More.Starfall.com –A Review

For the last several weeks my children have been using More.Starfall, a new subscription site from the creators of the free website Starfall.  We received one month free so that we could review the new site, so let me tell you all about it.  More.Starfall is an interactive site for preschoolers and early elementary students to practice letters, sounds, reading, and now even numbers and math.  All the content from the free Starfall website is included, with new additions covering colors, numbers, rebus stories, puzzle games for high-frequency word practice, decodable short vowel books, motion songs, math songs and more.  Here is the main menu:

Each graphic on this page takes you to a section of the site with multiple activities to do and things to learn.  My two kindergarteners love the Word Machine section the most at the moment, while Daniel (age 3) likes the colors and numbers areas the most.  Each activity or book is very easy to navigate, even my 3 year old can work his way around the site on his own. 

More.Starfall has some other features that I found very helpful as a homeschooling parent.  There is an entire “teacher’s lounge” with custom worksheet generators for the following:

• Calendar
• Numbers
• Counting
• Letter formation/handwriting
• Blends
• vocabulary cards
• word cards
• graphs
• lined writing paper with or without space to draw

Each of these generators allows you to type in personalized words or information to fit with the regular curriculum in your home.  I was even able to type in some of the science vocabulary my 4th grader is learning to make a quick card game, and the graph generator was fun to use too. 

The Teacher’s Lounge also includes the Starfall Kindergarten curriculum teacher’s guide and weekly plans in PDF format to download.  Quite a bit of the plans that use literature we could easily locate on our bookshelves or at our local library, such as Caps for Sale, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, and Miss Rumphius.  These plans also use several materials (flashcards, books, and writing booklets) sold in the Starfall Store.  What I found was that by reading through some of the weekly plans I was able to pull ideas on how to use the worksheet generators in combination with the More.Starfall website’s books and activities.  I also had fun lesson ideas for the literature selections already laid out in the plans. 

I do need to make something clear at this point.  Upon reading through the downloadable curriculum plans in the Teacher’s Lounge I discovered that one emphasis of the curriculum is evolution and Charles Darwin.  I do not, therefore, recommend you use the Starfall lessons plans as written.  God created man, animals, plants, and all other things; we did not ‘evolve’ from lower forms of life.  The lesson plans, however, are a resource that can still be used by a parent who is willing to use the content that aligns with their personal beliefs and ignore the parts that do not.  

A subscription to More.Starfall.com costs $35.00 per year to authorize up to 3 computers in your home.  That breaks down to less than $3.00 a month and includes a lot of content not available on their free site, as well as the worksheet generators, which can be very useful with younger ages as you can personalize pages quickly and easily.  If you are curious to really see each activity area in More.Starfall I have good news!  You can try one activity in each section of the site for free at any time.  All you need to do is visit More.Starfall.com and click on any area you wish.  You will find one activity in each area unlocked, with the rest grayed out.  Playing these activities is a great way to see just what each area is like!

{Disclaimer: I received a free one month subscription to More.Starfall to enable this review.  I received no other compensation and all opinions presented herein are my own.}

A special thanks goes to Starfall Education:

My children have loved the original Starfall website for years and they enjoyed trying More.Starfall immensely.