When my middle kids were younger, they loved playing Starfall reading games on the computer. As they grew and developed new interests, I sort of forgot about it. So when I had the chance to review The Starfall Home Membership from Starfall Education Foundation, I was excited!
What Is The Starfall Home Membership?
With The Starfall Home Membership, I received an annual membership to the interactive content on Starfall. All the kids can use the content, and it can be accessed from multiple devices once you authorize them. My family accessed the content from an iPhone, iPad, and laptop.
The activities focus on math and language arts for preschool through first grade, and math for second grade. There are games, songs, stories, and more.
Some of this content is accessible free of charge with the classic Starfall, which is what my kids used to play.
How Did We Use the Starfall Home Membership?
We used Starfall content as a supplement to language arts and math. My kids were always eager to play the games, and most of the time didn’t even realize they were practicing important skills.
I had six different kids use this product in some way.
My two-year-old and four-year-old mainly used the alphabet games. They loved watching the videos of each letter, and clicking on the letter when it shone. (This is how they moved from one page to the next on the iPad.) The color songs were something else these two enjoyed.
My six-year-old said her favorite was the talking books. There are several full stories that the program reads aloud.
My seven-year-old really enjoyed playing “Who Am I.” Here she got to customize a character by making decisions about it’s age, favorite activities, and more. She also liked the snowman game. You got to pick eyes, a nose, a mouth, and buttons for the snowman. Then at the end there was a cute song and your completed snowman could be seen.
My nine-year-old’s favorite were the math games. There were some beginning multiplication games that correlated well with what he’s learning in math. He also really enjoyed playing one where he had to find out how much an object weighed by making the scale balance. Here’s a picture of him playing it:
I personally enjoyed the songs. There were several categories to pick from, including historical folk songs, motion songs, and nursery rhymes. These were animated, and I enjoyed snuggling with Owen and listening to them.
What I Thought of The Starfall Home Membership
I really enjoyed watching my kids use The Starfall Home Membership. They had so much fun exploring the different sections.
The website version makes it really clear which games are for which age. The language arts sections are broken into four sections. ABCs are followed by Learn to Read, and then It’s Fun to Read, and I’m Reading.
Each level gets progressively harder, and works on different language arts skills. They go though letter sounds and identification, phonics, sounding out words, and comprehension.
In math, it’s the same. There are activities for the different strands of math at each of the included grade levels. Here’s a screenshot of what the first grade screen looks like on the PC. There are tons of options!
I also appreciated that the games were accessible on different devices. Once I authorized each, I didn’t have to keep entering a username or password. It was easy for the kids to play.
One downside is the content isn’t as easily divided by grade level on the tablet and phone. A couple of times my younger kids selected a game that was just too hard.
There’s also a Parent-Teacher center available. To access this you must answer an addition problem (written in words not numerals). This was to help keep the kids out.
In this section, there’s a guide to using the material, plus all sorts of supplemental resources. It was easy to download worksheets to correspond with the games they were playing. This is a fun way to expand the learning and bring it off-screen.
My kids are going to keep playing the games on The Starfall Home Membership. I highly recommend it, and will likely keep our membership current for at least a couple more years until my kids all age out of the target material.
To see what other families had to say about the Starfall Home Membership, click on the banner below.
