Review by Mieke VanderBorght, Common Sense Education | Updated April 2022

Sago Mini School

Subscription-based activities have wide range but little depth

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Expert evaluation by Common Sense

Grades

Pre-K–K

Subjects & Skills

Creativity, Critical Thinking, Math

Price: Free to try
Platforms: iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
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Take a look inside 7 images

  • Activities are organized by theme.
  • Within the theme, the graphical activity menu can get busy and confusing.
  • Some activities are open-ended imaginative play spaces.
  • Some activities are guided exercises with intentional light academic content.
  • Swipe through word choices and see how the story changes.
  • Students can explore self-expression in the About Me theme.
  • Very short videos show live footage to introduce vocabulary or new concepts.

Pros: Because play is exploration-based, there's no need for individual accounts, which makes it easier to share use on one device.

Cons: The layout is busy and may feel overwhelming to some students.

Bottom Line: It could be a valuable choice as a free time or station activity, but it isn't robust enough for meaningful classroom learning.

How Can I Teach with This Tool?

Sago Mini School is a collection of early-learning activities that lets kids explore. Kids can choose a theme like trucks, rainbows, baking, and more. The cute characters may be familiar to some kids from Sago's popular suite of apps. Use Sago Mini School as a downtime free-play option. There's light learning content embedded in the stories and activities, including things like letter tracing and simple mazes, but it's pretty superficial. There's not really enough structure in the app to make it an easy sell as a solid classroom learning tool. That said, it does have great kid appeal, and its open-ended approach lets students take the lead.

Learning Rating

Overall Rating
Engagement

Fun, colorful graphics and high-interest topics like trucks, ice cream, rainbows, and firefighters are sure to draw students in.

Pedagogy

Light early learning happens through free exploration of open-ended play, short videos, and goal-directed activities. There's no feedback and little depth.

Support

Students freely tap and swipe around to explore, though the layout can be busy and there's no navigation guidance or how-to help. A companion parent app can provide teachers with some limited usage data.

Common Sense reviewer
Mieke VanderBorght
Mieke VanderBorght
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Privacy Rating

Data Safety How safe is this product?

  • Unclear whether this product supports interactions between trusted users.
  • Personal information can be not displayed publicly.
  • Unclear whether user-created content is filtered for personal information before being made publicly visible.

Data Rights What rights do I have to the data?

  • Users can create or upload content.
  • Processes to access or review user data are available.
  • Processes to modify data are available for authorized users.

Ads & Tracking Are there advertisements or tracking?

  • Personal information is shared for third-party marketing.
  • Unclear whether this product displays traditional or contextual advertisements.
  • Personalised advertising is displayed.

Continue reading about this tool's privacy practices, including data collection, sharing, and security.

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