Thanks to ABCMouse.com for sending along a subsription for review. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always. Affiliate links may be included at no cost to you. 

When did homework start being part of your child’s daily life? For us, it was this year, first grade. Darah’s homework takes about 30 minutes each afternoon. This isn’t too terrible, unless, of course, you are Darah’s 3-year-old little sister, Layah, in which case it is the WORST THING EVER.

Like most younger siblings, Layah is very eager to do everything she sees her big sister doing. So when Darah is practicing spelling or math or even reading a book, Layah begs to get to do homework, which has typically been enrichment workbooks we have purchased. I never want to discourage a motivated child, so I give her the opportunity to do some of her own work.

But the problem is that in both cases and at exactly the same time, my undivided attention is needed. Oh trust me, I’ve tried to figure out how to swing that, but I have not succeeded. So when ABCMouse.com reached out about their online learning academy, I thought it was worth checking out, though I wasn’t overly optimistic, as I assumed that it would require just as much oversight from the parent as the workbooks in the best case scenario, and in the worst case scenario, that it would be overly simple and wouldn’t hold Layah’s attention at all.

The reason I wanted to share about ABCMouse.com with all of you is because it has not simply been a fun little computer program, but rather, because it has vastly exceeded my expectations and really and truly made a big difference in how smoothly homework time goes around here. I’d definitely call it a game changer.

When you first set up the program, you do need to spend a little bit of time familiarizing yourself with it, and showing your child around. But once Layah learned where to go to access her lessons, and especially once she learned that by completing her lessons she earned tickets that she could redeem for fun virtual prizes, she was off and running!

In the photo above, she just redeemed some tickets for a beautiful shell which will go in the fish tank in her virtual classroom that she can help care for, in addition to her curriculum.

ABCMouse.com is designed with preschoolers through first graders in mind. It is subscription based, and there are no in-app purchases. The tickets are the currency, and the only way to earn is to learn!

Layah is very quick to request ABC Mouse time during big sister’s homework time. Prior to having this program available, I was at the point where I would ask Layah to watch videos on Netflix while I got through homework time. You can imagine how awful it made me feel to ask a child who WANTED to do enrichment lessons to just watch television instead, but I simply couldn’t give Darah the attention she needed otherwise. Now I have Layah nearby, completing her own lessons without assistance from me and she absolutely loves it.

 

Big sister plays, too, and I find her curriculum level to be appropriately challenging for her. Truly, I’m so impressed with this program! 

ABC Mouse Price

The subscription for the program is $7.95/month and you pay month to month, so you can easily cancel at any time should you feel that your kids aren’t getting the value from the service. But before you even spend your first $8, take advantage of th 30 day FREE trial ABCMouse.com offers. Simply mark your calendars for maybe 28 days from now as the point when you need to evaluate how much the program has been used. This makes it risk-free! Additionally, right now ABCMouse is offering 38% off if you opt to pay for an annual membership over a monthly membership (which would be $59.95 for the year).

I think you will be very surprised by just how many amazing things there are to do on the site, (7,000+ activities!). It is my understanding that many school systems actually use ABCMouse as part of their curriculum, and after seeing just how much is available, I understand why.

I’m SO glad to have this at my disposal for the school year, and we will be continuing on our learning paths with ABCMouse.com over the summer to help keep that dreaded “brain drain” at bay. I very highly recommend that you do the free 30 day trial. I believe you’ll find the subscription price to be worth every penny and then some (especially if you have the same homework troubles we do!) but if not, you won’t have to spend a dime!