Having the opportunity to review the one-year subscription to the The Starfall Home Membership by the Starfall Education Foundation has renewed and refreshed me in homeschooling my 4-year-old in particular. I can't wait to explain the results I've seen in my son since using this program a few times a week over the last few weeks!
First I want to tell you about The Starfall Home Membership. Star fall Education Foundation offers a free app that can be dowloaded by anyone. However, they also offer different memberships including a Home membership, Teacher's Membership, Classroom Membership, and School Membership for a set price each year. I am reviewing The Starfall Home Membership which allows a single account to be used by immediate family (including grandparents) for a year. It includes authorized access on all your devices encompassing computers and mobile devices using only one email and password.
Starfall Education Foundation was originally designed to help early readers, but as it expanded, it became so much more then that. It now offers mathematics, language arts, and phonics from pre-K to 2nd grade. It covers a wide variety of activities. One of which includes an extensive music library which is my two boy's favorite feature! I have actually seen both my boys, ages 4 and 1, improve in their abilities to count simply from the number of songs they have viewed on the topic.
There is also an extensive book collection that walks a reader at several levels through short stories. One can listen to the whole page be read to them, they can isolate certain words by simply clicking on them and hear how they are pronounces, and several words are broken down with pictures to help the early reader understand what is being read.
I would say the greatest benefit of the Starfall Education Foundation that we have seen as a family is how excited my 4-year-old son has gotten about phonics! It drives me a little bonkers... but while we're driving now he'll constantly say, "Mom! Does BUS start with "b"??", or "Mom! does COW start with "c"??". His daily phonics reading time with me has become a lot more fun then it used to be and I see him excited and enjoying sounding out words more then he was before.
The layout of the computer website is a little "old school" feeling - meaning it's your basic column list of game options. When I see this layout I often wish Starfall would update this to look more modern and fun.
Mathematic skill practice and introduction is a large part of this program and includes songs about math, introduction to numbers, geometry and measuring, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. And all of this is covered in a fun, explorative way through games and songs.
Surprisingly my 18-month old, who has been a faithful viewer of his older brother play on Starfall Education Foundation, knows how to count to ten and knows all his colors! I am suspecting it's from all the fun songs and games he sees his brother play during school time.
I think what I love most about this subscription is that you don't need to purchase several subscpritons for each child. A one-year membership covers the entire family on however many devices you want to access it on. My 7-year olds all the way down to my 1-year old can benefit from this single purchase whether they're at home on the computer, at a doctors appointment on my phone, or at their grandparent's house.
And this is affordable! You can download the free app and try it out, then you can budget in the yearly subscription and use it as a homeschooling tool. It can supplement learning, or entertain in an educational way.
There's so much more to cover when it comes to The Starfall Home Membership by Starfall Education Foundation that there is no way I can do it all in my review. However, lucky you can check out other reviews from my Crew Members by clicking the banner below!
Cheers!!
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