We have had a lot of difficulty teaching our youngest biological child to read. Most of you know that he is on the autism spectrum but is smart as a whip in most areas. Reading however is not one of those areas. We have tried all of the usual approaches over the years and some unusual ones as well. Nothing seemed to click with him. I remembered that a long time ago we reviewed and used Reading Eggs for a while and he loved it and seemed to excel. Somehow, though, we got sidetracked and thought something else might work better. Well, wouldn’t you know it, through the Homeschool Review Crew we were given the chance to review it once again and I took the chance. After all, why try to reinvent the wheel? If it worked once, maybe it will work again.
The first thing that I noticed was that it seems that it has changed! The Reading Eggs program itself hasn’t changed, but it has added a few new things that I either didn’t notice or it wasn’t there before. I noticed a program, Reading Eggs Jr, for 2-4 year olds, that will help kids begin to learn to read even earlier and another, Reading Eggspress, for children 7-13, that will continue to help kids after they have completed the Reading Eggs program. There is even a new program that will help kids with math called Mathseeds! I’ll talk about those programs briefly just a little bit later but lets talk about Reading Eggs, their main program and the one that has helped Jacob tremendously.
And, yes we picked up where we left off with Reading Eggs. Jacob loves it just as much as he did before, and he is once again excelling in reading. Since it had been some time since we used it, we began with the placement test to see on what map he should begin on. You see, Reading Eggs has different maps that each contain ten lessons. Each lesson introduces a new sound. In a recent lesson that Jacob completed the “ix” sound was introduced. Jacob had to go through about 12 different games that mostly had to do with “ix” but sometimes reviewed something from a previous lesson. One of the things that he had to do was click on two of the awesome animated characters. One was in a barn loft hoisting one bale of hay with a letter on it. The other was on the ground tugging on another bale that had two more letters on it. As Jacob clicked on the characters the bales would come closer together. Each time Jacob could hear the sounds of the letters until the bales finally came together and the word was actually revealed and the sounds blended together to say the word. Another game had him putting fish with words on them in the correct boat. Still another game had him putting a sentence together using bricks. Finally, at the end of the lesson, he gets to read a book that contains words that had the “ix” sound in it or another sound that he had previously learned. Each lesson builds on the one before it. Jacob is loving it! He has learned so much already in this short review time and is becoming more confident in his reading. He wants to do two or three lessons a day which is fine with me.
And those are just the regular lessons. There are also other awesome added features that help him learn without him even knowing it. We haven’t even had time to try them all out! He can create his own story. He can play games. Each time he does well in the regular lessons he gets reward eggs. He can use his reward eggs to buy furniture for his house or to buy clothes for the avatar he created at the beginning or to play some cool games. There is also a spelling section that will help him learn to spell, a driving test area that helps him review sight words, letters and sounds and content words, printables that you can print out and much more. I am really excited to see him try more and excel.
I mentioned some of the other programs before. I really like the progression that Reading Eggs has made with it’s programs. Each program, Reading Eggs Jr., Reading Eggs, and Reading Eggspress, is designed so that a student can go seamlessly through the program and become an excellent reader (or should I say “eggcellent” reader).
And, as I was writing this review, we just got an email that the new homeschool guides are available for homeschoolers. They can be printed out and used for kindergarten to second grade parents to use as a complete curriculum using some of the great books from the Reading Eggs library. It covers language arts, math, science and social studies!
This is a winner for us, and, as I said before, we are not going to try to reinvent the wheel anymore. We are sticking with Reading Eggs. I know that you will really enjoy it as well but don’t take my word for it, try it yourself. The creators of Reading Eggs have allowed us to offer a Free 4 week trial that you can use to see if you like to program. Just click on the highlighted link that says “Free 4 week trial” to find out more. To look around and see all that Reading Eggs has to offer just click on any one of the other highlighted links above. Other members of the Homeschool Review Crew reviewed Reading Eggs as well and you can find what they had to say by clicking on the banner below. Happy Reading!
