Primarily, before going into this extensive ABCmouse review, I want to give a little insight into my own expertise in this realm. I am, first and foremost, a mother of two small children and a teacher and specialist in the realm of secondary education, specifically reading. In my field, I see many students who are struggling in reading mainly because outside of the school building. They have not been given substantial enough learning opportunities in this area. I say this not as judgment because life is crazy and busy, but to offer help with tools that will actually work.
This ABCmouse review is designed to do four main things:
- Provide you with accurate information about the program;
- Explain how children learn with this program;
- Give you enough information to determine whether or not ABC mouse is worth the money; and
- most importantly, determine whether or not ABC mouse will be the best fit for your child.
You don’t have to be in the career realm of education to know that there are so many different educational programs available that claim to do everything your child needs. Unfortunately, so many parents with the best of hearts purchase expensive programs to find out the homeschool learning activities aren’t as great as they would have hoped for.
What is ABCmouse?
ABCmouse is an educational website and subscription service that offers a comprehensive approach to a child’s learning. Using ABC mouse has many benefits and is designed for kids ages 2 through 8 years old. ABC mouse allows your child to, literally, learn from anywhere they are at. They can play on your phone with it, a computer, an iPad, or another android device.
Ideally, you would use ABCmouse in a classroom setting. However, this is the perfect learning path for those who are learning from home as well. You will find that ABCmouse is comprehensive and versatile enough that kids will love ABC Mouse throughout the entire day.
ABCmouse has over 850 lessons that span ten different levels. These levels range from the earliest of ages (around 2 years) up through those who are in second grade. With this subscription, your child will interact with activities in the subjects of social studies, mathematics, reading, and art.
ABC mouse has earned its reputation of being one of the best curriculum-based learning activities available to children. This subscription has earned the Mom’s Choice Gold Award, the 2012 Teachers Choice Award, and the Parents’ Choice Gold Award. Plus, aside from this article, you will find many different positive reviews from other educators and parents who have purchased an annual subscription for their classroom or their own home.
How Does Learning Occur With ABCmouse?
ABC mouse uses the basic educational concept that interactive activities and tools work best for younger children. This is not necessarily reinventing the wheel. However, ABC mouse has all of these different aspects for learning all in one place, which makes this subscription convenient for the parent and/or educator.
The various activities that this ABC mouse subscription offer includes animations that kids will instantly be drawn to, various interactive games, books with guided reading, songs about anything you could think of, lots of fun puzzles, interactive art projects, and even principles for on the go. ABCmouse truly has something for those that are as young as two years old up to those going into their third-grade year.
Reading & Language Arts
The ABC mouse reading curriculum includes many different activities to keep your young child engaged in growing the skill. Reading and language arts activities include guided reading practices, phonics reviews, and rhyming words and their families; which art section of ABC mouse has more than 450 books for your child to read, starting with the beginning reader all the way up through the second grade.
Not only does ABC mouse focus on the reading aspect, but this program also focuses on everything that makes up the learning process of reading. Instead of just having children learn words by sight recognition, ABC mouse practices phonics and sentence structure. To go a step further, ABCmouse teaches upper and lower case letter recognition and parts of speech.
Math
Just like with reading, learning math is a vitally important tool for any child. This app has numerous math games that are varied by level to help both the parent and child with math concepts needed going into grade school.
The ABC mouse math curriculum includes recognizing and counting from numbers 1 to 120. Your child or student will also learn the base 10 system, place value, and addition and subtraction. Kids will also learn the names and attributes of 2D and 3-D shapes, which is vitally important in many introductions to coding apps that kids will surely be introduced to in early grade levels.
Another main mathematical concept that is vitally important not only to grade school but in life is learning length, time, and money management. The skills alone will help the child turn into an adult that knows how to get to work on time and manage the income they make.
Science & Social Studies
If you thought that the reading and math curriculum was impressive, look at the science and social studies. This section answers many of the basic questions that any 4 years old would ask. What’s cool about ABC mouse is that it addresses things that we wouldn’t normally think to address on our own. There are some things on here that, even as an educator, I will don’t think to address with my small child. For example, the science portion of ABC mouse covers the body and health, plants and animals, weather climate and the seasons, and even the earth’s different environments and ecosystems.
Kids will love exploring the different maps and regions of the United States. Also, what kid doesn’t want to learn about the solar system? This section will make sure the kids know the basics of matter and its properties and all of the other things in the world around them.
Art & Colors
Two of the most asked questions to them are; What is your favorite color with any typical four years old? And, How old are you? Since ABC mouse covers the various counting concepts, this section allows kids to learn their different colors and shades of colors.
The section also combines colors with mouth by allowing kids to work on paint-by-number activities and number and letter dot-to-dots. Your child will have so much fun coloring and putting puzzles together that they will forget entirely that they are learning in the process.
Is ABCmouse Worth the Money?
Absolutely! As I mentioned previously, there are hundreds if not thousands of different curriculum material that is available at all times to just about anyone. I love ABC Mouse as it is a comprehensive educational website that will greatly benefit kids when used regularly. I would not suggest purchasing a subscription to ABC mouse if this were used every so often.
The best learning occurs when certain subjects and their projects are used every day for a certain period. Like with exercise, you are not going to become a bodybuilder going to the gym once a week, so why do we think education works this way? Consistency amongst younger grade levels and higher ones is a simple fact that kids review and practice material on ABCmouse every day. Then, they continue growing and building on that knowledge. The same learning process must be used with the ABC mouse.
The best and most substantial learning can occur when you take the time to ensure that your child can interact consistently with their learning path.
Is ABC Mouse Any Good?
Yes! As previously stated, the ABC mouse is absolutely worth the money. To further explain why it is worth your hard-earned cash, keep on reading! In the classroom, there is something called scaffolding with materials and learning. In a nutshell, this means building on the previous knowledge from either the year before or even the day before. ABC mouse does this for you. This means you don’t have to try and figure out how to scaffold the learning for either your own student or child. This site does everything for you.
As an example, the typical 4-year-old doesn’t know how to Count in sets of tens. So ABC mouse will ensure that this child receives age-appropriate activities and that those activities continue to build on each other. I know this might not seem like a lot of work to build on previous knowledge. However, when considering this across numerous subject matters and age levels, this is pretty significant. Using ABC mouse will create a specific learning path for any child 2 years old and up.
What About the Two-Year-Old?
Much of what you find on ABCmouse seems to be geared toward children aged four and up. However, there are several things on ABCmouse that will help prepare your child for pre-school. I cannot stress enough that the most important thing in brain development is reading with your child and playing games with them. Doing this every single day will help them to read and process at an earlier age.
With children of this age, there are many concepts on the site that a young child may not grasp yet. For example, the reward system involves tickets and purchasing items in a virtual room. Chances are, a two-year-old is not going to be able to grasp this concept. Still, a small child understands how to play with guidance from either a teacher or a parent. While many of the features may not be suitable for a smaller child, many things on here are certainly worth trying for your child to experience learning through play.
Additional Features
As with any product, we always want to know what the features are. What are the extras that make whatever we are looking at so much better than everyone else’s? This ABCmouse review will give you all of those details so you know exactly what you would get with your subscription.
Progress Tracking
One of the most important features in any educational program, or education in general, is the ability to track a child’s growth or decline in various subjects. The ABCmouse review portion of the site allows you, as the parent (and customer), to see exactly where your child or student is regularly.
You may ask why it is important for you to see this information or your children’s level. First of all, you cannot know exactly where your children should start if you do not know where they are at. Second, when paying for a subscription service, you want to know that the service you are paying for actually is helping your child. This site allows you to clearly see how many lessons have been completed and their progress on their specific learning path.
Tickets & Rewards
I don’t know about you, but I like to be rewarded when I do good work. Well, as an adult in education, that reward typically comes in the form of expired snack cakes in the break room…but kids do much better with visual reminders of their hard work. ABC mouse does a great job at having a rewards system that kids will want to spend their time working on.
Children will love spending their virtual tickets and rewards on cool items for their ABC mouse classroom! They can redeem their tickets on items like a classroom goldfish or clothing for their avatar. Using tickets will certainly be something that kids love to do, and it is a great way to help a child learn through play.
Make Your Avatar!
Aside from all of the other games, prizes, and tracking that this educational program comes with, kids will find all of that much more fun when they see a cartoon version of themselves on the screen. When playing the different games on the app, children from the youngest ages and up will use their avatar to get from one place to another. Plus, time and time again, kids will love changing their avatar just the way they want.
Other Interactive Activities
There are so many great interactive experiences for children on this app! Aside from games and puzzles, your child can go to the zoo, aquarium, or farm. Kids will love a chance to interact with the elephants, read about different kinds of fish, and feed the animals on the farm. Using these interactive experiences was a great feature before the pandemic. However, this is a great opportunity for kids of any age to feel still like they can see cool things while never leaving the house.
How Much Does ABCmouse Cost Per Month, and Do They Require a Credit Card?
First, let me start by saying that you can get a 30-day free trial! That’s right…FREE! A free trial for not just a week or two, but for an entire month! The ABCmouse free trial is not just as simple as the click of a button, though there are a few steps you need to go through first.
1. The first step is to create your family account on ABCmouse. Here you will enter your email and create a password for use on the ABCmouse site. Make sure that you create a password that you will remember easily! I know it is difficult when we all have so many different passwords, so possibly choose something that your children will remember as well! Just a tip, have your child try to log in on the app themselves, so they learn how.
2. Step two is where most people decide to cancel going through with the rest of the process. Here is the allusive step where ABCmouse needs your credit card information to set up the account and begin your ABCmouse free trial. Nervous about putting your credit card information on the ABCmouse site? Don’t be. ABCmouse has a security feature that keeps your personal information safe and free from hackers. There will be no charges until your free trial has expired.
3. One of the best features is easily canceling the subscription should you find it isn’t worth it, you realize that you don’t need it anymore, or it isn’t meeting the specific needs of your child. If you realize you don’t need ABCmouse, and you are still within your free trial, go into the “Parent Section” of the app and cancel your services.
How Many Children Per Household is Allowed on ABCmouse?
The 30-day free trial can be used on up to three children under the same account. So if you want a subscription that most, if not all, tiny humans can use within your home, this is a great option that your children will love! Many other educational subscriptions charge per account, so if you have two or three children and you want all of them to benefit from the use of this app, this is a good option. Plus, only ten dollars a month after the free trial really is a great deal for one child, but it is certainly worth trying if you have more.
Are ABCmouse Assessments Accurate?
As a teacher, it is straightforward to get critical of different educational websites. For one, ABCmouse has been ingrained into every teacher to get, use, and review data to determine growth or decline. While ABCmouse isn’t perfect, it is important to know that nothing really is or ever will be exactly perfect. Still, this site uses wonderful techniques to help your child level up, up, and up.
Visuals are everything to kids, which this alone makes this app a step above. When kids (and adults) can see that they are improving, they want to work harder to get to that next level. This app has made its assessments accurate according to various level standards to ensure that your child is fully prepared for school.
Final Thoughts
In hindsight, you will find a ton of different reviews on ABCmouse that will help you use the site and determine beforehand whether or not this app will even be something you will like and that your children will like. Ultimately the entire purpose of the site is to prepare students for school. This whole concept even goes a step further to provide them with the foundation from which they will be building for the rest of their school career. This is a pretty humbling thought, considering how much of a person’s academic struggles in life are determined by test reviews as early as kindergarten through the third grade.
Ultimately we hope that our ABCmouse review will help you determine whether this site is worth your cash. Overall, my take is that the site is worth looking into and going a step further to use the free month. Worst case scenario, you realize that you don’t like the app and decide that you want to cancel and the first few days or weeks of using it. However, if you’re like me, you will likely forget to cancel it before your ABC Mouse subscription will automatically renew itself. Just being real here. They also have a special offer of $5 for 2 months and a monthly fee of $12.99 after that.
Still, with all this being said, ABCmouse is certainly worth a try, and we encourage you to give it a go!
