Reading Eggs Review

Cory is 5.  He'll be starting school in the fall and in fact we're in the process of signing him up for a local Montessori school.  I'm super excited about that!

But before we knew what we were going to do I was on the lookout for any curriculum or apps that would help him get started.  When the opportunity came up for us to try out a program called Reading Eggs I thought I'd give it a try.

Reading Eggs is an online learn to read program that lets your child work at their own pace.  At first Cory wasn't thrilled because it was a bit of a challenge for him.  But as soon as we figured out that you earned eggs for completing lessons and you could use those to buy clothes and other things for your avatar and his house he was hooked.  You can also use them in the arcade to play games, but he doesn't seem to care much about that.

Here's what I think about the program.

Pros:

• Individualized learning
• Teaches the letter sounds and gives audio examples of sounding out words
• Has short activities that come at each lesson from different angles
• Creates an incentive for kids to keep working
• Is NOT an annoying program for a parent to listen to and work with

Cons:

• Requires good listening skills to know what to do in each segment (I think this could be easily fixed by not allowing a child to click "next" until the directions are done being read - at least in the first few lessons or the first time a new type of activity is introduced)
• Could teach a kid that he needs a reward for learning

Cory isn't very far into it, but already I can tell that he's learning how to sound words out.  And he's now asking to play it all the time.

Personally my biggest complaint is that it is more like a game and he's only doing the lessons to get to play the games.  I think learning is something that we need to learn to love and I don't see that happening right now.  Although once he learns to read that will open up a whole new world to him and he does like books already so hopefully that won't be an issue.

As a teacher myself I know that sometimes you just have to learn stuff that isn't super fun.  If you don't learn it you can't go on to the "bigger and better" stuff without the basics.  I don't think that everything is like this, but I don't particularly like the idea that there should be a reward for learning.  Learning is its own reward.

That being said, I think there is a place for this and since I don't seem to be as organized as I'd like (what, twins?) this is helping Cory where I can't right now.

And they are always running specials so the price is pretty reasonable!  Sign up for a free 2 week trial and see if your kid likes it first!

I was provided with free access to Reading Eggs to facilitate my review.  I was not compensated in any other way and all opinions are my own.