My 3 and 6 year olds have been helping me check out a new review item we received, which is just for their age group! MESSYLEARNING FOR PRESCHOOLERS AND KINDERGARTNERS from PandaParents is a monthly program that you can use with your child for about 20-30 minutes a few times a week. You get a storybook ebook, an accompanying video to watch, and a colorful workbook to go along with the story. It is a curriculum kit designed to help teach your roughly 3-6 year olds all sorts of skills, including colors, shapes, handwriting skills, prereading, math, problem solving, basic art concepts, and more.
I received everything as a digital download, but it does appear that they offer several different subscriptions. You can get the digital subscription like I got, or a workbook subscription which includes the same digital elements but also a printed workbook, or a deluxe subscription which includes the digital elements and printed workbook AND storybooks. All of the subscriptions are per month with their pricing. The plans with print resources are currently being sold as a pre-order. The all-digital subscription has a free trial available.
My family got to preview 3 different months worth of subscription content. The titles of the books we received were Mommy’s Baby, Scotty Skunk Hears a Scary Sound, and A Jolly Jingling Journey. They each came with one ebook storybook and an ebook workbook. Scotty came with 2 videos to watch and the others each came with one video.
My sons liked Mommy’s Baby best. I think that’s because they’re both mama’s boys for sure and they really related to the story. 🙂 We began by reading the story together. The PDF document for this is only 31 pages and is in full color. It concludes with some critical thinking questions and observational activities. My boys enjoyed going back in the story to see new things that they had not paid attention to earlier when we read it the first time. The answer key is included on the same page, so if your child is old enough to actually read ahead, be sure to cover it up!
The next time we worked with the program, I showed my boys the video that went along with it. My kids liked this because it was also very colorful and fun. I found the slow pace of it to be quite refreshing and it gave them plenty of time to watch it and make some observations and predictions.
The graphics are not as high tech as the cartoons my kids normally watch, so I was a little worried they wouldn’t like it, but I was pleasantly surprised. It held their attention!
For the next several sessions of working with the program, we looked through the workbook ebook. My printer refuses to print anything green or blue, so we had to make due, but many of the activities were easy enough to do by looking at it on the computer screen, such as finding shapes in pictures and answering questions based on the pictures. Early on in the Mommy’s Baby book, there is an activity that shows a character and the child has to choose which emotion is looks like they are feeling. That was a good one to just do on the screen and I thought it was a great worksheet for them to do. That’s an important social skill to be able to identify how others feel, and it’s not something you see in a lot of preschool programs.
There were pages that we did print out. For example, I did want my son to practice printing his letters. A lot of it was very colorful and I am sad that I’m not able to print those out at this time. It’s definitely worth considering the subscription levels with the physical copies.
The workbook had several pages that had stickers or mentioned using the stickers. This is one thing that having an ebook wouldn’t be advantageous for, but you could always print them, cut them out, and glue them in the appropriate places. If you have the budget, having the printed workbook would be fabulous, though! We looked over the stickers and I had them decide which one should go in the empty spots as they came up.
Overall, the program is a very gentle approach to preschool and kindergarten learning concepts. It is bright and fun, covering a wide range of topics and information. There’s a whole game element to it, having kids look through and find or count things or sequencing. There is the school-like approach, teaching what you would expect like shapes and colors. There are also project ideas and wholesome stories to share with your children. There are mazes and dot-to-dots, cutting and pasting, memory games, phonics exercises, art projects, craft ideas, tracing, coloring pages, and more.
I would recommend trying it out for a month or two to see how your family likes it. The price is right and the content is new every month.
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