Funbrain - Is It all that fun?

For my first review I checked out Funbrain. This site is supposed to be for students grades in grades 1-8. It has stories, comics, games, and I felt it was more something for younger students. There is no log-in, but the site gives you passwords once you have passed certain levels so you can resume play without losing any progress on the gameboard (kind of like Candyland).

There are lots of games that are secretly drill activities: matching exercises, math computation drills, and mouse moving activities that seem to be about motor control. Some games are combinations of all three things, like Bumble Numbers. I think there is lots here for younger folks, but I bet older students would feel this site is "for babies" and not so challenging after a short time. I think that this site would be great for kindergarten to second grade students.

The hardest part of the site for me was Math Baseball, which features some pretty difficult computations, at least if you try to do them in your head, like I did.  I can see it being a quick way to get some students to practice simple algebra exercises, but also something that could get old quick. I did like running the score up though...

I also tried the Mad Libs because I liked those so much when I was a kid. I was almost immediately frustrated with the words moving. Typing them in was not as much fun, and when I was finished choosing I was bummed to see some grammar errors and omissions in the actual passage. Not a good showing, I am afraid.

I think this site is ok for basic skills work, and there are certainly links to books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid (seem like they are all Scholastic products), which is good, I guess. They also have comics, like Brewster Rockit: Spaceguy, which is full of lame Star Wars jokes and does not seem even aimed at kids, but I thought they were subpar, so no links to those.

There is a moderate presence of ads, and they certainly are pushing an app and site called Poptropolis (I am not linking out of spite) that seems to be more of the same. Funbrain also advertises DVDs, cartoons, Froot Loops cereal, and other popular culture things.

It seems more a slight diversion or skills work than something that would be appealing over a long period of time, which bummed me out. I had higher hopes for this site!

I would get fun for my brain elsewhere.