ABCya.com Review: Best Educational Website and App for Kids

When you have kids and want an educational app, there are many apps to choose from. However, there are the bad, the good, and the exceptional. In this review, I will look at the exceptional ones. These are not just apps but whole educational platforms aimed at teaching kids skills early and advancing them with step-by-step games and tools that provide another layer of education away from the formal education system.

Essentially, there are apps out there that will provide your kids with a comprehensive education from the convenience of your home and your P.C., laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

This is the world of ABCya, and this is what a fantastic company can produce when love is a significant component of their productions process.

ABCya: The company

ABCya.com, L.L.C. is an educational children’s game software development company founded in 2004 by Alan Tortolani in Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. The CEO of the company is Lisa Tortolani, and the official website is www.abcya.com.

Alan was a public-school teacher who decided to create his software since his school district ran out of funds. The name was his creation and reflected a word that kids of all ages could pronounce.

In September 2016, ABCya reached around 13.2 million unique visits a month, making this a constant top 25 apps found on many scoreboards, including the iOS App Store’s Education category.

ABCya: The platform

Since a public-school teacher created this platform, it conforms to certain conditions, focusing on K-5 grade levels. Games are categorized into age groups and subject matters. The site is a platform for holding many games, and new ones are added annually.

The age groups are organized from pre-kindergarten to fifth grade, and the content categories are split into two main categories and then split into subgroups. The main categories are numbers, letters, holidays, strategy, and skills, and the games and activities are designed to meet the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

The subgroup categories include arcade-style, word find, racing, typing, and more. In some instances, games might require parental or grow-up guidance to explain the instructions.

The site itself is easy to navigate and GUI friendly for both adults and kids.

ABCya: The Components

After downloading the app, you have two options, a family login or a class login page. The difference between the two is based on the actual registration process, where an individual or family login requires an e-mail and password with basic info. The class login is school-based, and the process is between the school and the site, so all kids in the class can connect using the same login codes.

The site has a nice list of links under the Parents and Teachers tab, and you can connect to their FAQ; they’re about us and other settings and pages.

Now to the core of the matter, the games.

There are over 300 games and activities on the site, and they are accessible through category or grade. Each game has a grade relevance indicator, and each grade holds the games relevant to its age group.

The seven ages groups are:

• Pre-Kindergarten
• Kindergarten
• K-1
• K-2
• K-3
• K-4
• K-5

For example, in the age group category (Pre-K) Pre-School, are the following word games.

ABC & 123 Magnets

In this game, the children can practice the alphabet, number, and punctuation recognition. They do this by clicking and dragging magnets to the refrigerator. The program reads out the letter or number when the child clicks it on a magnet. Kids can use this game to practice essential writing skills.

All About Me

This is the first day at school kind of simulator, where the player is asked to answer different questions about themselves. This step-by-step process makes the game structured, and the answers are displayed in a fun pattern. You can save the final layout and print it.

Alphabet BINGO

Alphabet BINGO is all about learning the alphabet in a fun way. In this game, children will hear an animated character say a letter, and the player has to click on the correct letter. Kids can toggle display between upper and lower case.

Other pre-K word games include:

1. Alphabet Bubble
2. Alphabet Slider Puzzle
3. Alphabetical Order
4. Alphabetical Order Bubble
5. Connect the Dots ABC
6. Letter & Number Tracing
7. Molly’s Magic Adventure
8. Monster Mansion – Alphabet Matching
9. Monster Mansion – Letter Match
10. Talk to Me Alphabet

Let’s jump over to the 2^nd grade and look at their holiday games. These games represent two prevalent religions and U.S. national holidays, instilling the child with an understanding of the icons representing holidays while providing some exciting interaction. The religions are Christianity and Judaism, I expect that sometime during the following year, they will add Islamic games too, but Islam has yet to become a national identified religion.

Second Grade Holiday Games:

1. Christmas Lights Math
2. Christmas Present Hunt
3. Christmas Tree Fun
4. Christmas Word Search
5. Dreidel Dreidel Dreidel
6. Easter Egg Hunt
7. Easter Word Search
8. Ghost Typing
9. Halloween Candy Hunt
10. Halloween Hop
11. Halloween Word Search
12.  Hanukkah Gelt Hunt
13. Hanukkah Word SearchHanukkah Word Search is a word puzzle game providing two grid sizes. The larger one is for longer words, and the shorter one, yes, for shorter words.
14. Make a Christmas Tree
15. Make a Gingerbread House
16. Make a Pumpkin
17. Make a Snowman
18. Make an Easter Egg
19. Pumpkin Carving
20. Pumpkin Matching
21. Shamrock Hunt
22. Super Santa
23. Super Santa Junior
24. Thanksgiving Word Search
25. Trick or Treat
26. Turkey Touchdown
27. Valentine Hunt
28.  Valentine’s Day Word Search
29. Write a Letter to Santa

This is the ABCya writing activity game for helping children write letters to Santa. It helps teach them both rewriting and also understanding what Santa is all about. (If you explain it properly).

If we jump over to the 5^th-grade list of strategy games, then the list is seriously overpopulated with choices, and this is a good thing. Here is the complete list, with a few defined for the required level to play them.

There are over 100 Fifth Grade Strategy Games, but we shortened the list for games with different level rates, such as Andy’s Golf 1 & 2; in reality, two other games in the same series, I counted them as one. Here is the complete list.

1. 10 x 10 | Ice Cream Adventure
2. 40x Escape
3. Alan’s Pizzeria
4. Alarmy 1 to 4
5. Andy’s Golf 1 & 2
6. Animalines
7.  Aqua Friends
8. Aqua Thief
9. Baby Chick MazeBaby Chick Maze is a family memory-based strategy. In this game, you learn to guide the baby chick through a maze from memory. This means you need to look carefully and then retrace your steps based on memory.
10. Big-Time Butter Baron
11. Blobble
12. Blue Box
13. Brain Trainer
14. Build the Bridge
15. COIN
16. Cake Topping
17. Candy Pool
18. Candy Timbermen
19. Cat Around Africa
20. Cat Around Asia
21. Cat Around Europe
22. Cat Around the World
23. Civiballs 1 & 2
24. Colorush
25. Cute Puzzle Witch
26. Daisy’s Plumber Puzzle
27. Dogs in Space
28. Duck Life 1 to 5
29. Factory Balls 1 to 3
30. Flappy Dragon
31. Flip and Go
32. Fluffy Cuddlies
33. Full Moon
34. Future Buddy
35. Fuzz Bugs Factory
36. Fuzz Bugs Treasure Hunt
37. Giant Hamster Run
38. Golf
39. Gravity Run
40. Hero in the Ocean 1 and 2
41. Hook
42. Hoverboard Halfpipe
43. In Drmzzz
44. Jelly Collapse
45. Jelly Doods
46. Jelly Slice
47. Jellydad Hero
48. Jetpack Escape
49. Let Me Grow
50.  Lightybulb
51. LineumLineum is a puzzle game that teaches your children how to think in 3-D with mental image planning by drawing a continuous line that flips non-green tiles.
52. Little Jane
53. Me and the Key 1 to 3
54. Mila’s Magic Shop
55. Mini Train
56. Money Land
57. Monsterland 1 to 4
58. Monsterland Challenge
59. Mountain Hop
60. Mythical Jewels
61. Need a Hero
62. One Button Circus
63. Pixo Cross
64. Puzzle Drops
65. Rainbow Stacker
66. Rally Racer
67. Red Warrior
68. Road Rally
69. Robo Trobo
70. Rotate & Roll
71. Salazar the Alchemist
72. Scary Path
73. School Bus Pickup
74. Shift the BlockThis is a logic puzzle that requires the player to slide colorful blocks around and create groups of like-colored blocks. This then eliminates these blocks leading to a puzzle solution.
75. Slice the Box
76. Snail Bob 2
77. Snoring
78. Snoring Pirates
79. Snoring Treasure Island
80. Snoring Wild West
81. Snoring Winter Edition
82. Sparkanoid
83. Stack the Burger
84. Submarine Dash
85. Sugar, Sugar 1 and 2
86. Sushi Slicer
87. Sweetland
88. Temple Crossing
89. Ten Basket
90. Tingly Bubble Shooter
91. Tiny King
92. Tower Blocks
93. Use Boxmen
94. Well Whale
95. Wheely 1 to 7
96. Zippy Boxes

Safety and Guidance

I have trolled the internet for reviews to back up what I already know and have experience with. My children have all used these games, and even I have a go on occasion. These are fun games for all ages; however, you still have been wary of the internet even when there are fun games around. In this section of my review, I bring third-party reviews, professionals who have used and still use ABCya daily. Their input is important for all partners, since we cannot gauge the contribution of these games from a school environment point of view. So here are three separate professional opinions.

From Parents Choice:

A review was written by Karena Rush, Ph. D., in 2014. Rush opens up with, “ABCya contains free, fun educational games and is a good place to find new and original educational activities as well as the tried and true. “Rush concludes with these words “The variety of these games designed for children in grades K-5 will keep kids coming back for more fun and learning, while parents and teachers will want to recommend and share this site.”

From Common Sense Education review website:

Posted by Kristin G., Classroom teacher from East Buchanan Elementary School, Gower, United States

Kristine opens with this statement “There are several reasons why I believe this is a great website to use in the classroom. One reason I like it so much is that many of the games have different levels. “Kristine concludes with these remarks “Basically, if you are looking for a safe website that is easy to use where students can practice skills, then ABCya is the website for you and your students.”

Education World gave ABCya an A-A+ rating; here is their site’s reasons:

A for content: “ABCya provides Web-based educational games and activities that teachers have created for primary and elementary school students.”

A+ for site design: “The site is visually stimulating and easy to navigate. Some of the kindergarten and first-grade activities have audio instructions.”

The Childs Point of View

Any review that discusses apps for children should include a critique made by the player, and in this case, these are children. So, a cute 8-year-old child has been playing with this system for over three years now. He started with the basics but fell in love with the strategy games such as duck race and blocks.

His primary attraction to these games was competition. He hates to lose. With strategy and arcade types of games, it’s pretty apparent when you win or lose. It’s fuzzier with numbers and words since they don’t fail; they get a right or wrong answer and try again.

Since there are many dangerous games for children on the web, I try to provide him with enough online stimulation by offering a large and continuous flow of new games. In other words, children, on the whole, get bored quickly by repetitive games; they want something new that will constantly challenge their growing minds.

This is where ABCya comes in; their extensive library of games and the many layers per game provide a lot of focused stimulation and attraction to change games. All the games were accepted happily by young, hungry minds, and it is only the individual preference decides which games are used more than others.

The conclusion of my son’s critique would have to be his love of complete audio-visual stimulation and the need to win at any cost, not just the computer but other players. When it comes to exploration and mazes, it’s a fight against himself, which is the most frustrating. In the beginning, before he learned self-criticism, he created a new buffer. When he lost, it was the computer that was cheating. When playing some else, they were cheating. With word and number games, this issue did not come up. The bottom line of this story is that children will learn to cope with failure in their way, but they have to be given enough stimulation to do so; this is the only way they can learn from their mistakes and improve.

Playing the Games

It’s time to delve into the games; I have delivered an overview of the site, but what does it provide?
Let’s take a closer look:

ABCYA.com Registration

The process is simple, you press the login button and then choose the “new subscription” option; as a parent, I prefer the family plan that costs $6.99 per month.
Pressing the family plan subscription button, I then agree to the terms and conditions of the site and am transferred to the payment screen. It is a straightforward screen, just key in your card details and wait for the subscription screen to return.
Now check your e-mail account, the one you used to register.
You then press the coniform account mail you received, and this will open an account confirmation page where you key in your details and password. You are all set up to now enjoy the site in full.

Checking your Account

Click on your name; it is on the top right-hand corner of the P.C. screen.
You can change your name, your e-mail, your password and also cancel your subscription.

Playing Games

Just click on a game or on a Grade to get the game suitable for your child’s grade.
When you click on the game, icon it will open an Adobe Flash payer frame on your screen, so make sure you have the latest Adobe Flash player to enjoy the games on this site.
Take note that the speed and integrity of your internet connection will make or break the experience. Also, the server capacity at the time of play would be a determining factor. Generally, all games load up nicely, and the playing experience is excellent.

There are so many games and variations that I will forgo writing about each one; I will present three screenshots of three different games.

Road Rally: This is a math game, and it teaches you math while enjoying a racing game that lets you upgrade your car to be faster and stronger than the competition. The game is a straightforward arcade-style game where you move the car using the arrow keys. You avoid hitting other vehicles but must collect coins and also hit gas pumps to add gas. Your child learns mathematics, coordination and has fun doing both.

Make me a…backpack, a Cookie…
The make me games are construction games that give the child the ability to learn design. It also teaches them attention to detail b offering all kinds of additional accessories, toppings, colors, etc. Creativity is the key here, and there are several Make me games on Abcya to make them enjoyable, time and again.

Halloween Word Search is a classic game; it’s a seasonal take on a word search game and focuses your child’s attention on words associated with Halloween. There are several such word search games to choose from.

The app is available for iOS and Android and is free to download but comes with those annoying ads. Something that also helps us learn patience (frustrating but true).

Conclusions

There are so many games here, this platform is constantly adding new games, and if you have a strong internet connection, your children will enjoy uninterrupted hours of educational fun. What I do strongly suggest is that you meter the types of games your children play. The strategy games tend to overtake the number and word games, so always make sure your children play at least one word and one number game a day to improve these skills before going over to the logic and strategy games that end up leasing to basic online playing.

This site complements the education system and is a fun platform at home and in the school classroom. This is a must app as well as a great desktop go-to game page. The additional bonus is the constantly expanding library of games, and the ever-increasing levels of popular titles, that give children a chance to continue playing with their favorite games on different levels.