As we ease into a homeschool routine for our preschooler daughter, we are really trying to focus on basic math and counting skills, and basic phonics and reading skills. I came across Starfall a couple of months ago after hearing about them on the Secular Homeschool website. While they have a packaged curriculum, one which is adaptable for either classroom or homeschool use, they also have a web portion that is really great.

We opted to purchase a year’s subscription to Starfall.com. This gives us full access to all of the web content, which includes a very nice collection of flash-driven activities. Word generators introduce simple three-letter words, “books” are read-along by clicking on individual words or having the entire sentence read aloud. There is also active content within books, which makes it even more exciting for the child. A wonderful collection of animated songs, and nursery rhymes introduce various subjects, like time, money, months and days of the year, body parts, etc. We love the emphasis on phonics – in just two months of using Starfall, our four-year-old has really made significant progress in learning to sound out words, and I often hear her imitating the starfall website in making the sounds that each letter makes. The content is enjoyable for her, and so it doesn’t seem like “school work” and she is really benefiting from the material and its approach.

One thing I love about the Starfall online membership is the Teacher Lounge. Here I am able to generate worksheets for our daughter to practice writing her letters, words, and numbers. I can also generate word finds and letter search worksheets. While there are defaults that follow the “weekly” schedule of the Starfall curriculum, it also allows for custom input. Included in the Teacher Lounge are additional resources, such as a Blank Writing Page, perfect for early writers, as well as Vocabulary list generators, Word and Number Card generators, and a large collection of the Starfall Books available for on-screen reading. Finally, the Starfall Kindergarten Curriculum guide is available, broken into “weeks.”

As we transition from a more formal preschool to educating at home, we are taking a relaxed approach out of necessity this summer. While we will be incorporating more structured material in the fall as we move into Kingergarten, Starfall is providing a nice foundation for our daughter to get more comfortable with reading and early math. The material available with Starfall ranges from early readers in preschool to new readers in Kindergarten (and beyond), and the Math content ranges from early counting, addition and subtraction, and goes into simple multiplication and division. There is a whole series of songs for learning the multiplication tables which our daughter loves, even if it is a little advanced for her!

Overall, we have been extremely pleased with the Starfall content. Our daughter loves to do Starfall and really seems to be getting a lot out of it. We have even bought three Starfall apps for my Iphone, which she absolutely loves. I think the reasonable price ($35 for home membership) makes this an excellent investment, even if not homeschooling.