Lakeshore Educational Software Review

As a former Pre-K teacher, I love Lakeshore Educational Products. They have everything you need from arts and craft materials to furniture to teaching supplies and more. As a homeschooling Mom, we are still enjoying Lakeshore materials in our home as we educate and teach our children. Their “Teacher’s Corner” site even offers free printables! I was recently given the opportunity to use their educational software in our homeschooling.

With homeschooling, we use curriculum but it is always nice to have fun, engaging ways for the kids to reinforce what they are learning through the textbooks as well. With the age of technology, all 3 of our children love learning on the computer as well. Lakeshore Educational software is available for PreK – 6th grade and you can buy it in store or purchase a download online. After reviewing their amazing line-up of educational software we chose 3 programs we thought would work well for our children and help reinforce things they are currently learning. We picked Can Do Interactive Phonemic Awareness Game, Science Quiz Game Show and the Language Adventures Quiz Game Show.

Can Do Interactive Phonemic Awareness Game: Children compete as contestants on the most exciting game show in the galaxy—and get the focused practice they need to master phonemic awareness! Our animated game show features level-appropriate questions that quiz students in three categories—including beginning, middle and ending sounds. Players just spin the wheel to select a category, answer a question to earn points…then unleash a hilarious surprise on the competition—like slinging pies in their faces! The game even features a friendly robot host who gives players instant feedback for every answer! With a printable assessment. For Mac/Win.

Our 6 year old is an emerging reader and he has been working diligently on his phonics/blending. This game gave him the opportunity to reinforce lessons learned in these areas as well as introduce him to new ones. The game focuses on beginning, middle and ending sounds so he gets a well-rounded reinforcement in phonics through this program. The story line and characters were kid-friendly and the game kept his attention well. In fact, he often asks to play it even outside of homeschool time.

Science Interactive Quiz Show is geared for 4th – 6th grades. This totally wild quiz show makes it a blast to explore science concepts—from chemistry & the human body to magnetism & the solar system! The interactive game show features over 200 level-appropriate questions that quiz students in 11 different categories…plus hidden bonuses that can double or triple the points—and add to the excitement! Players just choose a category & answer the questions to earn points for their team…then get immediate feedback from the forest ranger host! With a printable assessment. For Mac/Win.

Our 3rd and 5th grader both love playing this game. The beauty of it is that they can play against each other or they can round up friends and create teams to compete against each other. Up to 6 teams can play against each other at one time (this would be great in a classroom setting). It is designed in Jeopardy-like format where you answer a question and if you are correct you are awarded a particular number of points. There are tons of questions on this game and I think the girls have yet to run across the same question twice so far. Some of the information they have studied and some of it they have not yet learned about so they are actually refreshing and learning in the same game!

Language Adventures Quiz Game Show is geared for 4th – 6th grade (ages 9-11) as well. Quiz students on important language skills—with a fun interactive game that’s played like a real TV game show! Perfect for language review or extra practice, our game show features over 200 leveled questions covering 11 language categories—from grammar and usage to sentence structure and story elements. The game even features engaging animation and sound effects that tell students if they have the right answer…an optional timer for added excitement…plus hidden bonus questions worth double and triple the points! Includes a printable assessment. For Mac/Win.

This software was much like the Science Quiz Interactive Game but it focuses entirely on Language Arts. English is something that can be challenging for a child to grasp and easily understand yet this software makes learning parts of speech, punctuation, analyze/comparision, etc. very memorable and understandable. One thing the kids loved about this game was the “sound effects” that let them know if they got the answer right or wrong. Again, up to 6 teams can play or you can play two-on-two against each other. This software covers 11 different aspects of Language Arts giving your child a very well-rounded reinforcement or introduction to various aspects of Language Arts. As a parent, this was probably my favorite of the 3 educational software programs we are enjoying in our homeschooling.

I also love how each educational software allows you to print an assessment at the end of the game. This gives you a visual look at where your child is, their strengths/weaknesses and how they performed in each particular game. Downloading and installing these software programs was very easy and fast as well. Lakeshore Educational Software would make a great asset to your homeschooling and is also available for Class License (for up to 5 computers). Check out Lakeshore’s great line of educational software as well as all the other awesome educational products they have to offer.

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*Gretta was provided with the above software, free of charge, to facilitate this review.  All opinions are those of reviewer only