Starfall.com helps Teach Reading

Kindergarteners and first graders can celebrate favorite holidays and learn to read at the same time all at www.starfall.com. It’s a FREE easy-to-use website for small children, brought to you by the people who created Blue Mountain Arts greeting cards.

The Starfall reading method is based on games, interactive "speaking books" and short movies that make learning to read fun. Characters such as Gus the Duck and Peg the Hen hold the interest of the children as they learn to relate letter sounds to whole words, through a series of small steps that build upon one another.

"Discovering this website is like winning the lottery," according to a teacher who recently wrote Starfall. Since opening in late September, Starfall has heard from teachers and parents throughout the country, happy with the response from very enthusiastic little children who are giving "cool" grades to the website. One school reported that 90 percent of their students got high scores on their spelling/phonics test after working with the program. One child with speech problems has been helped in her speech therapy by listening to the way words are said. It seems that children are quickly catching on to using letter sounds to read effectively and are excited that something called "the alphabet" has come into their lives.

The Starfall program was conceived and designed by Dr. Stephen Schutz, who as a child had difficulty learning to read. Stephen’s wife is the poet Susan Polis Schutz. They founded Blue Mountain Arts publishing company in 1970 and, with their son, created the popular electronic greeting card site, bluemountain.com in 1996. Their son, Jared Polis, serves on the Colorado State Board of Education. The Polis-Schutz family is presenting this site as a free public service to instill a lifelong love of reading and learning in young children.

The Starfall program was developed by a team of teachers, graphic artists, and computer animators across the country. The website took two years to develop and was tested extensively in the classroom.