Review – Orphs of the Woodlands From Star Toaster
Orphs of the Woodlands is an online interactive book and game for kids. Kids learn about math, science, and language to solve problems and move forward in the story.
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this product for review, all opinions are 100% my own.
Our daughter has had so much fun with a reading game these past weeks. What has she been using? Orphs of the Woodlands from Star Toaster!
Fun Reading Adventure Game
Orphs of the Woodlands is an online interactive book and game. It's intended for children in the 4th to 7th grade.
The story is about a squirrel who is a spy and helps to save and defend the orphs against the night creatures. The orphs are little orphaned animals whose family have been lost to the evil night creatures.
Orphs of the Woodlands Game Map
As the child reads the story words that they may not know are highlighted and they can click on them to read a definition of the word.
Woven throughout the story are many fun lessons on science math, vocabulary, grammar, logic, art, life skills, and more! At the end of every chapter, the spy works to complete jobs to earn a payment of gold stars. They can then use the gold starts to pay to build settlements and care for the orphs.
Parents can keep track of their child's progress by accessing a skills page that shows what your child has been learning and how they are performing on these skills.
Adventure Game To Practice Reading Skills
Our oldest daughter (age 13) was the one I picked to use this program. She was so excited since she had looked at the previews that she was constantly asking me if she could start the program! When we were ready to start she dove right in.
When dd logged on Orphs of the Woodlands started out by having her fill out a job application. I thought this was such a cool idea! She was given some questions and had to pick from multiple-choice options. There were questions about the character of her squirrel. Was he hard-working and kind etc?
The book that makes up the story of the Orphs is The Treasure of HighTower.
It is 15 chapters long. The first chapter is about 30 pages long so it took a while for her to read. She made it through because it was interesting enough to draw her in and she really wanted to get to the end to try the "jobs" and start helping the orphs.
Book of Bird Shoes Cricket
Not long after we started using this program they added a helpful page counter to the screen. She has really liked having this there. As the chapters are fairly long knowing just how much is left helps to motivate her to keep reading.
At the end of the chapter, the jobs area is shown. She could pick from jobs in science, language, math, vocabulary, life skills, etc.
With each job she completed well she would earn gold stars. With the gold stars, she could buy homes for the orphs and buy supplies for caring for them.
Her favorite job sections are vocabulary and life skills. The life skills area has many fun recipes that we've copied into a word processor to print off and try.
What My Daughter Thinks Of Orphs Of The Woodlands
I think it's pretty fun because it's set up like a game. I like that it can teach you any type of school lessons like math and vocabulary. The jobs are really fun to work on. I really like how you get to save the little orphs and buy them homes, food and clothes.
I think Orphs of the Woodlands is a really fun way to encourage children to read and practice skill subjects. I would recommend this to anyone with children who love interactive or strategy-type games.
