Science Snippets with Slade Series: Part 1, World Book

This is a series where my five-year-old, Slade, is reviewing MCPL’s online resources for kids. For this first installment, Slade and I reviewed Early Learning by World Book.

If you haven’t used Early Learning by World Book before, it’s “…the premier online resource for preschoolers and children in the early elementary grades.” It features several resources on creepy crawlies, sea creatures, the rainforest, rainbow colors, counting numbers, and more topics in a standard school curriculum.

Mom’s first impression: Colorful, bright, inviting, knows it’ll tickle his fancy for science. I like the characters that represent the different subjects across the top. If you scroll down, there are categories for videos, games, stories, and activities.

Slade’s first impression: More excited he gets to use an iPad (I wanted to test the resource’s mobile capability), but ultimately really excited to be my curly-haired guinea pig. I asked him what he thought about the website, and he said, “I don’t know!” We’re off to a good start, friends!

All morning, Slade was upset his teacher didn’t assign a video for their science topic in her daily email. So, I used this resource to my advantage. He immediately swiped through the carousel of characters and found “My Body.”

His first choice: Bones

The way Early Learning of World Book is set up, you find your topic and subtopic, and it’s all arranged like a book. You can move from page to page by pressing the arrows or by tapping the megaphone to have the words read aloud, and the pages move along after it's finished on that page.

He didn’t seem put off by the robotic reading voice because I’m sure it reminded him of how I read a book. I am a Master of Monotone. Anyway, like the engaged reader he is, he asked me a few questions after having the paragraph read to him to better understand what he just heard. I was impressed! The paragraphs were all short enough that he wasn’t bombarded with large amounts of information. It looks like we really are off to a great start! See you in Part 2!

Brityni S.
Consumer Technology Specialist