My little one just finished all fifteen books in the Starfall Learn to Read set.
I chose to purchase the books because I wanted my little one to learn to relate to books as books and not just words on a computer screen. I want her to love the feel of a book in her hand. She has fallen in love with the books, and loves to get them out of the box, read them to friends, and in general just admire them. When reading time comes, she will ask to read several of them and I have to tell her that is too much!
The Starfall website provides a lot of wonderful activities that help her learn material, like - games involving silent e, videos on the SH sound, and demos of each book being read aloud. You click on the word and (usually) it is sounded out, sound by sound while that letter or letter combination is highlighted in red.
My little one asks to do Starfall (on the computer) as a treat outside of school time - in place of having the video of her choice - so that's pretty high praise.
One drawback to the site itself - in the store they offer a book on Darwin. This tells me that I cannot leave the computer programs unsupervised to teach my child, but have to vet whatever they present.
What I felt these materials did (and, what I wanted them for) is to help my little one keep loving books while going through the challenge of some not-always-fun phonics drill with the rest of our reading instruction time. She loves these books, and they help her love reading.
Recommendation: I have been very pleased with them overall.
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