Having Fun with Online Learning Games from The Starfall Home Membership {A TOS Review}

The children love being able to be on the computer during the day. Ever since the older girls were little, we have found great educational sites for them to play on. In fact, when they were still preschoolers, we used Starfall Education Foundation to work on letters, sounds, and learning to read. This was a wonderful way to work on these skills for free. Then they added more advanced lessons in phonics, plus math and other subjects, in addition to activities for older students. We purchased a membership to what we (at the time) called "more starfall dot com," and the girls were using it for a while, but we got to a point where we couldn't justify the expense, even though it was quite affordable. When we were offered the opportunity to review The Starfall Home Membership thanks to the Homeschool Review Crew I decided it would be neat for Hannah and Harold to get a chance to use this fun site. 

We were given a one-year subscription to this online site which can be used by all the children in the family. All we had to do was authorize each computer that they would be working on, which was as simple as entering my email and password while on each computer. Children could also use Starfall on mobile devices (Kindle, Android, or iOS devices) if so desired. I was pleased to see that even after all these years, they have kept the low price of $35 per year. This is a family account, so the children don't have their own separate accounts to save what they have been working on. The activities can be played in any order, as many times as the child desires. Which is good, because the children both have their favorites they play over and over. 

This paid version of Starfall offers so many wonderful, educational activities that aren't available on the free site. Here, let's take a look.

This is the main screen for the free version of Starfall. The menu on the left is everything a child can use for free. The green menu on the right gives a child a chance to preview the paid version of the site.

Once a child chooses a subject and clicks the button, they are taken to that screen. If you take a look at the screenshot below, you will see that a child can only pick a handful of activities to play. 

It is the same with the first grade and the second grade levels.

First Grade:

Second Grade

As you can see, there is so much more that a child can access once a membership is paid for. And what I have shown is just the tip of the iceberg, as I didn't take a screenshot of each topic. 

After signing up for the membership, when the children access the site, they are greeted with this menu:

Math is on the left, letters/sounds/reading is in the middle, and extras such as songs and rhymes are on the right. And all the fun seasonal extras are now located on the bottom. 

Let's take a look at some of what Starfall has to offer.

Though my children are too old for the alphabet and beginning reading lessons, I did just want to share how much we loved them when the girls were younger. In the "ABCs" activities, I love that the letter plus the sound is taught in fun animated lessons, where the child is also introduced to several words that start with the letter and then gets to complete a fun activity. 

For example, here is a collage of some screenshots from the B lesson. 

Once a new word and picture appear on the screen, the child is to click the highlighted letter. They will hear the sound, plus the word, then either a phrase or a sentence will appear, which is also read by the computer (which sounds like a friendly child). After several words are introduced, the child gets to play a little game. In this one they had to drag the lowercase and uppercase letters that the bee was carrying to the correct flower. Once they successfully complete the activity, they are treated to a short animation. This really helped the older girls learn their sounds and letters (both uppercase and lowercase), plus gave them a chance to see new words. 

Once they are ready they can move onto beginning reading with "Learn to Read." 

They can play games that focus on specific word families, building words.

And then they can move onto stories where they focus on words that contain the same letter combinations they just played games with.

In the above collage of several screenshots from the story, the children are working on words containing the short "a" sound. The picture is shown with a sentence below it. The child can click on each word and it will appear on the screen while the computer sounds out each letter then the entire word, unless it is a sight word, in which case it just says the word. A child can also click the little ear icon to the left of the sentence to hear the sentence in its entirety. Once the sentence has been said in completion the picture will come to life. 

There are 15 levels, beginning with short vowels, moving to long vowels, and then to sight words, vowel teams, and r-controlled vowels. They could then move on to "It's Fun to Read" and "I'm Reading."

As wonderful as those lessons are, there are so many more ways a child can work on phonics and reading now that there is a paid version. We used to love the Short Vowel Word Machine activity. The child will focus on one short vowel at a time in C-V-C words. The computer sounds out the word and the machine creates the object. Then the child can choose to change either the beginning or ending sound.

The child could also work on "More Phonics," "Backpack Bear's Books," or "Short Vowel Pals."

With the original Starfall, there was no math at all, so I loved when they added it. A child can work in "Numbers," "Geography & Measurement," "Addition," "Subtraction," "Multiplication," "Division," or listen to "Math Songs." And those are just the math topics for younger children. First graders can also work on "Operations & Algebraic Thinking," "Base Ten Number & Operations," and "Measurement & Geography." Second graders can work on "Understand Place Value," "Use Place Value to Add and Subtract," "Add and Subtract Within 20," "Foundations for Multiplication," and "Beginning Multiplication."

First grade also contains more phonics lessons and reading with literature and informational text.

As you can see, there is a lot that a child can choose to work on. 

Harold and Hannah each had 4 days of the week where they spent the beginning of their computer time working through several different activities from The Starfall Home Membership. I had them mainly focus on math, but Harold did spend a good amount of time with reading activities as well. They also like to take time to listen to different stories and music. There is a nice selection of music by different composers along with small tidbits of information about said composer or the music. The child can listen to a sample of the music as well. Some of the composers also had a "jukebox" where you could choose to listen to several different musical compositions from each of them. There's even in a little English lesson at the end of each lesson. Harold enjoys listening to the music after he has done some math and/or reading. 

Here are some of the math activities they have been using.

Harold has worked on fractions. This activity was a matching memory game.

He's even been working on addition with regrouping. 

I absolutely love the way they help the child work through the problem. The ones column is highlighted and the child is to click the numbers to type in the answer. Then the number is broken into the tens and the ones, and the tens are moved up top. Finally, the child needs to add the tens column.

Once they get a correct answer the Skateboard Dog can continue on his adventure.

 Harold has even worked with shapes and symmetry.

And even weighing.

The following Math Journey activity is a favorite of all the children. They help the animated child along his/her quest by answering math problems correctly. I love that ramps are used for greater than/less than/equals, but there are also other ways the character may overcome obstacles. Such as building bridges or taking a lift.

One of Hannah's favorite activities is Monkey Mash where she gets to practice addition and subtraction.

When she clicks the correct answer, a monkey will pop up and grab the banana. Once there are three in a row, the game ends and the child can watch the monkeys as they go on the Cyclone roller coaster or bumper cars. 

She also likes Crazy Gator, which is the same idea, just for division instead of addition and subtraction.

Like Harold, she is a fan of matching memory games. Here she is working on money, coin values to be exact.

Hannah is also a fan of Alien Planet, which is similar to the Math Journey, only the character is making its way on the surface of an alien planet and the equations focus on fractions.

Another neat feature of the Starfall Home Membership is having access to the Parent-Teacher Center.

There is a Complete Guide for Using Starfall, where you can find guides to each of the levels. This will tell the parent/teacher what can be found, and let them know what (if any) supplemental resources are available at the Parent-Teacher Center. Those resources include worksheet generators, custom printables, projectable books and posters, and printable downloadables. 

So, what do we think of The Starfall Home Membership? 

I have always thought Starfall was a wonderful site for early learning. There are numerous, engaging activities for working on letters, sounds, reading, and math. For younger children this could really be used as a complete curriculum. However, for older children in first and second grade, it is definitely more of a supplement. Either way, children are learning in fun ways, which is so important to me. The games are wonderful for reinforcing the concepts that are being learned. 

You can find Starfall Education Foundation on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Don't forget to click on the banner below to see what my fellow Crew Mates had to say about The Starfall Home Membership.

School Time: Week 20 (Ee concluded)

Surprisingly we actually accomplished some things this week.  I say surprisingly because we had two doctor appointments squeezed in.  On Monday, Hannah had her 9 month check up, and though she is still gaining weight slowly the doctor is not concerned and she is doing fine in every area (I will be posting some more on Hannah's development in another post).  The most we got done on Monday was Muffin Tin Monday.  This week's theme was favorite foods.

On Tuesday we actually had lesson time.  Tuesday is usually Play Group day, but when I heard the school had a two hour delay, I decided I wasn't going out on the roads.  This worked out well because I had lost Monday.

The girls got to use the new Starfall site, more.starfall.com .  We have always liked using Starfall for the cute interactive lessons on learning the alphabet and the sounds, plus beginning reading.  When I saw that there was a new site I had to check it out.  They offered some of their lessons for free so you could get a feel for it, but they charge a membership fee to be able to use the entire site.  What I had sampled impressed me, so after talking it over with hubby I was able to pay the low membership fee ($35 for the year) to open up everything for the girls to use.  Oh, my goodness.  I am amazed at everything they have available (and best yet, the girls love it)

On Tuesday they wanted to "learn" their colors I guess.

I know Tabitha knows all her colors.  I think this will help Amelia to learn the ones she doesn't know yet. 

We still have all the old Starfall lessons.  Here is the alphabet menu page.

But there is sooooooo much more:

Tabitha was really intrigued by the Word Machine.  On the sample you only get to try out "a", but now that we purchased it we can make 3 letter words for all the vowels.

Here is what the machine looks like (reminds me of the Leap Frog DVD "Talking Words Factory"):

Here it is after you press "on"

It sounds out each letter separately and then says the word and out of the machine comes the "object" being spelled.

Then you get levers to click on:

Voila, the word has changed.

(You can also click the red button to change the first letter)

It was quite fun. 

There are also math lessons.

Numbers:

Addition and subtraction

When we sampled this only a couple of each was available.  We enjoyed the "Adding Machine" and "Bowling." We have yet to try out any of the new lessons.  There is just so much.

Of course they still get to enjoy their stories which they enjoyed from the original Starfall.

Not only did the girls get to use the new computer to play on Starfall, we also spent a lot of time focusing on Elmo and Elmer this week.

On Tuesday, when they were done with Starfall, they colored an Elmo picture

I had them color Elmo red

Then they traced the E and I put glue on on their writing.

So they could attach elbow macaroni.

Tabitha took it upon herself to write the sentence:

On Wednesday we started our project based on some really cute "new-to-me" books.  I am not sure how I never heard of Elmer the Elephant by David McKee, but I saw someone on another blog somewhere out in blog-land do a project with her child based on these stories recently.  When I saw them I knew I had to look into them as we were going to be starting E lessons.  I put them on hold and they were available for this week, our second week of E.  We read Elmer, Elmer Again, Elmer's Friends, and Elmer in the Snow.  The original book was written in the 60's and is about an elephant who is very different than the plain old elephants who are gray.  He is patchwork colored.  He feels the other elephants are only laughing because they are laughing at him because he is different.  Turns out he is a real prankster in each of the books, but it is nice to see that he is accepted for who he is.

The girls made their very own patchwork Elmers on Wednesday by fingerprinting.

We had to wait for the paint to dry to finish our craft, so we didn't do any more that day.  The girls did watch a lot of Elmo though.  Well only one (or was it two) that day.  They usually get one show a day while I am making lunch, but the Elmo's World shows are shorter than the other shows they like to watch, so I think I let them watch 2

And on Thursday February 3rd we celebrated Elmo's birthday with a party. 

We made him a party hat and wrapped him a present and got out the tea party stuff and invited a few friends.

And because mommy gained weight from Tabitha's birthday cake, we didn't make a real cake.  I had planned on it.  So he was served tea party cake.

Elmo even got to go in the van with us to my doctor's appointment on Thursday.  Of course, he wore his seatbelt.

We continued the Elmer project on Friday.  I cut a sponge into an elephant shape, using the Elmer as a guide, though I had to make it a bit smaller to fit the sponge.  Then the girls sponge painted gray elephants on green paper.  When that was dry we glued on Elmer.

After talking to daddy, I have started doing our State Lessons again.  No new pictures right now as we just reviewed Delaware.  Focusing on where to find it, the capital, the bird and the flower.  We also talked about directions and the fact that we would have to drive south and east to get to Delaware.  Tabitha can tell me what the capital is and find Delaware on the map!

We also talked about the concept of empty using our egg carton counting from the summer.  First I asked the girls if the egg carton was full or empty

When they told me it was full I took one egg away at a time, each time asking if it was now empty.

Finally it was empty.

Then we worked on some subtraction.  I made up some equation cards from 1-12.  We got to about 6.  I would put the card above the egg carton and the girls had to put the correct number of eggs in the carton.

Then I asked them how many they would have to take away to make it empty again, to equal zero.

They found the right number. 

Took away the eggs and put the numeral card in the equation.

Amelia really enjoyed counting the eggs.  She recognizes the numbers up to five now and is working on counting out one-to-one.

This week daddy had a few days off in a row and he spent some time helping the girls learn.  I'm linking this up to Daddy's Time Friday, a cool weekly link up over at Patricia's blog, Welcome! My Tot Learning Time.

I almost missed the opportunity to take these pictures as I was upstairs getting dressed and doing laundry.  But I heard daddy telling the girls words and asking them to get something.  I had to sneak down the stairs to see.  When I saw what was going on I hurried to get my camera.

They are using Hannah's new foam letters.  As I said, daddy would say a word and the girls took turns hunting for the letter it started with.

Then we made Elbow macaroni macaroni and cheese for lunch.  The girls were both supposed to help but Tabitha wasn't interested for some reason.

While you are here, I invite you to check out my giveaway for World Wide Montessori Online.  You could win a Free Montessori Course for Pre-Primary Children (Ages 2-6).  This course includes her 12 albums/training manuals, plus interaction on Yahoo Groups with fellow students and lectures on Montessori.  The value of this fantastic course is $240 and you can win it here to take the 2 year course for free.  After the completion of the course you will receive a certificate. 

So, if you have ever been interested or remotely curious about Montessori I would recommend checking out her course and the giveaway which ends February 19th.

I'm am linking up to