PandaParents Review

PandaParents has created a fun and engaging monthly subscription program for young children called MESSYLEARNING FOR PRESCHOOLERS AND KINDERGARTNERS. This is an interactive monthly learning program for you and your young child to enjoy together. For this review, we received the first three months of programming.

Each monthly subscription include three basic features: stories to read aloud, story videos to watch, and workbook activities to complete. Let's discuss each component in depth so you know what to expect with your subscription.

First, the stories to read. These are sweet, cute, engaging stories that also teach some beginning reading skills such as letter sounds. The graphics are bright and colorful, drawing the young child in. We received PDF versions of the story books. These are each several pages long, so don't expect to read one entire book in one sitting. These are completely flexible so you can choose how long you want to spend on reading. For my niece, I read the story to her until she became bored with it, which was about 15 or so pages. I loaded the PDF on my computer screen and she happily sat on my lap while I read to her. The pictures were bright and captured her attention. The first story has some Christmas themes to it. For the letter "j" that was introduced in the first portion of the story, the letter "j" is a candy cane striped letter. The characters visit the North Pole and Santa is mentioned. While these storybooks are beautiful to view on the computer screen, it would also be very wonderful to receive them in printed format so that you and your young child would be able to curl up on the sofa to read them.

Next, we watched a portion of the month's video. These videos are very engaging. And they are new and original material. Again, these are not expected to be watched continuously. Follow your young child's lead to watch and learn as they are interested. At a young age, we want learning to be fun and exploratory. For my niece, we watched a short portion of the video story each day. The videos are hosted on Vimeo and are password protected. I didn't download the videos, instead choosing to keep the password close by so we could watch the videos as we chose to. For the letter "j" some interesting vocabulary words are introduced. I really appreciate the sophisticated approach that is taken with this. Sure they introduce simple words too, but the use of bigger words is wonderful for vocabulary development. The story and video tie in nicely together.

Finally, we opened the PDF workbook. Oh my! These illustrations are very well done and the activities are completely thought out. Many pages in the workbook are full color and include sticker pages. I can see the vision that the company has with these and they will surely be the star of the entire program! I can imagine receiving these already printed each month with the stickers printed on sticker paper and ready to use. What child wouldn't love to have stickers to help them complete their work? We happily explored several activities in this workbook. Since we received the PDF version of the workbook, I needed to print all of the pages. I sure do wish the PDF version included a printer friendly workbook. So many of the pages are full color and the sticker pages require you to either cut and paste or purchase sticker paper. I can definitely see the benefit to receiving these already printed for you! We simply chose some pages and activities that didn't require so much color ink.

Aside from the many lessons that we enjoyed in the first month's subscription activities, I was curious what the other months would be like. I was happy to preview the next lessons as well. Each month builds on previous months. It doesn't appear that you can work out of order as new letters are introduced with each month. There are definitely plenty of activities to choose from with just enough variety. In looking at the cost for this program, it appears to be quite reasonable. Each month you would receive a new storybook, workbook, and story video that all complement each other. The PDF versions are nice because you receive them right away in your email inbox, but the heavily illustrated workbook pages would be super nice to have already printed. It is unclear to me how long the subscription would last or how many monthly subscriptions are going to be created. 

Curious what other reviewers had to say about this product? Head on over to the Homeschool Review Crew blog to read all the reviews.

Connect with me here:

Twitter // Pinterest // Instagram // Facebook // Google+