Building Literacy Foundations With Super Simple Songs Playlists
At phonics.org, we review the most widely-used literacy apps for kids so you can make informed decisions about what programs to consider. Continue reading to learn more about the Super Simple Songs app and website.
What is the Super Simple Songs App?
Super Simple Songs provides an immersive literacy experience through its app and website. It offers a safe environment for young learners to explore independently. With a free trial and flexible subscription plans, the Super Simple Songs app is tailored toward families seeking quality educational content.
This app is tailored for younger learners under the age of 8. It features an extensive collection of engaging songs, printable activities, and simple interactive games. The content and themes in the app vary widely in content and quality.
This review will focus on the literacy-related themes within the app.
How Easy is it to Use the Super Simple Songs App?
The following factors contribute to the ease of use of the Super Simple Songs app.
Usability
Super Simple Songs excels in usability, even for young learners. The intro to the app is a rotating wheel that can be turned by a child to choose the content they’d like to engage with.
Even for young children, the interface is intuitive and straightforward.
Parental Controls
Super Simple Songs protects the grown-up area (parental control settings) by requiring the user to answer a simple math problem to change the controls. These controls allow the adult to tailor the app experience specifically for their child or students. Parents can also limit or lock access to the app ensuring their child doesn’t exit the app and explore other types of media on the device.
The app also allows pages to be ‘frozen’ so kids can’t navigate without adult guidance. The ability to change the control and subtitle language is a thoughtful feature for families who don’t know English but would like their child to learn through the app. These comprehensive grown-up controls ensure a safe, customizable, and enjoyable learning environment for children and caregivers alike.
“Manage Playlists”
Super Simple Songs offers a comprehensive “Manage Playlists” feature, allowing caregivers to tailor the spinning content wheel to match their child’s specific interests and learning needs.
With nearly 40 content options available, it’s easy to curate playlists that cater to individual preferences, ages, and the topics being taught. This customization process is highly recommended. It ensures a more engaging and higher quality learning experience.
User Engagement in Super Simple Songs
These elements enhance the overall engagement of children interacting with Super Simple Songs.
Catchy and Fun
Super Simple Songs holds young learners’ attention with its catchy and fun content. The songs and activities are carefully designed to keep children entertained and eager to learn.
The videos strike the perfect balance in length, holding the attention of even the youngest viewers without becoming overwhelming. With vibrant colors, playful animations, and adorable characters, each video creates a lively and inviting activity that sparks joy and curiosity.
The app’s content is specifically designed for younger children. Therefore, it might not resonate with older audiences. Nevertheless, the colorful, playful, and cute presentation ensures an enjoyable and memorable learning experience for the target age group.
Encourages Physical Movement
“Super Simple Songs” cleverly incorporates physical movement into some of its videos. This enhances engagement and promotes active learning.
One notable example is the “Bunny Hop ABCs” where certain letters in the alphabet song are replaced by a bunny. This bunny cues children to join in and start hopping along. Such creative ideas effectively capture children’s attention and energize their learning experience.
Super Simple Songs That Support Literacy Education
Some of the playlists in Super Simple Songs are better than others. The following songs are helpful for children learning literacy skills, so make sure to include these in your playlist!
The Super Simple Songs
Super Simple Songs are short, engaging, and playful songs that usually repeat a few keywords or concepts throughout. Don’t let the simplicity of the songs in Super Simple Songs fool you, though! These songs teach valuable skills.
Many of the vocabulary words in these songs are called “basic concepts” which are essential words to understand to comprehend language. This supports overall oral language ability as well as reading comprehension.
Repetition and clear, fun animations help children remember the information presented in the songs. Whether it’s letters, numbers, colors, or other basic concepts, the songs serve as powerful tools for vocabulary development, laying a solid foundation for language acquisition and literacy. Make sure to include the “Super Simple Songs” category in your playlist!
Storybooks
Super Simple Songs provides a valuable resource in its digital library of books. These books appear as classic stories that are read out loud to children or interactive storybooks with a look-and-find feature. While not intended to replace an adult directly reading with their child, the app provides a nice supplement for children to hear stories independently. This is another great option to include in a learning playlist on the app.
Phonics Fun
Phonics Fun stands out for its catchy and engaging approach to letter-sound instruction. Through repetitive exposure, the Phonics Fun section of the app reinforces accurate letter-sound associations, letter names, and keywords associated with the letter sound.
The frequent repetition of letter sounds ensures that these associations are firmly established in children’s minds. This is a great resource for parents and teachers alike and should be included in customized playlists.
Caitie’s Classroom
Caitie’s Classroom is an educational resource featuring Caitie, an engaging teacher who brings real-life experiences to life to explain various concepts to children. With her clear and direct communication style, Caitie holds children’s interest, making learning both enjoyable and accessible. Through her lessons, she skillfully builds background knowledge on interesting and important topics, laying a strong foundation for reading comprehension skills.
The inclusion of “Imagination Time,” an audio-only segment, adds another dimension to the learning experience. Imagination time builds kids’ listening comprehension skills. Caitie’s Classroom is an excellent addition to the in-app playlist option if your goal is literacy education.
Not Great: The Super Simple Songs to You Should Skip
As mentioned, not all of the songs in this app are effective for literacy education. Here’s our list of songs that were not fully approved by reading experts. We recommend you leave them out of your child’s playlist. Instead, focus on the more effective songs mentioned above.
Pratfall ABCs
Pratfall ABCs presents adorable bug characters that engage with letters and associated images. However, it lacks effective integration of literacy fundamentals. While the animated bugs interact with letters and corresponding keywords, the absence of letter names and letter sounds diminishes its educational value.
Additionally, some keywords may not accurately represent the letter’s sound, such as the use of “onion” for the letter ‘o’ (onion starts with an /u/ sound). While the videos here are harmless entertainment, they are unlikely to contribute significantly to literacy learning. This part of the app may be better skipped in favor of more educational content.
Turn and Learn ABCs
Turn and Learn ABCs adopts a turning puzzle format, gradually unveiling pictures of keywords associated with each letter. However, the app falls short in directly addressing letter sounds, prioritizing the visual reveal of pictures over phonics instruction.
Despite mentioning words beginning with a specific letter—such as “bee starts with the letter b”—it neglects to emphasize letter-sound associations, which are essential for literacy development. Consequently, while the app’s interactive puzzle may capture children’s attention, neglecting letter-sound relationships diminishes its effectiveness as a literacy tool.
Captain Seasalt & The ABC Pirates
Captain Seasalt & The ABC Pirate presents a lively approach to early literacy instruction with its charming pirate theme. Each video features friendly pirates that visit a letter island and tell a short story using many of the letter sounds of the island they visit. While the videos explore words beginning with a particular letter, they lack explicit phonics explanations of how each letter represents its corresponding sound.
Additionally, the depiction of letter formation—often starting at the bottom—is inaccurate. It could potentially confuse young learners. Despite the creative use of a pirate map to illustrate letter formation, the incorrect portrayal detracts from the instructional value of the content.
Overall, while the app’s theme and characters may capture children’s interest, it falls short in delivering effective phonics instruction and accurate letter formation techniques.
Is the Super Simple Songs App Good for Phonics Instruction?
The Super Simple Songs app offers an engaging platform for building language and literacy skills in young learners. The app’s user-friendly interface, coupled with grown-up controls and playlist management features, ensures a safe and customizable learning experience that children can enjoy with their caregivers.
The short video options available in the app are highly engaging for young children. The songs are catchy, the animations are well-done and visually appealing, and the content is interesting.
Some of the thematic content available in Super Simple Songs has higher educational quality than others.
- Super Simple Songs, Storybooks, Phonics Fun, and Caitie’s Classroom are excellent additions to classroom instruction. Additionally, these are ideal for parents and teachers interested in fostering foundational literacy learning for their children through custom playlists in the app.
- Pratfall ABCs, Turn and Learn ABC, and Captain Seasalt & the ABC Pirates have less educational value than the above content areas.
The Super Simple Songs app alone will not teach a child to read. However, the app offers a playful and enjoyable learning experience. Its effectiveness in promoting literacy skills depends on the selection and integration of appropriate content.
Learn more about effective phonics instruction programs for kids by reading more Phonics.org reviews today!
Super Simple Songs App: Overall Ratings
Quality of Literacy Instruction: 3.5 / 5
Usability: 4 / 5
Engagement: 4 / 5
