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For us parents, it’s really important to instil a love of learning in our children. I believe this can only happen if learning is as fun as it can possibly be. Enter Busy Things! Busy Things is a fab website packed full of fun educational games for children. Read on for our full review of Busy Things, PLUS find out how to be in with a chance of winning a free one year family subscription!
* This is a paid post
Table of Contents
What is Busy Things?
Busy Things is an award-winning educational website that produces curriculum-linked content to enhance children’s learning. Most importantly, it is FUN! This is because the team behind Busy Things believe that children learn better with laughter. Their main aim is to inspire a love of learning in children across the world.
Teach. Laugh. Learn
The Busy Things motto
The twigs have been using Busy Things for years as their school has a subscription. They have always loved it and say the games are really good fun. So when we were given the opportunity by the team at Busy Things to write a review, I jumped at the chance! If you’ve been following along for a while, you hopefully know by now that I only review products that we genuinely love 🙂
What we love about Busy Things
So here are some of the many reasons why we love Busy Things:
It’s colourful and engaging
You *might* have noticed that we LOVE colour! The Busy Things website is really colourful and inviting – it’s so appealing for children (and grown-up colour-lovers too!) It’s all carefully and neatly laid out though so it doesn’t look at all chaotic or overwhelming, which is particularly important for neurodivergent kids.
It’s easy to use
Busy Things is intuitive and user-friendly. Children can easily navigate the website themselves, giving them more control and autonomy over their learning, which in turn leads to greater enjoyment.
On the child’s home screen, they will see all the subjects in a grid (see image below). It clearly shows where new resources have been added. I like that there is a really clear back arrow on every page to make it super easy for the child to return to the previous page.
Kids can personalise it
There are lots of lovely little touches on Busy Things, to make the experience individual to the child. Each child can have their own profile and can customise their avatar and background. They can also save their creations then access them using the ‘My Files’ button on their home screen.
It’s varied
There’s SUCH a huge variety of topics and activities on Busy Things. Definitely something to suit everyone! H is obsessed with Maths so he absolutely loves the Maths games on there – they’re right up his street. C is really artistic and creative so she loves the more arty activities, like creating patterns.
Parents/carers can have control
When you first log in to Busy Things, you can set up your child profiles. You put in their dates of birth so the content is tailored for their age. You can also manually select particular content you would like to be available to them. The profile settings can be accessed by an adult at any time using the ‘Parent Things’ tab along the top (not seen from within the child profiles when the child is playing). You can also check out the ‘Timeline’ section which shows what your child has been playing and for how long.
A useful setting to note if you have younger children is that you can select which phonics programme Busy Things should use. This means any phonics activities will align with the teaching the child receives from their school. Another of the Parent Tools is the printable resource maker which is a brilliant idea! It’s where you can easily create your own customised worksheets.
The content is linked to the curriculum
All the content on Busy Things is written by teacher advisors and meticulously checked throughout the whole design process. It’s all linked to the National Curriculum. One of the Parent Tools is the ‘curriculum browser’, where you can see exactly where all the different activities fit. It’s brilliant as you can search by Key Stage and subject. You can even search for specific objectives and find activities to address them.
So for example, if you know that your Year 1 child needs to work on making inferences within their reading comprehension, you would select Key Stage – English – Reading – Comprehension then choose the year group and objective about inference. Then on the right you’ll be shown all the activities that address this objective and are suitable for your child. Coming from a parent who used to be a teacher, this is fantastic!
There’s always something new
The Busy Things website is updated regularly with new and fresh content. On the child’s home screen there is a ‘New Releases’ button so they can easily check out everything that’s been newly added. If your child is searching for some inspiration, they can also use the ‘Top 40’ button to find out which games and activities are most popular with other kids at the moment. Also, there’s a Special Events button where they can find activities related to events throughout the year, from World Smile Day to Ramadan to Children’s Art Week. These can be searched for by the month they’re in.
The twigs can play on Busy Things for ages – there is just so much to keep them interested and engaged. I think it would be pretty difficult for a child to get bored with the huge amount of variety on there! And it’s so reassuring for parents to know that it’s all completely safe and educational.
I really hope this review of Busy Things was useful. Check out my giveaway at the bottom of this post to be in with a chance of winning a FREE one year subscription to Busy Things for your family!
In the meantime, why not set up your free 7-day trial and check out all the fun that Busy Things has to offer!
Thanks for reading my review of Busy Things! Til next time,
Hannah xx
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WIN a year’s family subscription to Busy Things!
a Rafflecopter giveaway*Terms and conditions: Entries are open to UK residents. The competition closes on the 30th March 2023. Winners will be announced on social media and contacted via email. If the winner does not respond to the email in two weeks, a new winner will be randomly chosen. No cash alternative available. One winner will win one 1-year family subscription to Busy Things.
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