KinderBach is a music program geared to the preschool to early elementary (ages 2-7) crowd. You’ll need a piano or electronic keyboard in order to use the course, which is available either online or as a CD-based program. I can’t say enough good things about KinderBach. While I thought it skewed a little young, Tornado Boy absolutely loved it and asked to do a lesson most days. There are plenty to do – the online program has 240 videos.

KinderBach uses engaging characters (shown above) and kid friendly lessons to teach beginning music theory. The child meets new friends along the way, starting with a little boy named Frisco and a donkey named Dodi. They teach him things like sounds, rhythm, high/low, loud/soft and where the notes are on the piano. The characters are also featured on printable materials that go along with the program.

Besides the keyboard or piano (which should be close to the computer or TV – depending on the program type), you’ll need other instruments to keep the beat like a cup and drumstick, plus paper, crayons, etc. Each lesson has printable companion pieces like coloring pages and activity pages that reinforce the lessons. I really like that the printable that correlates with the lesson can be printed from the same screen while the child is watching the lesson. One of the really nice things for us is that the lessons are short and active. They are a great fit for Tornado Boy. I’ve wanted to get him into music lessons, but I was very concerned about his limited attention span. We’ve actually been able to do several lessons in a day because they are so short. I love that he wants to do more.

To purchase the lessons that KinderBach has, you can first do a free trial, and then choose from online lessons from $19.99 per month ($7.95 monthly if paid in advance for a year) or DVD packages, starting at $40.95. You may also want to consider becoming a KinderBach Friend on Facebook as they run specials there from time to time. We liked KinderBach so much that we went ahead and ordered a years worth of lessons – the program was just that good. I feel that it will give Tornado Boy a great foundation if he decides that he’d like to take piano lessons or learn to play another instrument in the future.

Also available for purchase are e-coloring books and music CDs that complement the curriculum.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of KinderBach, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

Disclaimer: I am a member of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew for 2010-2011 and receive free products and services in exchange for a thorough and honest review. Though I am compensated with free products, I am not compensated in the form of cash for my reviews. My reviews will always reflect my honest opinions, findings, beliefs and experiences with the products and services that I have received.

Kabongo is an online gaming world that allows your child to practice pre- and early reading skills. Skills are developed by playing in the three different Kabongo habitats (Laughter Lake, Twister Top and Galaxy Gardens). Each habitat contains three different learning games. Each game has six different levels of play. Kabongo uses the games to help foster cognitive development skills that help with reading. Integrated into the games is a rewards system containing virtual items like stickers, decorations and trophies for the Kabongo environment.

For each week that your child spends time in Kabongo, the parent will receive a progress report update via email. The email shows which areas of the site have been used, the level that the child has attained in each area and what skills they’re working on developing. Tornado Boy’s favorite game is called Crazy Maze. According to the progress email, its focus is on Spatial Awareness: Being able to visually determine the placement of objects in space helps readers begin to identify sight words and particular letter groups as representing certain sounds. Progress information is also available within the game’s parent dashboard area. It gives level and skill information for each habitat. Here’s a snapshot on the in-game progress report:

Kabongo is recommended for kids ages 4-7. Since Tornado Boy’s reading skills developed so early, the games are somewhat easy for him. I do like the ones that challenge him to pay attention to details like “Design-a-door” in the Twister Top habitat. The group that created Kabongo has also created another gaming environment (currently in beta) for older children called Skatekids. I’d be curious if he enjoys it as well as he does Kabongo. I rather like that he can use Kabongo so independently. It’s nice for me to be able to get a short break once in a while.

Free trials of Go Go Kabongo – Laughter Lake are available, and the standard price for an additional individual habitat is a one-time fee of $4.95. The Kabongo website also has activity suggestions and printables like coloring pages and dot-to-dot puzzles.

As of now, Kabonga is a “beta” release, meaning there are a few technical issues that they are working on.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of GoGo Kabongo, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

Disclaimer: I am a member of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew for 2010-2011 and receive free products and services in exchange for a thorough and honest review. Though I am compensated with free products, I am not compensated in the form of cash for my reviews. My reviews will always reflect my honest opinions, findings, beliefs and experiences with the products and services that I have received.

BigIQKids is an online learning program for elementary and middle school children that has four different focus areas – math, U.S. geography, spelling and vocabulary. I was asked to review BigIQKids through the TOS Homeschool Crew. There are a few different membership levels – free, free with upgrade and a premium paid account. The free with upgrade option adds additional game content. The paid premium account adds additional lessons and quizzes for most topics, along with parental tracking and full game support. There is also more limited advertising on the premium account. For the purposes of our review, we were given premium accounts for all topics to use on the site. I really appreciate the vendors generosity for this review.

Here is a video that gives a quick overview of the BigIQKids website:

The site intends for the child to complete one lesson per day in each area of instruction. The site works well when learning specific sets of facts (spelling, geography or math) to mastery. The premium membership in particular allows students to complete different types of lessons and quizzes and then rewards them with coins that can be used in their game section. Parents are notified via email message or on-site reporting about their student’s progress. The intent seems to be to allow the student to work independently online to reinforce lessons that they have already been taught elsewhere. This paradigm works well for things like math facts.

Pros:

• In the spelling and vocabulary programs, the parent can set up their own word lists to use with their existing curricula.
• In the premium math program, the parent can select the areas of math that they want the student to work on, and the program will automatically move them up as they display mastery.
• The parent can control access to the reward coins that the child gets for completing lessons. The default is that the child earns one coin (that they can trade for game play) after each lesson. The parent can also opt to only shows game content on the weekends, or not at all.
• The site is actively growing their content. The free section of the site has a new eBook preview, vowel reviews and quizzes on measurement and time.

Cons:

• The program doesn’t seem to always mirror the student’s level very well. In the Geography program, the intro section throws so many facts at the child and there doesn’t seem to be any way that a young child would have good comprehension given the pace. Also, 50 problems is the default math quiz setting regardless of the grade level of the child.
• I found the digitized voices on the pages very distracting. There are some pronunciation issues and also the phrasing is often awkward.
• I had a few issues with site areas not working. At one point, the screen said “double click on the word below and Jake will say it”, but I couldn’t click on the word. I was using Google Chrome for my browser, so that may have been a problem. The site recommends using Firefox or Safari. The technical support section of the site seems to be a little bit out of date. Windows 7 is not listed as being supported, but it does work on my system.

Pricing:
Free account – Free!
Free account with game access upgrade – $9.98/yr.
Premium account for one subject -varies by subject.
Premium account bundle for all four subjects – $19.99/month or $99.99/yr.
Classroom pricing plans are also available.

Tornado Boy enjoyed the math practice areas when I reset the problem sets down to 20 problems rather than 50. I felt like the rest of the site was over his ability level at this point, mostly due to the pacing in the areas. This may be a site that will be a better fit in six months or so. Tornado Boy is currently age 5 and in Kindergarten. I think that this would likely be a better fit for kids in later 1st grade and onward.

If you would like to try a free trial of the premium account, you can sign up here for 7 days free. This will allow you to test out all of the premium features on the site.

If you’d like to see what other TOS Review Crew members think of BigIQKids, you can visit our Crew blog.

Thanks so much for reading!

Disclaimer: I am a member of The Old Schoolhouse Review Crew for 2010-2011 and receive free products and services in exchange for a thorough and honest review. Though I am compensated with free products, I am not compensated in the form of cash for my reviews. My reviews will always reflect my honest opinions, findings, beliefs and experiences with the products and services that I have received.