More Starfall - a review

Starfall is a terrific free site that I used with Bear and now use with J-jo to teach letter sounds in conjunction with all the other alphabet and phonemic awareness activities we do. 

There is now a paying section of the site called More Starfall.  I contacted them to see if I could have a free trial in return for a review on my blog and they answered yes.  Here are my thoughts on More Starfall.

More Starfall includes everything at Starfall plus songs (lots and lots of songs), colors, numbers, more phonics, and talking books.  As well there are alphabet rhymes to go with every letter and also some historical folk songs.  There's even a teacher's lounge where you can print out worksheets with the worksheet generators.


We have done most of our playing in the math section.  I really like how they have done concept "books" for each number (and each color) like they did with the letters on Starfall.  For example, if you click on the number 1, you will get four or five different pages of examples of 1.  These concept "books" are especially good for the 1 to 2.5 year old crowd (my 3.5 year old still enjoys them even though she knows the concepts).

In the math section, Bear's been playing the addition games, but they also have subtraction, multiplication, and division games.  There aren't too many questions per game, which is good since little ones tend to get tired of repeating things endlessly.



The price is very reasonable - monthly it is less than the price of a Starbucks coffee. However, if your child is already beyond the kindergarten level in math and phonics, then it might not be a necessary purchase.  There really aren't enough multiplication and division games to make it worth the subscription for the older child.  I'd say the bulk of the site is really geared more for J-jo (the 17 month old) than for Bear (because of her academic level - her enjoyment factor of More Starfall is high!), but I do know some three year olds who would benefit from More Starfall's extra enrichment.

The bottom line:

For a parent who wants some enriching computer time for a child, I encourage you to look at More Starfall and see if it is a right for your family.