PandaParents (A REVIEW)

I just love preschool-kindergarten learning resources, so I really wanted to check out this one. It is MESSYLEARNING FOR PRESCHOOLERS AND KINDERGARTNERS from PandaParents. It's not really "MESSY" although there is a creative part. The M.E.S.S.Y. stands for M-mixed subjects, E-engaging activities, S-simple 1-2-3 steps, S-smart designs, and Y-yeah! a new way to learn. The acronym MESSY sure is memorable though!

PandaParents is a completely digital product. We received everything in digital form, and were sent the links via email. There are workbooks and reading books in PDF form, and there are videos to watch using vimeo. A password was given to us for those videos. Everything is available to download and use at our convenience.

How it works:

The MESSY learning courses can be purchased as a monthly subscription, or there is an option to buy the individual courses. Each course has 3 components. A book, a story book movie, and a workbook full of activities. They recommend to read and learn with your child 2-3 days a week using the book and learning activities. These courses are packed with a lot of fun learning and information with each component.

The Storybook:

Each course has a theme and a letter focus. We received 3 stories/courses for review, but for this review I will focus on Scotty Skunk Hears a Scary Sound. In this story the focus is the letter S. There are a lot of new words that begin with S that are introduced all through the story. I love that it has many new words, and doesn't just focus on one word that begins with the letter S.

A screen shot of the storybook for Scotty Skunk Hears a Scary Sound. This would be the cover.

The storybook is meant to be read by the parent to the child. There is no audio for this part, that's why there are movies. Those will have a narrator telling the story.

A page from the storybook.

The movie:

The movie is a fun animation of the story and the letter. It contains more than just the story as it has animations of the letter and other fun things that have to do with the story.

A screenshot of the movie Scotty Skunk.

The workbook:

The workbook has 51 pages of fun stuff to do with the story. It has stickers, cutting, tracing, dot-to-dots, story re-telling, and more.

The cover of the workbook screen shot.

The workbook has so many creative things to do. With children this young it is almost too much, but it has such variety that you could do some or all. You really have to decide what your child can handle best. The key is to invite them, not force them. I can see many children being naturally drawn to these pages because they are so fun and interesting. All of my children are out of this age range, so I didn't have anyone to do these with, but I would have loved to have these for my kiddos when they were this age. This would have been a workbook I would have had available during school time, or whenever they felt like getting it out. It would need to be printed up though. I didn't print anything since I didn't actually have anyone doing it.

One of the workbook pages. Notice on the bottom it says Encourage, I love that. It's important to not force children this young to do things a certain way. It says Be CREATIVE!

Overall, I think this is a very cute preschool curriculum. I love anything that revolves around a story, and this would definitely fit the bill. I would consider this for my preschooler/Kinder if I still had any. It's very fun and engaging for this age. If you'd like to see what other crew members had to say about PandaParents you can click on the banner below.