Real Mom Review: MarcoPolo World School

Posted Apr 13, 2020

MarcoPolo World School is an online early learning platform designed for kids ages 3-7. Learning becomes an adventure, filled with all the thrills and joys of discovery. With 500+ immersive educator-designed lessons and 3,000+ STEAM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Art, Math) & literacy learning activities, your little explorers will have a blast on their learning journey. New features and content are added every week so there's always something new to explore.

CertifiKID team member Olga received a free trial of MarcoPolo World School in exchange for providing an honest review of her experience.

Get Your First Month of MarcoPolo World School for FREE with this CertifiKID deal.

Olga: Like many of you, my life pre-Coronavirus was so different than my current reality. As my family’s designated COO, I’ve expanded some roles and assumed new ones. More specifically teacher mom, as my 3-year-old daughter calls me. Trust me, I’d love to be back to my old routine of getting my second grader up and ready and off to the bus, but clearly that may not happen for the rest of this school year. So I have to suck it up and put on my teacher mom hat.

The past few weeks have been a bit of trial and error in our continued at-home learning. When given the opportunity to try MarcoPolo World School I was eager to experience something new to help get my son excited about learning from home.

Set up was pretty easy. I downloaded the MarcoPolo app from the Apple app store and created my son’s profile with his name and age. Then selected some of his favorite subjects from list of subjects provided and chose his “Polo” avatar. I decided to set up a profile for my daughter Olivia as well. The Marco profile was pre-set.

Once he got started, The Polos welcomed us and explained how to navigate through the content. There were a lot of topics to choose from on the top menu slider of subjects. Zaine was excited to explore space first. We were both impressed with how the interface featured animation and real world videos and images so seamlessly.

The Polos boarded their rocket ship and took him straight into space. Once there he could choose from a variety of videos to explore specific planets. The video was full of fun facts and informative information. They were not long videos, which is good because it held his attention just long enough.

After the video, the lesson continues with either an interactive reading, spelling, math or other learning game activity related to what he just learned about.

Once you complete the activity you can automatically move on to the next video, which cues up for you. You can always go back to home screen and chose another subject and explore more videos and activities.

What I like about MarcoPolo World School is that it is easy for them to navigate on their own and access whenever they want to without my assistance. The seamless mix of animated characters in real life/life-like simulations captured their attention and allowed them to be almost inside of the learning environment with the explorers. I thought Zaine would not be interested but we've learned about so many topics that he has retained what he's learned and is eager to continue learning.

Of course the dinosaurs, animals, weather and space were some of his favorite sections. Olivia jumps around a lot through the subjects but she can move from activity to activity with ease and complete some of them. She gravitated to the music, friendship, human body and under the sea sections. Zaine is at the top end of their recommended age range of 3 to 7 but he still finds it fun and engaging. Right now just keeping up with his learning no matter the level is important to me.

I was impressed with the platform and how much is hidden in there. Almost everything you click on leads somewhere. Other apps are not as extensive or intuitive and there is a parents' area where I can track their progress. So overall we like the MarcoPolo World School app and will continue to use it as supplemental learning, especially while we are home-schooling. It has now become an effective tool in my learning toolbox and really helps boost my teacher mom credibility with the kids.

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