I go into the download center and print activity worksheets that go directly along with the puzzles. Lately, we’ve been focusing on one puzzle (or short vowel sound) per week. It’s pretty much a free on-line workbook you print and use as you like. Here you can print activities for each of the sections. They are very heavy-duty and are cleverly color-coded on the back so the pieces don’t get mixed up. Each of the five jigsaw puzzles focuses on a short-vowel sound by displaying words in “tags” attached to various objects. We have the Starfall Phonics puzzle set (see right). Here you can find hard-copies of most of the books from the site along with several other supplementary materials. There are a couple of other great parts of the website for parents : Here there are longer books and games in various subsections: Three Little Plays, Fiction and Nonfiction, Comics, Folk Tales, Greek Myths, and Chinese Fables. They describe it as the section which transitions children from learning to read to reading to learn. It’s got subsections where children begin to practice their new-found reading skills : All About Me, Art Gallery, Magic, Music, Poetry, Tongue Twisters, and Bird Riddles. Madeline and I have only begun to explore this section. There are also some fun movies in this section. Madeline loves to read the page and then look for the spot so she can click and watch the picture do something fun. So after the child does activities with “an” and “at,” they read “Zac the Rat.” Then they move on to blending “en” and “et” and read “Peg the Hen.” Unlike paper books, these books have special spots you can click to animate the picture. This section starts to blend letters and has a book for each level. The end of the “a” book has an activity where the child sorts capital and lowercase “a’s” into the correct baskets. (Which terrifically entertains my two kids.) When the child is ready to turn the page, the short “a” sound is repeated. Sometimes the picture then dances, sings, or giggles. When the child clicks on the sparkly letter “a” in each picture, they hear the short “a” sound and the name of the object in the picture is pronounced. For example the A “book” as they call it, has pictures of things starting with the letter “a” on each page. In this section, each letter has it’s own set of activities. There are four main sections to the site: They learn how to navigate between pages, drag and drop with the mouse, and yes, on occasion, wait patiently for a page to load – all key skills for today’s world. In addition to the tremendous phonics foundation that it lays, it also gets kids acquainted with using the computer. eh, eh” or “The silent ‘e’ at the end of the word makes the vowel long” around the house all day long!) (I can’t tell you how often we’ve gotten these songs stuck in our heads and have ended up singing things like, “Ed the Elephant likes red eggs. It builds concept upon concept by using great graphics, clear pronunciations of each letter and word, fun interactive games, and terrific teaching songs. I have just begun my journey as a home-schooling mom, but after a couple of months of comparing this site to a $150 Kindergarten phonics curriculum, I definitely prefer Starfall. Anyone with pre-school to first-grade children should check out this FREE educational resource.
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