Starfall is an interactive, brightly-colored, fun and popular free preschool curriculum. It has been used by both our family and readers since 2002!
Starfall has a subscription model now, but several areas of their site are still free.
The “Learn to Read” is the same as it has been for a decade or so – my youngest used to play the reading learning games, and she’s now 13! Click on a “book,” such as Zac the Rat, and the program reads a book to the child, sounding out, through audio, each word in the book.
Check out this download page to view all of the Starfall freebies.
This is my little guys’ all-time favorite website!! In fact, as they saw the screen-shot above, they started requesting to play Starfall. We LOVE Starfall!
We love starfall! Another great link: Poisson Rouge at http://www.poissonrouge.com/
Thanks, Lori!
We LOVE Starfall!!! Both of the boys loving playing on it! They sing along to the songs and enjoy the interactive stories! Our 3 yo’s favorite part (it seems) is that the lady computer voice says “thank you” after he provides his feedback about whether or not he liked the story. They can’t play on Starfall enough for their tastes!
Starfall is a favorite at our house as well!! The boys LOVE exploring all of the stories, songs, and games while they are learning to read. Starfall is a GREAT educational and FUN resource!
My 4 year old loves Starfall! Also a good one is http://www.letteroftheweek.com it’s a little more structured than we prefer but it entirely free! 🙂
Thank you, Jackie!
We love starfall! My kids always ask to play.
Thanks for posting this, I’ve been trying to find some kind of software for my son (it’s hard keeping his attention!) and I will definitely be trying this one out!! Thanks again!
Thank you so much for your feedback! We'd love to know how you like it, after you've used it a while.
Wow, for once I knew about a website before you posted about it! My son and I have been using Starfall for a couple years now. It’s great!
Love it! Thanks!
I love Star Fall, I’ve been using it with my daughter to teach the alphabet as well as letter sounds. It’s really helped her to start identify more letters.
Our house uses a variety of things online for the Preshoolers and favorites include:
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/
http://pbskids.org/
http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/general_content/free_resources/teachers_corner/teachersCorner.jsp?f=hpsb
and
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/tresourcegrade.jsp?gradeId=16
We also use museums (free museum day!) and the museums local to us usually offer some free resources online that support the subjects.
Blogs are another great resource and most of them offer free ideas and printables. Oh, that reminds me, another great place for printable materials is
http://mrspancake.com/
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing, Jessica!
Im doin a research paper on Starfall and how it would be a good choice for a small daycare to implement to teach their children to read. If you have any information that may help me such as positive parent feedback on the program, I would be very grateful. Thanks
three cheers for starfall! my kids, especially my 5 year old, LOVE starfall. it doesn’t “feel” like school: playful graphics, rating systems for readers, etc. she always asks to do MORE!
melinda
I agree!
We love Starfall as well and the songs for remembering the rules are very catchy. We sing them alot to remind the kids of the rules “When 2 vowels go a walking the first one does the talking”
We used starfall when my kids were preschool but when they wanted to learn to read and “do school” they thought it was too baby-ish. We found Progressive Phonics http://progressivephonics.com/ and it was a much better fit for our family.
Both website are good and work even better together.
Great feedback, Mia, for a smooth transition.
Not just for preschool! My young reader is in love with this site and it helps her practice a lot of the phonics skills she struggles with. She also loves readingeggs.com and after the free trial, we ended up getting her a subscription as a Christmas gift.
Thanks for mentioning that it's for more than just preschoolers!
very nice site, user friendly and good for your children. Read and Learn things at starfall zone…Great Job!
We used Starfall when our daughter started to learn to read. She loved it. Now we use this free website for her vocabulary. I’m not sure if you have it on your free resources on your Pinterest board. It’s SpellingCity.com. There are so many games that my daughter loves to play on there!
I love puzzle games it’s very fun and addictive.
Preschool learning games teach kids to recognize colors and shapes and to concentrate.