Our son is way ahead of the curve in a lot of ways. He knows how to read, he knows how to write, though he does it mostly on the walls. He very much enjoys anything to do with learning so, for Christmas, my husband and I agreed a membership to ABCMouse.com would be something we thought our son would have some fun with.

What follows is a recap of our experience while Homesteading in a Rural Area, Homeschooling and the use of ABCMouse.Com

Toddler Time

As I set up my sons account and immediately worry began to set in. As I read the descriptions for the level settings I was concerned that our son doesn’t have the understanding of how the games were played, not having had a lot of hands on time with our Ipad, Kindle Fire or our computer. So I began to wonder how much he would be able to do. With this apprehension I set the level to Toddler Time, as our son is still 2 and it seemed appropriate.

As the program began, it guides you through a learning path that starts with the Letter A and stays fixated on it for every activity. I found that there were some he figured out quickly and others he had a little more trouble with but the information was all just the Letter A. You can’t move forward , you can’t skip ahead.

Our son knows the Alphabet. So, I dared to skip ahead.

Level 1

It felt like more of the same. Our son already knows the Alphabet, can counts to into the 30s, and knows his primary colors (Thanks to Crayola ).

He doesn’t get dressed all by himself but he knows all the body parts in the Head, Shoulders, knees and Toes song.

So again, we moved on.



Level 2,3,4,5

Now I was on a skipping binge…

The only thing our son didn’t really know was the “Learning at the Market” sounded interesting but I could move to that part of the lessons.

Again, the only thing our son hadn’t been exposed to was Weather and Plants. It would have been nice but again, but I couldn’t figure out how to get to it without repeating the same lessons.

Good Sportsmanship would have been good.

The Four Seasons is the only thing he hasn’t been fully exposed to.



Level 6

Finally, a level my two year old could learn something new from.

But by this time, after playing 1 to 2 videos and 1 to 2 games on each level, our internet started to waver. I started to notice longer wait times. I asked my husband to check and we found our bandwidth allotment to 15gigs completely gone.

One of the drawbacks of living outside of the city is that internet is still “rationed” outside of city limits. We have better selection now, but no one is offering anything unlimited.

I know videos and songs can be data intensive but I could have never imagined using that much data in so little time.

We signed up for the year and I feel like it is absolutely a waste. I have faith that given the opportunity I would have found great activities on ABCMouse.com for my son, but with our current bandwidth, I am too afraid to search them out.

These days, I won’t connect for more than a few activities at a time and to be honest I am actively searching for other ways to teach Telling Time and Patterns, our sons current interests, to our son.

We kindly requested that our account be canceled and that the unused portion be refunded but have not received any answer as of yet

Update: ABCMouse.com since responded and gave us a refund on the unused portion of our account.

Books and Resources:

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