) Introduction to reading at the same time introducing concepts like poetry, art, riddles, etc 4) Reading in various forms and genres like comics, folk tales, plays, etc. Then there also a lot of fun activities on the main page – writing a letter to grandparents, the Halloween pumpkin, the groundhog, etc. Our favorite is the calendar where you can choose the theme and also mark in important days for the month. And the best part is the music and animation and the characters make learning a game and before you know it, your child is hooked.
With all these, one can engage our child’s imagination and learning with very well structured content to introduce alphabets and reading with an assortment of concepts like time, seasons, days, the earth, family, parts of the body, the list is only indicative. And then for those who want a bit more there is the More.starfall bit. This is a paid site where one has access to more in-depth learning material like songs, nursery rhymes, numbers, colours, basic concepts of Maths like addition, subtraction geometry games, etc. For 35 USD, for a whole year it is not very expensive for the daily usage one can envisage for this site. I have bought this once and am planning to purchase it again this summer.
The site started with a Kindergarten curriculum, followed by First Grade and lately a Second Grade curriculum to follow for home-schooling or even normal learning at home. They are now also offering a Pre -K kit. Membership is open to individuals, schools for classroom activity, and there is also a teachers lounge where it offers detailed resources and aids for teachers. This is actually superb – one can generate practise sheets with a weekly progression for reading, writing, numbers, etc. They also have a Download center with a lot of practice stuff to download for learning to read, and even awards to hand out to little readers. They also have a Starfall store to ship to you worldwide, and a mobile app in two versions for USD 2.99.
There are delightful characters like Backpack Bear and it is fun to follow his activities, and others like Zac the Rat, Peg the Hen – who reside on starfall.com and make a new and exciting world come alive for the children. In case you are still unsure, all you need to do is check out the user reviews not only on the site but on the whole web. One very satisfied customer, is who else, but Me, me, me:) and my two little ones.
Related posts:
Source:
http://www.indianmomsconnect.com/2013/06/03/website-review-starfall-com/
The News from http://funyhalloween.blogspot.com