Wednesday, October 10, 2012

ABC Mouse

A few months ago I was watching early morning PBS kids shows with my Bug. He is only allowed to watch one or two non PBS shows and even then they have to be educational. I grew up on PBS and whole heartedly love and support it. So when I saw a commercial promoting something called ABCMOUSE.com I was intrigued. The commercial said it was an online learning academy for children ages 2 to 6. So I decided that it would not hurt to check it out. When I checked out the site we were offered a free trial month. I figured if Bug didn't like it we hadn't lost anything. So I let him set up an account. You select and design an avatar to look like your child.
Then you set them up on a starting level based on age and ability. I started Bug on Toddler Time because when we began it a month ago he was still 2 and he had never played with a computer much. You child's start page looks like this. From here they can also go to the farm, the zoo, or visit their fish or hamsters.
The hamsters look like this.
You buy their cages and tubes with tickets. You can have three hamsters in the maze at a time. The fish are also really fun. Here is the aquarium.
They have a classroom also that looks like this. 
The classroom is a jumping off point for all their lessons and shows their progress on their current grade level. It also allows them to get to their lesson path which looks like this.
Each lesson path has 3-5 different lessons which are split into four to 6 activities. Each activity is connected to the topic of that lesson. After each lesson is completed the child gets 20 bonus tickets (they get 1-4 tickets at the end of each activity as well) as well as selecting a prize. At the end of the lesson path the child moves to a new environment lesson path. You will see the progression meter fill up as well. When it reaches 100% the child has mastered that grade level. Bug graduated from Toddler Time today and moved onto Preschool level 1. 

At the end of each grade level the child gets a graduation ceremony as well as a printed certificate. We are going to print out all of Bug's as he progresses and frame them to hang in either his room or our hallway where my framed college degree is hanging.
All in all we are sold! I am just loving this program and so is Bug. Well worth the 80$ a yr.

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