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By Miranda

May 27th, 2019

I received a subscription to Starfall to facilitate this post.  As always, all opinions are my own.

Well, we’ve rounded out another year of homeschool with our four oldest kids.  But now, I’m starting to worry about the ‘summer slide’ for our middle two boys PLUS I’m wanting to start introducing more learning with our youngest since she’ll be starting kindergarten next year.  So I’m planning to utilize Starfall.com to help us.

Starfall Educational Learning Website

What Is The Summer Slide?

What’s referred to as the “Summer slide” is the tendency for students to lose some of their achievement gains that have been made during the previous school year. Primarily, it refers to writing abilities so some students need paper writing help to refresh their knowledge. If all learning is” If all learning is halted and kids are left to do anything they please, they tend to forget about important skills they’ve learned.  But don’t worry, there are ways to prevent great losses.

Avoid The Summer Slide With Starfall

Avoid The Summer Slide And/Or Start Prepping Your Younger Kids For School

So whether you have younger kids who haven’t yet started school at all or you’re wanting to help your preschooler, kindergartener, 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grader prevent the summer slide, here are some things you can do.

  1. Visit Your Local Library:  Most libraries have summer reading programs that encourage kids to delve into books and continue learning throughout the summer months.
  2. Look For Educational, Fun,  Enrichment Activities:  Check your local community to see what kinds of activities or programs they have available throughout the summer.  Some are even held at your local library!
  3. Go On Nature Walks:  Create learning experiences everywhere you go.  Head out on a nature walk but instead of powering through, make it a game.  Search for 5 insects and have your child sketch them.  Or you can look up more information about the creatures you’ve come across.
  4. Salt Trays:  Utilizing salt trays for letter learning, counting, math, and more is always a fun, hands on activity.
  5. Subscribe to Starfall.com:  One thing that we’ve used many times over the years with our five children is a subscription to Starfall.com.  (And yes, we’ve purchased this membership with our own money in the past too as well as reviewed it once before!)

Avoid The Summer Slide With Starfall

What’s New With Starfall?

If you’ve subscribed to Starfall.com in the past, you may notice a few changes.  Good changes!
  1. Starfall.com now runs on HTML5 instead of Adobe Flash.  What this means for most users is that they can now access the site without an additional plugin. Additionally, the Starfall.com website will now work directly on mobile web browsers on tablets and phones. Some activities work a little differently with this change, and they are busy working to polish the user experience on this new platform.
  2. The Main Index has been divided into two sections. One for Pre-K and Kindergarten, and another for Grades 1, 2, and 3. This provides room to expand into higher grades and offer additional challenge and engagement for growing children. They have several new activities in production to further flesh out our more advanced content.
    Avoid The Summer Slide With Starfall 3
  3. Starfall’s companion websites, the Starfall Parent-Teacher Center and the Starfall Store have been redesigned to make it easier for parents and teachers to find our most helpful content.

Avoid The Summer Slide With Starfall

Why We Choose Starfall.com

My favorite thing about Starfall is that they actually have a free option that offers limited access.  This is a great way to test them out without committing to a membership.  However, their low-cost membership program options expand the free content to include animated songs, mathematics, and reading activities spanning K-3. Membership also supports the production of new books, songs, educational games, and movies.

Avoid The Summer Slide With Starfall 3

Our family loves Starfall because they offer a variety of learning levels, activities, games, and songs.  Their programming starts with preschoolers and goes all the way through 3rd grade.  However, our kids have enjoyed their website past the 3rd grade level even and I love that they continue to brush up on skills.  And I love the fact that they continue working on what they offer and have expanded too.

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