Most Helpful Customer Reviews
62 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent set of Learn-to-Read books, June 27, 2007
This review is from: Learn to Read (Paperback)
The right learn-to-read environment can make a huge difference in how quickly a child learns and how much they enjoy it. I've expended quite a bit of effort searching for a great learn-to-read set, and this is by far the best I've found.
As a pulished author, instructional designer and professional journalist with a Masters in Liberal Studies/Creative Writing -- married to an English teacher working on his Education PhD dissertation in Curriculum and Instruction -- I have been disappointed with the majority of the learn-to-read book sets I've evaluated: Nonsensical sentences, unrelated grammatical structures, meaningless or non-existant plot lines, poor word choices and lame artwork are the hallmarks of even the most popular series.
I was searching for fun tales with engaging artwork and logical grammatical groupings with relevant word choices and plot lines. I was excited to discover the Starfall set and have been rewarded as my 4-year old son begs to read to me each evening and ambitiously plans how many new books he will tackle that night.
He loved this set, gobbling them up at a rate of 1-2 each night without fail. His retention of grammatical rules and structures -- introduced and reinforced logically and entertainingly by the Starfall team -- has been amazing to witness. We further encouraged retention with our practice of delaying reading a new book until re-reading one we'd already read. He was so excited to get to the new book that he was happy to review an earlier lesson.
Since he finished the books in this set a few days ago, we have been working our way through some of the competition's series and I am constantly reminded of the superiority of this Starfall book set.
Elizabeth Yarnell
Author: Glorious One-Pot Meals
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42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
GREAT set of BOOKS! With Starfall.com, this is 10 STARS!, January 10, 2008
This review is from: Learn to Read (Paperback)
These books are really cute, short and sweet. The pictures really draw in the child. The animal characters are doing various things that most small children love to do (cooking in the kitchen, racing cars, making messes, playing at the beach, enjoying family, etc.). My son (who just turned 5) LOVES them.
When we first sat down to read them, I thought they were cute and really focused on letter sounds AND kept the attention of my son. But what REALLY sold me and made me (and my son fall in love with them) was the STARFALL.com website. ALL of the books are ONLINE with animation and sound. The child can even modify the story. It is too cute! My son has his own laptop and loves to go to the website and READ and LISTEN to the books, where they focus on sounding out the words. In addition to the books, there are a million other FUN learning activities ... calendar, writing a letter. It's an absolutely fabulous FUN learning website, all for free! This website has helped with learning and reinforcing what he has already learned in school.
So, if you want to see (and read) the books BEFORE you buy, they are all on STARFALL.com.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best set of beginner learn to read books!, January 15, 2010
This review is from: Learn to Read (Paperback)
I'm extremely satisfied with the Starfall Learn to Read book set. It's a great value in that it includes 15 books, plus the packaging which has velcro tabs to keep the books secure, and a carry handle on the box. This is definitely money well spent and a much better value than buying learn-to-read books one at a time.
We bought these for our son (in kindergarten) as supplemental reading books to his schoolwork/homework. They are excellent. They're about the same skill level as the material his teacher was using (Scott Foresman series), though these books are a few pages longer. I like this in that the stories are a bit more detailed and coherent than the Foresman books. Starfall's are actual short stories rather than just individual pages describing a picture all about a similar theme.
In the back of each book, it tells you the learning concepts (letter sounds, long sounds, short sounds, etc), and the books stick to this. I've found that there's usually one or two words per book my son needs help with, which seems about right - not too hard, but not simple, either. These are great books for the beginning reader. I found that intro books like Dr. Seuss and similar ones are still too difficult for him. On the other hand, it was difficult to find books on the same level as Starfall without getting either a teaching kit, or paying $3-$4 per book at bookstores. By buying the series, you ensure you're getting multiple concepts, sounds, and phonics without duplicates or leaving some out.
The books are very nice quality - definitely worth the price paid. They're appropriate difficulty, have nice story lines, and there's a lot of them. You can't go wrong with using these to help get your child reading or supplementing their school work.
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