We like to use websites and computer games to enhance the schoolwork that occurs at home. One of the sites we have used with the younger children is Starfall.com. Starfall has a basic service that is available for free and a low-cost annual membership (at more.starfall.com) that unlocks a variety of additional learning games. We have used the free version for some time now and the staff at Starfall have graciously offered us a free 30-day trial membership for us to try out the full version. It didn’t take us long to decide to go ahead and purchase a membership.
Content
Starfall’s free site has four sections that allow you to work on one and when ready, move to the next, more challenging, section. In addition, there are some activities that deal with calendar, special topics and particular holiday themes. You also have access to their downloads site which has a variety of tools you can use to supplement your curriculum, all for free. You can download bookmarks, reading awards, flashcards and more. We have used the free site with the older child who is now 7 and in 3rd grade. Although she is too old for it now, she loved it a few years ago. The free site has sufficient content to be useful.
Subscription to More.Starfall.com is $35 per year. That comes out to less than $3 per month and is well worth it. In addition to all the free activities you get math activities including songs, numbers and counting games, geometry and measurement activities and math facts. You also get additional language arts activities including colors, additional books, phonics, songs and rhymes. The teacher’s Lounge area has some amazing resources including a variety of printables, projectables and a kindergarten teacher’s guide with step by step lesson plans. There will be a similar PreK teacher’s guide available soon with an expected release date of fall 2012. While we don’t use the teacher’s guide as our curriculum we do often find inspiration from it.
Age range
The 2-year old and 4-year old are the ones who use Starfall in our family. For most, first grade is probably the cutoff for when kids will be interested in the games and activities before they become too easy and it may be time to look for something more challenging. However, for the younger children, it is a great learning tool to help prepare for reading and beginning math. It reinforces what you teach at home.
Ease of use
Because Starfall is designed for younger children, they have made using it very easy. The buttons are big and in most cases single clicking will allow you to do whatever is needed including dragging if necessary. There is no need to hold down a mouse button to drag. There are some exceptions but those are mostly found in the membership area on the games that are a bit more advanced. The site is laid out well so you can go in sequence and work on beginner concepts then move on to more advanced. My youngest likes to skip around a lot and we do what interests him. The four year old likes to move in sequence but gradually add more challenges. She likes going over the ones she has already done before adding a new one.
Recommendation
Homeschool Pool highly recommends Starfall for PreK and Kindergarten children. The free version is not like others where you do not get a lot of content and it is only free to get you hooked until you buy the membership. Instead, you get ample material to work with. We used the free version for years without upgrading. Now that we have two children using it, though, we invested in the paid version. We get a lot of use out of it and it has been very helpful. It is highly recommended.
Starfall can be found online at http://starfall.com and the membership site at http://more.starfall.com.
