Like many parents, we’re mindful of screen time and its impact on our kids. When introducing a new app or game, we like to be involved, observing how our children interact with it and evaluating its educational value firsthand. This review of the Learn with Homer app comes from our family’s direct experience, offering you an inside look at what the HOMER learning app offers for young learners.
If you’re considering Learn with Homer to supplement your child’s education or seeking a fun and constructive way to utilize screen time, this detailed review is for you.
Good news! You can explore everything HOMER has to offer with their 30-day free trial. This free trial was invaluable for us in making our decision to subscribe!
What Exactly is the HOMER Learning App?
HOMER Learn & Grow is designed as a comprehensive, app-based early learning program tailored for children aged 2 to 8. It boasts a vast library of activities – literally thousands – aimed at building essential skills for both academic success and life in general.
Within the HOMER app, children can independently explore a wide range of subjects, including reading, mathematics, creativity, and social-emotional learning. The app provides a safe and intuitive, kid-friendly interface perfect for independent exploration and play. For parents, it’s a fantastic resource for keeping kids engaged and learning during long flights or road trips, or even for those moments when mom needs a little time to herself.
To use the HOMER app, you’ll need a mobile device and a stable internet connection. While HOMER does offer printable materials and offline activities, our review primarily focuses on the app-based experience.
One of the standout features of the HOMER Learn & Grow program is its personalized learning approach. The app adapts to your child’s age, individual interests, and current skill level, ensuring that the activities are always engaging and appropriately challenging.
When you first set up HOMER and create a profile for your child, you’ll be guided through a series of questions to assess their current abilities. These questions might include things like: “Can your child recognize all lowercase letters?”, “Can your child identify the initial sounds in words?”, and “Can your child solve simple addition problems like 8+2=10?”.
A single HOMER account supports up to four child profiles. This is incredibly convenient for families with multiple children at different developmental stages, like ours. Each child can learn at their own pace and level, independently of their siblings’ progress.
Related Reading: Top Educational Gifts for Toddlers
Why We Chose to Try Learn with Homer for Our Kids
Back in the winter of 2021, we were planning a trip that coincided with my son’s birthday and Christmas. We wanted to make sure our children felt celebrated, but the thought of packing and traveling with more physical gifts felt overwhelming.
Digital games for our tablet emerged as the ideal solution.
We are definitely not a screen-free household and do allow our children screen time. However, we wanted to avoid just filling their time with mindless games. If we were going to embrace educational apps as gifts, they had to genuinely offer learning value.
At this age, and really up to around age 8, learning games are just as appealing to kids as any other type of game. These apps were a huge hit as both birthday and Christmas presents! If you’re uncertain whether your child will enjoy educational games, the 30-day free trial is a perfect way to test the waters before committing to a subscription as a gift.
Beyond entertainment, we had also decided to homeschool our children and were encountering some hurdles with foundational reading skills. Concepts like identifying initial sounds in words and matching uppercase and lowercase letters were proving to be a bit challenging for us to teach effectively at home.
This led me to search for supplementary resources outside of our primary learn-to-read program.
HOMER’s educational games seemed like the perfect fit. They offered targeted games and activities designed to address the precise areas where we were struggling – and all without the power struggles that sometimes arose when I was trying to teach these concepts myself! HOMER claims to boost early reading scores by up to 74%, a statistic that certainly caught my attention.
The interactive lessons within the app have been fantastic for nurturing reading skills and making learning enjoyable for my children. HOMER excels at introducing new words and letters in a way that was much more effective than my own attempts.
What We Love Most About the Learn with Homer App:
My absolute favorite aspect of the HOMER learning app is simple: my kids genuinely love it, and they are actually learning! That’s a win-win in my book.
I also greatly appreciate the individual profiles feature on a single account. This is especially beneficial for us with a son and daughter who have vastly different interests – one gravitates towards princess themes, while the other is all about rocket ships and outer space.
Another significant plus for me is HOMER’s recognition of the importance of classic children’s literature. They emphasize:
“Young children should know classic stories, nursery rhymes, fables, and fairy tales. They should know the story arc between “once upon a time” and “happily ever after.” They should know classic fables so that when someone makes reference to a mouse saving a lion, they will know what that means. They should be familiar with such archetypical characters as the trickster, the foolish youth, and the generous of heart.”
I strongly agree with this philosophy. In a world saturated with fleeting and often shallow content, I value my children growing up with the timeless stories I cherished as a child. It creates a sense of connection to my own learning journey, even though my childhood reading experiences didn’t involve apps or tablets!
The ad-free environment is another huge advantage. We limit our children’s exposure to traditional TV with commercials, and even online platforms often contain previews or ads that aren’t always suitable for young viewers. While we appreciate our kids’ LeapPads, LeapFrog still incorporates in-app advertisements for other products. HOMER, refreshingly, has none of this, which is fantastic.
Finally, the price point is incredibly reasonable. At roughly $5 per month with an annual membership, the HOMER app offers tremendous value, especially considering the amount of enjoyment and educational benefit my children derive from it!
What We Find Less Ideal About the HOMER App for Kids:
One minor, somewhat trivial, issue that my son encounters is the inability to pause game introductions. If there’s a preamble or set of instructions before a game begins, and he needs a quick bathroom break, he might miss important information and then be confused when the game starts.
It’s certainly not a major drawback; you can always go back and restart the game. However, it seems like a basic and user-friendly feature that could easily be incorporated.
While the extensive library of thousands of games and videos is a major selling point, it was also a source of initial hesitation for me. As a parent, I prefer to have a good understanding of the content my children are engaging with. However, pre-screening every single game and video on HOMER would be impractical and time-consuming.
To address this, I did explore the app’s menus and randomly sampled dozens of games and videos. I’m relieved to say that I haven’t yet encountered any content that I personally found objectionable. At this point, I feel comfortable allowing my children to use HOMER without constant, direct supervision.
The last point, which is inherent to any app, is that HOMER is still screen time. This is something I grapple with as a parent. However, my sister rightly points out that screens are an undeniable part of their world and their future.
We continue to manage and limit screen time for our children, just as we would with any digital device.
A child engrossed in a Learn with Homer game on a tablet, focusing on letter and sound recognition, illustrating the app’s engaging educational content for young learners.
Does HOMER Learning Actually Work?
Does HOMER effectively entertain children in a way that’s more than just mindless screen time? Absolutely, YES!
Does HOMER Learn & Grow succeed in teaching children essential reading, math, and other necessary skills? In our experience, it is a valuable tool for early learning and serves as an excellent supplementary educational platform for young children.
While I wouldn’t rely solely on any app to provide a complete education for my children, HOMER has been instrumental in reinforcing specific areas where we needed extra practice, such as matching uppercase and lowercase letters and building word recognition skills.
To offer a fully honest review, it’s worth mentioning that while HOMER claims to teach “friendship” skills, I remain somewhat skeptical that an app can truly impart real-life social skills. However, that’s not why we chose HOMER. Our primary focus was on math and reading skills, and in those areas, HOMER delivers.
Start your free 30-day trial of the Homer Learning App today!
What is the Ideal Age Range for the HOMER App?
As I mentioned earlier, our children are 4 and 5 years old, and HOMER is perfectly suited for their ages.
HOMER itself suggests an age range of 2-8 years. However, I believe that a more advanced 7 or 8-year-old might not find it as consistently engaging or challenging as younger children. It might not hold their attention for extended periods.
Even a two-year-old would likely be captivated by the bright visuals and the folk songs and read-aloud story sections, even if they don’t fully grasp all the game mechanics yet.
For children aged three, four, five, and even six, HOMER offers an inexhaustible supply of fun and educational activities. I anticipate that children up to age 6 can continually acquire new skills and knowledge using the app. If your child is older than 6 and already a proficient reader, I would recommend utilizing the free month trial to assess if the learning material is sufficiently challenging and engaging for your child before committing to a subscription.
Is the Learn with Homer Learning App Worth the Investment?
To conclude this Learn with Homer app review, I can confidently say that for our family, it has absolutely been a worthwhile investment. And I believe it would be a valuable resource for most families with young children.
Any young child who needs support with sight words, letter sounds, basic math concepts, and foundational reading skills is likely to benefit from this engaging app.
The annual subscription, which brings the cost down to just $4.99 per month, makes HOMER Learn & Grow an exceptionally affordable educational tool. Even if my children were to use it just a couple of times a week, or learn only one or two new things each month, I would still consider it money well spent.
