TOS Crew: Digital Frog

As a homeschool parent, I am always looking  for ways to give my children access to new and exciting, field trips and material.  With a limited budget, and limited time,  it takes a toll on what we can access. Especially when you  have a large family. This is where Digital Frog comes in and saves the day! You will be amazed where our current stops are going to take us on our TOS Crew Voyage. In fact, we will be stopping in three unique locations! The Desert, The Wetlands and The Rainforest.  How can that be possible, you ask... let me show you......

The fine folks from Digital Frog  have put together an awesome field trip series that comes on a DVD/CD.  We have had the program for several weeks now and have only begun to uncover all of the features that are available.

While I have looked through all of the field trips, we as a family have spent most of our time in the Rain Forest! My children have thoroughly enjoyed their visits!

Finally, there is a way for you to take your family on field trips of a life time and this time, and you don't even need a passport!   That is because, it is from the comfort of your own home!

On each field trip there is a wealth of information, that I could not possibly do it justice in a simple blog post.  I am going to focus on the Rain Forest Field Trip and share some of the features that are available.  And what our family thought about this program!

Once you open the Rain Forest Field Trip, you will find yourself with a choice to make. From the front Navigation, you will need to choose, whether you would like to take the Field Trip, do a Rain Forest Study, learn about Rain Forest Types, or about the Mechanisms of the Rain Forest or about the Endangered Rain Forests.

From here, I am going to show you what it looks like under one of the sign posts. Simply to give you the idea of the shear magnitude of information that is included within this program.

We are going to visit the Rain Forest Study..

Clicking on the black words, will open a definition window. Clicking on the sign posts, or on the blue words within this text will take you to the next destination.  For us, our next stop will be the Dependency Web.......

Now once you have entered into the Dependency Web section, you see, that once again, there is a sign post of many choices. As well as an option for a game, on the porch.... under each one of the sign posts, you will find a wealth of information on that topic... for us, we will be visiting the habitats....

Now, what you find under each tab, in the individuals sections are unique. You will find text, animations, photos, little movies all that really engage the kids throughout the field trip!  And they are learning interesting facts in context, not simple, boring, dry facts like coming from a textbook!

Now the last photo I want to show you is of the field trip...

Now while this is our favorite part of the program, it is also the part that we had the most trouble with!  Here you see a screen shot of the first post of the field trip.  In the gray screen, you will be transported to that location. You have the ability to click and drag the camera, looking in different directions, as well as, zooming.  As you journey through the field trip, you will be taken to different posts, and everything that is at that post will be discussed in the text, with clickable, definable words.  However, as you see, in this shot, the screen is gray. On this computer, we were never able to get this feature to work. However, we were able to get it to work on our other computer. So the children were able to experience this feature, and absolutely loved it! But I would be remiss if I did not mention that we struggled a bit here.

There are  2 other things, that I feel like I need to mention. First, if you have a struggling reader, whether that is due to a disability or because they are young, you will need to sit next to them and help them with the reading. There is quite a bit of reading. However, my dyslexic told me that the words were in small enough chunks and with all of the animations, and clickable things he could do, it kept him interested. Much more than if it were a textbook.

The second thing would be the fact that this is from an evolutionary foundation. So you will need to decide for your family if this product will be a good fit or not.

Now in addition to all that is available that already showed you, each field trip comes with printables to supplement the field trip. As I mentioned in the beginning of this review, I simply cannot even begin to cover all that is available.

Please visit Digital Frog to learn even more about their product. On their website, if you join their Frogger Club, for free,  you will have access to additional online websites to supplement your field trip.  You can purchase these field trips individually for $60.00 for the Home User License, or you can buy all three on one cd for $125.00.

Please visit the crew blog to see what my crew mates have to say about the amazing product.

Happy Exploring!