Learning to read is not always easy! Sometimes, children struggle to sort out the different letters and sounds and keep them all straight on the page. My eight-year-old daughter is just such a child. She wants to read, but for her reading is hard work. I am always on the lookout for ways to entice her to practice reading. Enter Reading Eggs.
Reading Eggs is an online reading game. Children have the chance to play fun games, earn rewards including hatching out new animals, collecting eggs which can be exchanged for a personalized avatar, a virtual house and all kinds of virtual accessories, new songs in the music area, and completion certificates to print as they complete each set of lessons.
If children start with lesson one, they will start at the very beginning of phonics and work their way through 176 lessons including phonics and spelling. After this they can move on to Reading Express where they can practice reading and comprehension. If your child already knows some phonics, you can have them take a placement test when you begin.
I started my 5 year old son start at the beginning because he needed that refresher course on letter sounds. I had my daughter take a placement test because she has already mastered some level of phonics in spite of her struggles. I did not want her to get bored in the beginning lessons and refuse to play.
Once my children started using Reading Eggs I have had no problem convincing them to spend time with it. They both clamor for Reading Eggs as part of their school work every single day. In fact, they would spend hours playing this game if they were allowed that much screen time! Both children have made great strides in their ability to read in just a few weeks. Anna read aloud a book today and I was just astounded at how much she has improved in the five or six weeks we have been using Reading Eggs.
I have tried to give some representative activities in the pictures above, but I will try to describe different activities as well. Some of the beginning activities included things like clicking on a letter as it floated across the screen. The goal was to pick a certain letter out and find it in the bubbles. Of course, lots of other letters were in the bubbles too. Most of the instructions were verbal, and my son had no problem knowing how to play each game.
Another activity involved racing through a series of lily pads by recognizing and clicking on the sight word being taught. The next time this activity came up it would look similar but instead of lily pads it might be bee hives or rocks. By the time you get to some of the later lessons, children must read the directions such as in the screen above with bubbles where it says “Press Okay”, the instructions were “Click on two Happy Bubbles.”
In each lesson, a certain number of activities would cause a new egg to hatch. At the end of the lesson, students either listen to or read a book. I was so proud watching my daughter play today because she chose to turn off the volume and read the book on her own!
My Bottom Line: I have already purchased a one-year subscription to Reading Eggs for both of my children who can use this program. I know it will be worth it for us, because I have already seen results. I especially recommend this game for any child who has struggled with learning phonics and needs some sight word re-enforcement and lots of reading practice. Reading Eggs gets my highest recommendation.
UPDATE: My daughter just turned 12 years old. She learned to read the year I wrote this review – and I credit that almost entirely to the fact that she spent 15 minutes per day on Reading Eggs. Of all the reading programs we have tried, I recommend this one most because it is fun for the kids, repetitive enough to stick, challenging enough to push just right, and rewarding enough that kids keep coming back for more.