Zoo Whiz ~ A Review

 

 

Zoo Whiz is an online learning environment for animal lovers everywhere.

 

You play educational games in order to earn coins to spend on animals.  The choice of animals range from quite common to very rare.  Each time you purchase an animal for your collection you get information about it, ranging from it’s habitat to what it eats and more.

The educational games on Zoo Whiz covers subjects such as basic math facts, phonics, reading, grammar, vocabulary, and other word skills, as well as the science you learn about the animals you collect.

Zoo Whiz is quite customizable.  You are able to choose your zoologist avatar and you can save your coins for animals in you zoo collection.

The way you earn coins is by playing games in the Earn and Learn.  You can then purchase your animals at the Biodome, check on your progress at Milestones and just hang out and play around in the arcade.  The arcade games also take coins. I often heard how they had to save coins up to purchase an animal or play a certain game.

The Earn and Learn has over 17,000 games over 10 age floors.  The age floor automatically set to one year below the child’s age, however that is easily adjusted.  A big plus for me is that each subject could be adjusted.  My 7 year old is at her age level in math, but not in words or reading, I was able to adjust her down to a better level.

In Milestones, where you check your progress, there is a very simple version of a progress chart.  It is smiley face based.  You can see their progress based on which smiley they get.

Zoo Whiz was created for children ages 5-15. 

Let me tell you.  I wasn’t so sure my 13 year old would go for this.  I thought it might be to juvenile for him.  Boy, was I wrong.  He did enjoy it.  In fact he asked to get on Zoo Whiz more often than I was requiring him.   My 7 year old also used Zoo Whiz.  She did really enjoy collecting the animals and accessories for them, however her reading isn’t up to that of an average 7 year old. She struggled with having to read the directions and questions in order to earn more coins to spend, like I mentioned above, I was able to go in and adjust her age floor for reading and words.  This made it easier for her.  She did sometimes still need help reading what she was supposed to do. 

We did have a few technical difficulties, as in it was very slow to load on one of our computers (actually our newest one).  However, it works great on my husbands laptop.  I am still not sure what the problem is.  My kids were usually still willing to sit through the slowness of my computer if they had to.

Zoo Whiz has a free version. Which is a scaled down version of the Premium version (which I received).  The premium version is a price of $14.95 per year, right now. Normally $59.  I can see this being a great treat to use for your animal loving children throughout the winter.

I mean, if they are going to have more screen time it may as well be educational, right? 

Oh yea, and Zoo Whiz is still adding new content! 

 

To see what others though of Zoo Whiz check out this post. To see a wide variety of reviews check out our crew blog.

Disclosure: As a member of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew I review products like this, which I receive for free in order to be able to share my honest opinion.