Children’s English Site Review: Storyplace
What’s Storyplace?
Storyplace is an interactive website designed to provide children a virtual library. The site is split into two parts: the Pre-School Library, and the Kindergarten Library.
Storyplace is designed for children who speak English as their first language, or speak a different language at home, but live in an English-speaking country. However, it is useful for students in non-English speaking countries as well.
The Storyplace website was created by The Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenburg County and is supported, in part, by book purchases generated through the site.
What Storyplace Does Well
Storyplace does a lot really well. The animated stories are simple. Some stories, like When Will Daddy Come Home, are easy for children to relate to.
It is nice to see that there are a number of enrichment activities that extend and expand on the story. The online activities tie-in nicely with the stories and it is nice to see take-home activities: crafts that can be printed out and completed at home.
What Needs Work
Not a lot. I think a larger font in the pre-school section would make it easier for older kids (5-6) to navigate on their own.
It would also be interesting to see how providing story navigation controls (forward, back, repeat) would work. This would make it more difficult for children to navigate the story, but also give them control to review whatever they fancy. Providing more controls would be certainly worth a test.
It takes two clicks to change themes: first, to the “Pre-School Library” or “Elementary Library” pages, which show random themes, and then to the “Other Themes” pages where all the pre-school or elementary themes are shown. It would be easier for children to choose themes on their own if they could go directly to the list of themes from the various story and activity pages.
How to Use
Visit this site with your child the first time. Help her through the navigation. Once you have been through a couple of themes, older children will probably be able to navigate the site on their own, but younger children will need help.
The Elementary Library is probably a little difficult for most children who don’t hear English every day.
My Favourite
My favourite activity is What Should Fran Wear?. Children choose one of three options to dress up Fran as a firefighter. The silly options are what make this activity great. It is more fun getting wrong answers like dressing up the firefighter in flippers instead of boots. I can picture children spending a lot of time with this activity trying all sorts of different, silly options and learning more in the process.
The Verdict
An excellent resource for children from 3-10. Definitely worth a visit.