Lightbox Learning Review & Giveaway
Have you heard of Lightbox Learning? We didn’t either until asked to do a Lightbox Learning review. But, we’re thrilled we were introduced to it!
Known for its almost 40-year history of creating engaging learning experiences, Lightbox Learning offers a massive streamable library of interactive, multimedia ebooks. These ebooks cover various academic subjects and special interests, designed to excite children about learning.
I knew that Lightbox Learning has long been a tool used by large groups of students, like classrooms and libraries. However, it is also available as a learning resource for homeschoolers! I was curious to see how this resource works in a smaller, homeschool setting. That’s why I was excited to try it with my 9-year-old daughter and write this review of Lightbox Learning for The Homeschool Scientist.
As a homeschooling parent and lifelong book lover, I believe that a love of reading is at the center of all education. Once a child learns to love learning, they can achieve anything! Lightbox Learning initially excited me because it seemed like a resource that would support and nurture a love of books and self-study.
The idea of “multimedia books” appealed to me too, having read that Lightbox Learning ebooks have features like audio narration, dual-language options, video learning, weblinks, and more. However, I had trouble visualizing what an “interactive e-book” actually looked like and how I might use it in our homeschool.
For this Lightbox Learning review, I’ll thoroughly explore this resource from a homeschool framework, sharing:
- Our first impressions using Lightbox Learning in my homeschool family
- An in-depth review of the unique and interesting educational features of Lightbox Learning and the e-books
- A summary of ways you could use this resource in your own homeschool
Lightbox Learning Review: Our Personal Experience
Standout Features of Lightbox Learning
Impressed by the Variety of Subjects
When my daughter and I first logged into Lightbox Learning and selected the 3rd grade level, we were impressed by the variety of fun, colorful, interactive e-books available. We both said, “Whoa!”
My daughter, who loves space and learning about different animals, was drawn to those ebooks right away and could not wait to dive in. She was also excited to see content about mythological creatures like fairies and mermaids.
I was excited about the ebooks on historical figures, geography, and scientific concepts like friction and gravity. I saw several ebooks on topics that we have briefly covered in our other homeschool studies, such as specific time periods/historical events, places, and cultures. For the way we homeschool, I think Lightbox would be a wonderful supplemental resource for history, geography, unit studies, and science. As I’ll go into later, their K-2 science subjects form a complete science curriculum!
Below are a sample of resources available on the portal. As you can see, it’s easy to navigate, has beautiful photos, and the print is large enough for young children to read.
Lightbox Learning is easy to incorporate into your homeschool because of the wide variety of topics covered.
We were also blown away by the ebooks. The quality, ease of use, and fun, interactive elements are truly impressive. After completing one or two of the Lightbox Learning ebooks, she made lists of books she wanted to read, and I made a list for her, too!
Plus, I love that there is content for older students, so you can use this for multiple ages in your homeschool. We can use this for years to come.
Below is an example of a Lightbox Learning ebook for older students.
Great for Independent Use with Options for Digital and Hands-on Assessment
For homeschooling, I can easily envision choosing ebooks on a particular topic we are studying and then letting her explore them independently or together (depending on what my toddler is doing!) She has explored several ebooks already! When I haven’t been able to watch her, the digital assessments that are built into each ebook did a good job assessing what she’d learned.
We also printed some of the PDF activities Lightbox Learning includes in each lesson, allowing her to make a digital/hands-on connection with the material. The quality of the printable activities is extremely thorough, challenging learners to remember what they’ve learned and think critically about it. This is a great resource to help increase attentiveness and develop study skills.
I took some pictures of the printable activities for the video we watched on wolves. For questions my daughter couldn’t quite answer, we went back and found that section of the ebook for reference. Whether you use this as a quiz type assessment or as something physical for your kinesthetic kiddo to track along with the ebook, the physical component here is a great addition to Lightbox Learning.
Perfect for Exploring Student Interests and Fun to Use!
Like many homeschool families, we also embrace a lot of “free time learning,” especially during the summer or other less structured seasons. Lightbox Learning would be a perfect tool to encourage and nurture your child’s enthusiasm for a particular subject, while also supporting their reading, learning and research skills.
My daughter’s impressions about Lightbox Learning: “It is really fun! I love that you can learn about almost anything, and I love the cool videos and things you can do in every ebook. I liked that there were books about space and also stories and folklore.”
Lightbox Learning Review: Standout Features
Let me start by saying Lightbox Learning offers, in every way, so much more than imagined: more content, more special features, and more options for customization and engagement. When I initially tried to picture “interactive e-books,” I thought about my daughter’s Leapfrog, which she loved when she was younger, as well as online lessons/videos she has played or watched in the past. However, that does not come close to Lightbox Learning. This is a very unique, extremely comprehensive resource. While you can customize and select which program(s) you choose to access through a personalized subscription, there are 5,193 ebooks in all!
Interactivity of the Ebooks
Lightbox Learning ebooks offer non-stop engagement for every age level. Simply put, there’s a real “coolness” factor to these books. Far from being stagnant, they include videos, weblinks, activities, keywords, quizzes, Google maps, and more, to make for an engaging and dynamic learning experience. Plus, all of it is visually appealing and intuitive for kids to navigate.
For example, my daughter had no trouble figuring out when an illustration was also a video. She wanted to click the weblinks to dig deeper into certain topics as well. Everything from the appearance of the books to the user interface had a natural flow. The integration of the different types of media is done in a seamless way that encourages kids to explore and learn!
Quality, Curated Multimedia Content
In exploring a variety of different ebooks at different levels, I was highly impressed by the quality of the content. Every Lightbox Learning at Home book was well-written to the selected age level, with highlighted vocabulary words. Every video was professional, interesting, and engaging. There are excellent voice actors who read fiction titles and K-2 non-fiction titles, so that auditory children or struggling readers can enjoy that addition.
And, especially among the nonfiction ebooks, there are many fantastic supplemental options for children studying history and science. I think that the books on a younger reading level could even be shared somewhat across older grade levels in a homeschool setting, due to the quality of content! It is obvious that a lot of time, coordination, and professional effort have gone into each ebook.
Content Chunking
Each e-book is organized into clearly defined segments. This allows students to focus on one concept at a time. For instance, in the e-book on ancient Greece, you’ll find different sections dedicated to important events, cultural practices, and geographical information, each with its own set of interactive features like videos, interactive maps, and more. However, those sections stay distinctly defined by the page on which they reside. This “content chunking” allows children to go through each book at their own pace without getting overwhelmed and can help them remember more, too.
Printable Activities
Each e-book has a section called “Activities,” which is a PDF of printable worksheets and activities that can be used to assess learning and encourage more expression about the material. I appreciate when resources do this because it makes that connection between digital and physical. Many of the questions in the activities also require a little critical thinking and application of knowledge. I would use this as a homeschool parent working on a more individualized basis!
In two screenshots below, you can see the handy link to the activity pages. On the right, is a screenshot of the activity page in PDF format. As you can see, it’s super-easy for students and parents to find the activities.
Full K-2 Science Curriculum
The Lightbox Learning K-2 curriculum covers 100% of science for these grade levels, aligned to state standards. If you’re a homeschool parent, state standards may or may not matter to you depending on what state you’re in, but it’s always nice to know! There are 244 interactive e-books covering all major science branches for kids—life science/biology, earth science, physics, and chemistry. There are also plenty of books on other science-related topics that kids love, like space studies, animal studies, and dinosaur studies! I dove into some of the space-themed e-books and was truly impressed. As a space enthusiast who teaches space camp every summer to kids within the K-2 age range, I even learned a couple of things!
Beautiful Fiction Read Alongs
I have talked more about the nonfiction aspects of Lightbox Learning because it’s the piece I can see being used most in a homeschool setting. However, Lightbox Learning also offers some really wonderful AV2 fiction books as well! These are for grades K-5 and are full of beautiful pictures and great narration. This would be a wonderful resource for young learners and those who are working on their reading fluency.
Multilingual Support and Language Learning
The language features on Lightbox Learning are amazing. There is a “Dual Language” subscription available which allows you to seamlessly switch from English to Spanish in your e-book of choice. This particular subscription library has 639 interactive Spanish/English books. This would also be an amazing language-learning supplement for a homeschool English-speaking family who wants to learn Spanish (or vice versa).
There is also a “world language” option with about 2,000 books that offer text and narration in 17 different languages! Yes, I said 17! My daughter is working on learning Japanese, and she loved being able to see the language and hear the pronunciation as part of an e-book that she could also enjoy in English. This would be amazing for students or families who love to emphasize language studies!
Search and Navigation
The advanced curriculum search feature in Lightbox Learning allows users to search for content by grade level, subject, content area, and subscription type. This makes it easy to find specific resources that align with your homeschooling goals.
Wide Range of Subjects for all Ages
Lightbox Learning offers 7,000 interactive books that cover a wide range of subjects, from fiction to nonfiction. There are a lot of interesting educational topics for children of all ages, including older children–there are even subjects like budgeting and finance. In a homeschool setting, this could be great for several things: to provide a foundational science or history program, to improve reading, to study languages, to supplement unit studies, or to dive into special interest topics!
Powerful Literacy Tool
While each ebook offers an engaging learning experience about a distinctive topic, they are all fantastic literacy tools! The option to see the words alongside audio narration is really helpful for auditory learners and struggling readers, and I love the emphasis on vocabulary that is found in the quizzes and various assessment tools! The books for K-2 learners contain all 300 Fry words, which are important sight words that young readers need to know. I also really love how the format encourages deep exploration into particular topics, which fosters a love of research. In a homeschool environment, this is a really great resource to support your young readers and encourage reading confidence.
Keyword prompts throughout the reading.
Keyword multiple choice to help build vocabulary.
Sample quiz page shown above.
Works for Every Learning Style
All of the ebooks incorporate audio, visual, and kinesthetic elements! This is a great resource for all different types of learners.
Customizable Subscriptions
I mentioned earlier that Lightbox Learning has customizable subscriptions—they actually have 13 different options that you can choose from or combine. This allows you to purchase, for example, just the K-2 nonfiction, or just the K-3 Guided Reading, if that’s what you want. The annual pricing for these is 50% of the monthly pricing, making it the best value.
That said, you can choose as many combinations as you like, and choosing multiple subscriptions ( also referred to as “catalogs”) gets you extra discounts.
For example, I am interested in the 3-5 nonfiction ebooks, which would be 569 interactive ebooks for $89 for the whole year. However, I’m also interested in the AV2 K-5 fiction for guided reading! If I want to get that one, too, then I’ll be able to add it on for 20%. If you get 4 or more subscriptions, you receive 50% off the 4th and beyond.
I think the pricing is very reasonable for homeschool families, especially if you plan to use Lightbox as a resource for multiple ages and subjects!
Ways to Use Lightbox Learning in YOUR Homeschool:
This is a comprehensive multimedia tool that could benefit any homeschool environment in various ways. I mentioned many of these ideas when exploring the features above, but here is a summary of some ways Lightbox could be an asset in your homeschool!
- As Quality, Shareable Content for a Variety of Ages: The nonfiction topics, in particular, offer important learning that is shared at a high-quality level, even when the reading level is for younger ages. I think these ebooks would work well for sharing across different age levels in a homeschool family.
- As Comprehensive Science Curriculum for K-2: The K-2 nonfiction science books could form a complete science curriculum for homeschoolers! The nonfiction science books for older learners would make a fantastic supplement to any science curriculum, as well.
- For Language Learning: The Dual Language subscription and world language books are amazing language-learning supplements for homeschool learners wanting to practice their skills “in the wild,” with books!
- To Explore a Wide Range of Subjects: The wide range of subjects can provide foundational science or history programs, improve reading, study languages, supplement unit studies, or dive into special interest topics in a homeschool setting.
- To Help Nourish Literacy Skills: Each ebook is a fantastic literacy tool that supports young readers and encourages reading confidence in a homeschool environment.
- To Engage All Types of Learners: Lightbox’s multimedia and interactive features make learning dynamic and engaging, perfect for maintaining children’s interest in a homeschool setting.
- To Supplement Unit Studies or Special Interest Studies! Honestly, Lightbox is the perfect resource to add valuable learning to many unit studies, or let your homeschooler do a deep dive into a subject that interests them! The Lightbox Learning library has so much to choose from!
- For Fostering Independent Study and Research Skills One of my favorite things about Lightbox Learning is that it has built-in assessments, vocabulary studies, and additional resources that allow learners to fuel their own desire to learn more! I think this is a valuable tool for homeschool parents who want to help their learners learn more about how to self-study and how to research, even from a very young age!
Lightbox Learning is a versatile and comprehensive digital learning resource that has much to offer a homeschooling family. It has many subscription options that allow you to customize your experience. Personally, I think this resource has much to offer homeschool families, especially within the subjects of science, history, geography, and language learning. It is also a wonderful tool for building literacy skills and study skills, which is important across all subjects! And, importantly for your learners, it is really fun and exciting to use. Kids using this tool will create positive associations with reading and learning, which I would argue is the most important thing of all! Like homeschooling itself, Lightbox Learning is easily customizable and designed to ignite your child(ren)’s desire to learn!
Visit the Lightbox Learning Website & a Giveaway!
Visit the Lightbox Learning website by clicking here. They have something for all grade levels, and have full curriculum for K-2nd.
Katie is a Christian, wife, writer, and homeschooling mother of two. She and her husband are both homeschool graduates who now homeschool their children. Katie is passionate about literature, the arts, STEM, and education. Katie has a MA in English and literature, and she works with her local STEM organization and Classical Conversations community to help create hands-on learning opportunities for children. She teaches NASA Astro Camp every summer, and she loves to read and paint whenever she can. She believes that the arts and sciences have much more in common than many people realize!