Hello, DeKalb Families! Miss Julie here to tell you about our latest acquisitions: ABC Mouse and Poisson Rouge. While you may have heard of these two subscription sites, we now have them for you to use for free! Poisson Rouge will entertain your youngest children with it’s bright colors and fun animated pictures while they learn the alphabet, their numbers, and how to navigate a computer screen, and ABC Mouse will help you teach your older child how to read. Both sites can be found alphabetically after going to our A-Z Resources page.
Above you see the main page for Poisson Rouge. Everything you see in the picture is clickable and does something unique. You can see that some things are purely for learning, like the alphabet, the numbers, and colors, but others are just for fun. For instance, if you click on the cradle, you will hear a baby cooing; however, if you click on the telescope, you will be given a picture of the night sky, and clicking around on that will make the outlines of different constellations pop up:
There are no fancy bells or whistles with Poisson Rouge, just calm playtime on the computer. There are pages that have songs and music, but nothing is too obnoxious, and everything is pretty low-key. My kids loved this site when they were little, and it is fun to revisit it now. Some things are the same, but then there are new additions, like this adorable page that has you painting the picture by clicking on different colors of the rainbow:
Next up, we have a site that you have probably heard of online: ABC Mouse. It is a very popular program for kids just learning to read. My three-year-old is currently enamored with it and he especially loves the section that reads books out loud to kids. To my surprise, he is also motivated by the program’s built-in reward system: complete a learning exercise and earn tickets, and when you have enough tickets, you can “buy” a pet or toys for that pet. This had an amusing real-life application when we went to the pet store after adopting a puppy from the local rescue… my son confidently marched into the store and told us exactly what our little bundle of fur needed to stay happy and healthy.
The above picture shows the landing page. You could have your child just hop on and start playing, but that kind of defeats the point of the program because when they quit for the day, all progress is lost. Instead, I recommend taking the time to set up an account so that your child can progress down the learning track. Since this site has the ability to guide your child from preschool level work up to second grade work, having an account will help your child to get the most out of the learning experience. Just go to the button that I have circled above to get that taken care of.
So many parents that I know used ABC Mouse to help them teach their children to read. Don’t get me wrong… there is no substitute for sitting in an adult’s lap and reading a book together. But if you are looking for something a little bit different that also serves an educational purpose, then check this site out. At the very least it will allow for some quality online engagement while you get some work done, but ideally, it will allow you to play along with your child and have fun while he or she learns to read.