New Site: MSN Mom’s Homeroom, Sponsored by Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats {Spotlight}

I gotta say, I’m a sucker for the Frosted Mini-Wheats commercials.  I think they’re cute and clever (“your eight layers are showing!)” and highlight Kellogg’s dedication to helping kids get a great start to their school day.

Recently Mom Central invited bloggers to check out the new MSN Mom’s Homeroom, a collection of online educational resources sponsored by Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats.  The site features several unscripted videos with the special Mom’s Homeroom “Moms” – four women, including a teacher, a doctor, a psychiatrist, and a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom – covering a variety of topics.  They discuss questions and ideas on reading, writing, class attentiveness, memory, and more.

There is also a large database of articles on all these topics, pulled from MSN’s Encarta website, Scholastic, and the Mom’s Homeroom contributors.  Encarta also contributes a list of quizzes to the Mom’s Homeroom site.

Browsing around, I found that I really enjoyed the videos – the four Moms involved in this project are knowledgeable and engaging, and the videos were helpful and most importantly, they were just the right length (from 1.5-3.5 minutes each).  I also I think they cover topics that are of the greatest interest to most parents of school-aged kids.  The articles are fabulous and quizzes are fun, and I appreciated the added respectability of having Scholastic and Encarta involved in this new site.

One aspect I feel is still generally weak is the “community” element of this site.  I believe the intention is for there to be a discussion board where readers interact with the Homeroom Moms and each other on educational topics of interest.    There is still very little content in this portion, and much of the content I *did* see was actually spam from individuals trying to promote their own sites or businesses.  Though I would watch the videos and consult the articles on the site, I wouldn’t use the community links at this point.

I also have one aesthetic challenge with this site – the font is so light it’s sometimes difficult to read!  It’s also formatted in a kind of Java/Flash interface instead of straight-across HTML, giving the design a slightly “soft” feel.  These are just personal preferences of mine, though, and don’t ultimately take away from what I think is a great resource for parents to find information, encouragement, and new ideas regarding their child’s education.

Disclosure:

“I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats and received a sample to facilitate my candid review. In addition, Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.”

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