In kindergarten, I remember my teacher telling us that we were going to start playing games in the Computer lab to help us learn the holidays, read better, and spell better. By doing this, we are introduced to Starfall. Starfall has games for pre-k to 3rd grade. It is all educational; however, it is still fun for an 8-year-old, so she is not bored. My favorite thing about Starfall was the decorating for the pumpkin. I don’t know what I liked about it so much, I just did.

In about 3rd grade, we switched to ABCya!. ABCya! offered more games for a variety of age ranges pre-k through grades 6 and up. It still had educational values, while still being fun for the target audience for the game. As much as I love Starfall, when I consider the simple directions, I would pick ABCya! rather than Starfall. It has more options to play, and I think even a 6th grader could still enjoy the 3rd-grade level games on ABCya. I feel like more people would like ABCya! because it has more options. But, Starfall has more nostalgia for people. In my opinion, I like ABCya! more because it has a much bigger range of games to play. I would just pick ABCya! over Starfall.

I asked another Crimsonian staff writer, Sydney McCabe which one she likes more. After she received the questions, she said to me, “They’re both great resources, and I hope they continue to be used to their advantage. The best part is they’re both free! Most sites, such as ABCmouse (I’m anti-ABC mouse), shouldn’t have to pay for educational websites, especially a monthly subscription for 4-year-olds.” I asked her which one she would personally prefer, “Starfall for sure, ABCya! can be considered more educational, but Starfall truly helped me when I was little. I played the games as often as I could even at home over the summer. When I’d randomly scour the internet desperately trying to remember the name of the website.” completely agree with her, even though I was an ABCmouse kid. I agree with the fact that ABCya! and Starfall are great websites because they have no cost to play any games.

I asked a different Crimsonian staff writer, Addison Smitley which one she likes more. After asking her what her opinion was of each game, she told me, “I prefer ABCYA! and still play it sometimes when I get too bored to do anything else. I like the fact it has a large age range, and there are a lot of games for each grade. They also don’t always focus on things primary school related and you can find something genuinely fun while using an ABCya!. I also like Starfall, and their stuff is funny to use but it kind of makes me feel like a little kid in a non-good way. I also don’t like the features. I don’t know if it has changed, but you could barely ever skip ahead when using it.” I agree with Addison in that ABCya! is a great website to play on when you’re bored, and that it’s great because it has games that aren’t primarily school related; however, they have enough games that it can be played at school while having educational aspects to it.

Lastly, I asked Olivia Yackey which one she likes more. After asking her what her opinion was of each game, she told me, ”I don’t really remember much of Starfall, but I do remember ABCya!. We used it a lot in elementary. I remember there being like typing and math games. I think it is very good for younger audiences like elementary school and everyone enjoyed it so I think it was pretty good.” I agree with her because it is very good for young audiences, and it was like everyone enjoyed playing the games. 

All in all, I think that the most popular game is ABCya! because of the wide range of games. Starfall still has very good qualities. Nevertheless, I still like ABCya! more than Starfall because of the large range of games and how welcoming it is to so many people of lots of different ages and grade levels.