Connor and I stumbled on Starfall.com through this site. I was looking for some simple toddler computer games with at least a modicum of educational flavor so I could show Connor some computer basics while learning things at the same time.
Connor and I floated around several sites -- on one we discovered an EXTREMELY annoying animal sounds game that he insisted on playing six zillion times a day -- but once we found the Starfall ABCs game, we were hooked. Connor has known his ABCs forward and backward for several months and can "sing" the ABCs, can recognize his name and 12 other words, etc so I wasn't sure how much if anything he would get out of it at first. Well, I should not be hungry for awhile because I ate my words.
The "game" consists of alphabet letter blocks...click on the selected letter you want to play and it will do animated illustrations of different words as it goes along. Connor can hunt for the letter on the keyboard and press it to make the game advance and use his budding mouse skills to advance it even more. At the end of some of the letters are simple toddler games -- matching, find what doesn't belong, etc that have cool animated celebrations at the end if you win (it's hard not to win in a toddler game). Who doesn't like to have a celebration with lovely ladybugs lifting legs in a dance line? Connor's favorite is the alligator in an apple tree shouting "Awesome!" for sorting capital As and lower case as into their correct apple baskets. Whew that was exhaustingly alliterative!
Connor is learning tons from just a few 10-15 stints a day on Starfall. He's recognizing more words daily and is wanting to read even more than he did before, so he can point out words he knows, like dog and wet. We recently starting structuring it just a tiny bit and selecting one special letter every morning, playing that letter then roaming around the house to find objects that start with that letter, talking about the sound it makes, writing/drawing things on his Magnadoodle with that letter, etc. I've been trying to show him how to write some of the letters, but his motor skills are perhaps just a touch behind to do that quite yet -- our Cs turn into big swooping circles and it frustrates him, so I backed off some on that for a few weeks.
The best part? Connor thinks this all is fabulous fun. Letter games are an enormous treat in our house. We use them as bribes to use the potty correctly, to coerce good behavior while out, even taking letter time away for serious infractions like trying to paint the walls with watercolors. It's DEVASTATING when we get letter time taken away -- though mommy usually later catches us doing something good so she can give it back.
At my friend Brita's suggestion I also incorporated some daily exercise into his letter games. When I'm nursing, and he's bouncing off walls, I'll often ask him to run super fast ("hurry, hurry, big letter emergency!") into the kitchen and fetch me a specific magnetic letter or number off the fridge. I can usually get him ping ponging back and forth 6-10 times before it loses its fun. And then he gets ultra excited to put them back on the fridge because he then earns letter game time. Moms sure are sneaky making this learning stuff fun huh?
Anyway, if you have a toddler interested in computers, check out Starfall.com...you won't be sorry!
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3 comments:
We have used this for Abbey's learning to read! They are brilliant. And they also have a bunch of free worksheets. For writing the letters...I used to draw a start and finish dot...and I didn't go in order. There are some pre-writing ideas where the child traces zig zags and loops just to get the hang of things. And have you seen Word World on PBS. I bet he would love it! And....are you dead because I haven't heard from you in ages. Hug hug kiss kiss.
This site was also suggested to us by Tom's ECI case worker, it's great!
Starfall is a great site, isn't it? Glad you guys are enjoying it!!
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