Tiny Planets - A TOS Review

Recently, as a member of The TOS Homeschool Crew, 

I received access to Tiny Planets.com.

Tiny Planets.com is an interactive website where a child and his parent can explore the Tiny Planets Universe accompanied by Bing and Bong (the cute white aliens at the bottom right of the above picture).

Tiny Planets is designed for children ages 4-12 and has won several awards including: two BAFTA awards and a Silver at the 2002 Hollywood World Animation Celebration for “Best Animation Produced for Educational Purposes.”  It has amazingly beautiful artwork and is very pleasing and intriguing to look at.

The site is based on a popular British preschool television show by the same name.  The Tiny Planets television was co-created by the UK's Pepper's Ghost Productions and Sesame Workshop in the US and is endorsed by Montessori Centre International.

The first step to a Tiny Planet experience is to create a Cadet Account for your child.  During this creation your child will get to choose from preselected and approved Cadet names and then they will choose a password.  These log ins are used to do things such as adopting and caring for their own planet in the "My Tiny Planets" section of the website.

After the Cadet has their account set up the parent will want to create a parent's account and link all of the Cadet (child) accounts to the parental account.  These steps, once found, are pretty easy to do.

Once a Cadet account is created exploration may begin.  Each planet has a few free activities that require no additional purchase.  However, to get the most of this website a parent will want to purchase *Keys* which the parent deposits into the child's Cadet account and allows that child to purchase additional TV episodes, games, gadgets for his own designed planet and more.   Most items purchase for 5-10 keys.

Parents can purchase:  10 keys for $1.95; 25 keys for $3.95; 85 keys for $9.95; 250 for keys $25.95;  and 600 keys for $49.95.   Once you purchase an item with your keys you have unlimited access to that which you purchased.  You will never have to re-purchase it.

Once a Cadet is all set up it is time to go explore the Tiny Planets Universe.  There are 8 sections to this Universe where children can have fun exploring.

• Tiny Planets Home is the home base that describes what to find at each planet and provides a launch point from which to get there.
• Tiny Plants TV is where you can access episodes of the well acclaimed Tiny Planets television show featuring Bing and Bong and their adventures.  These episodes emphasize "social and emotional development, language and literacy, problem solving and reasoning, understanding of our world and creative development."  Each episode is about 5 minutes long. 
• MY Tiny Planets is an online community where you cadet can adopt and care for a planet.  In this universe your cadet will see other ships bearing the names of other cadets.  It is an interactive gaming world yet it is very controlled as the only ability to *chat* from one player to another is to select from a panel of emoticons.  
• Tiny Planets Fun takes Cadets to Bong's Corner where they can read comic strips and access coloring sheets.  They can also choose the arrow taking them to Bing's Corner where they can play games that feature educational concepts.              
• Tiny Planets Books allows Cadets to explore with Bing and Bong as they read through brilliantly colored, slightly animated e-books on the website.
• Tiny Planets Learning provides some introductory alphabet pages as well as math pages such as this one:

From Tiny Planets Learning you can click on the "Lesson Plans" arrow at the top and access a detailed lesson plan for every Tiny Planets episode and story.  Each Plan includes an activity and helpful discussion questions.  Here is a link if you would like to peruse it now.  CLICK HERE.

• Tiny Planets Labs is where to go to access many, many games taking place in the Tiny Planets Universe.  Some require your cadet to log in which enables the scripted dialog (which must be read) to address your cadet directly by his or her name.
• Tiny Planets Blog can be accessed by clicking the "What's New" sign found at the top of each planet.  The blog area is for both parents and cadets and features intriguing science facts and experiments (easy enough for preschoolers).

What did we like? 

The television episodes were our favorite of all the website's activities and are found on the Tiny Planet TV.  These episodes all take place in space with Bing and Bong and their couch shaped space ship.  Each episode explores a larger concept and encourages critical thinking all without the use of words and non-alien dialog which is heard by the viewers as sounds and music.  Sometimes it was hard to determine what the "take home lesson" was from the episode but my 4 year old especially thought Bing and Bong were very cute and funny.

The visual beauty of this site was also a positive.  Lots of time and energy has gone into making this created Universe unique and fascinating.

What we struggled with?

It was very hard to find much on this website that the children (even my 6 year old who is pretty good at manipulating a mouse pad and arrow keys) could do on their own.  The games often required much more sophisticated manipulation skills than even I had.  To navigate a spaceship in diagonals was very hard.  Dragging and dropping with the requirement of moving a star up while continuously engaging the left mouse button was nearly impossible for my 6 year old.  I wish there would have been a "click on", drag, "click off" options for many of the Tiny Planets games.  We were just not able to work the mechanics needed to play these games.

We also saw the announcement of PUZZLES and were very excited. We LOVE puzzles but when we clicked on that arrow we found not-so-challenging alphabet and math worksheets.  Perhaps there is a vocabulary difference between U.S. English and American English but we were really hoping for a couple of preschool skill level space jigsaw puzzles to drag and drop together.  

Would I recommend this product?

Perhaps.   For older children interested in "all things space" I would say this site might provide some fun extra curricular entertainment.  Older children in middle elementary school would be able to manuver the controls to work the games yet I I might guess the content would seem "Baby-ish" to them.

I might recommend the program to a preschool teacher of 2 and 3 year olds and then advise that they avoid trying to play the games, or have only the adult teacher demonstrate them with the class verbally directing the teacher.  The lesson plans (once I finally found them) seem to be a great guidance for a teacher who wants to focus on the Tiny Planets Curriculum.

For my family, we might watch a few more episodes and read a few more of the electronic books but I find the "educational material" that they provide to be much less stringent, much weaker than what we focus on in our family even at the young pre-school ages.  The lessons that are seen in the TV episodes and books are mostly concepts that we cover in daily life and are issues that I don't really feel the need to purchase actual curriculum in order to cover with my boys.  

I was hoping for deeper and more extensive educational meat.  I was hoping for books that talk and just need a young child to click the "Go to Next Page" arrow at the end of the page.  I was hoping for games that were designed with the fine motor skills (or lack thereof) of 3 year olds that require fewer key strokes and a broader range of placement acceptance (Star Fractions).  I was hoping for a longer loop on the music.

YET, at the same time I could gaze into the illustrations for a very long time. 

If you would like to read more reviews of this product please visit the TOS Crew Website.

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Disclaimer:  I am a member of The Old Schoolhouse 2010-2011 Homeschool Crew and receive free products and services in exchange for a thorough and honest review.  Though I am compensated with free products, I am not compensated in the form of cash for my reviews.  My reviews will always reflect my honest opinions, findings, beliefs and experiences on the products and services that I receive.