Reading Eggs Online Learning Games Review

My family had the privilege of trying the online learning games from Reading Eggs for this review to use in conjunction with our own homeschool curriculum. This is a Homeschool Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family.

Reading Eggs is an online program that helps kids learn better literacy through reading lessons, activities, and ebooks. Reading Eggs is made up of  5 different kids learning programs: Reading Eggs JR for ages 2-4, Reading Eggs for ages 4-5, Reading Eggs for ages 6-7, Reading Eggspress for ages 7-13, and Mathseeds for ages 3-9. These self-paced educational games are recommended for kids ages 2 to 13. They are created by a team of qualified teachers, educational writers, animators and web developers. These online reading programs will engage your child or student to keep learning.

Student Menu

Reading Eggs JR is a brand new online reading game that teaches toddlers ages 2 to 4 words, sounds, and letters. These pre-reading skills are the first step to literacy. This has games, videos, and e-books to help motivate the younger child.

Reading Eggs is an online reading game that teaches kids ages 3 to 7. There are two parts: the lessons for ages 3 to 5 and the lessons for ages 6 to 7. The first teaches phonics, sight words, and essential reading skills needed to get ready for school. The second part gives the child practice with bonus activities and lessons that teach spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.

Reading Eggspress is an online reading game that teaches kids ages 7 to 13, grades 1 to 6. This game continues the online learning from previous Reading Eggs lessons. This teaches structured comprehension, vocabulary, spelling and grammar with live games, an online library, and more!

Mathseeds is an online math learning game that teaches kids ages 3 to 9. This program teaches early math skills. Great for beginners and young children in their first years of school.

Teela and Zari on Reading Eggs.

How We Used This and Our Thoughts:
I have two young daughters. Teela is 9 years old and Zari will be 7 on October 19th. They are in 4th and 1st grades. My daughter Teela has done Reading Eggs before in 2013 because we got a free trial to try it out back then. Teela has grown to love reading and is doing so roughly at a 6th grade reading level now. My daughter Zari hadn't tried Reading Eggs at all and is just starting to read. We hadn't tried the other programs that came with our subscription.

Reading Eggs Navigation

We received a six month subscription to Reading Eggs this time around. This included access to Reading Eggs Junior, Reading Eggs, and Reading Eggspress. We also got a six month subscription to MathSeeds. Both Teela and Zari worked on this educational game an average of three days per week since we got signed up.

Both started with a reading assessment to see where they needed to be. Since Teela had already done one in 2013 she needed to redo hers to see where she was now. They both started with Reading Eggs. I believe Teela made some mistakes on her assessment because she was trying to plow through it...so she was put at a lower level than she should have been. When she went on to the games in Reading Eggs at lesson 111, map 12 they gave her she said the games were boring and that she already knew this stuff. I agreed with her that she already knew it and asked her if she wanted to redo the assessment for a second time and she didn't. So, she just did the rest of the Reading Eggs games and then moved onto Reading Eggspress. Zari was placed in the right place. She started on lesson 41, map 5. There are 120 lessons total in Reading Eggs with about 6-14 games per lesson.

Reading Eggs Lesson Maps

Reading Eggs Lesson Map

• Step 1 Starting Out in the Zoo (Lessons 1-40, Map 1-4): For children ages 4-6 that have little to no reading skills. Children will learn first reading skills, including: learning sounds and names of the alphabet letters, reading their first sight words, and phonetics to read three letter words. Includes simple stories to read featuring Sam the Ant.
• Step 2 Beginning to Read in The Playground (Lessons 41-80, Map 5-8): Builds on skills learned in step 1 focusing on short vowel words and constructing reading skills. Children will learn more high frequency sight words, make word families, and read 40 more books that build vocabulary.
• Step 3 Building Confidence at the Theme Park (Lessons 81-120, Map 5-12): These lessons cover long vowels words and focus on reading for meaning, comprehension, and understanding of longer words and sentences.

Reading Eggs Lesson Parts Examples

Reading Eggs Lesson Parts Example

• Parts 1 & 2 The Main Lesson: interactive animations that are led by a character modeling the concepts. Students need to get 7 correct responses to move on.
• Part 3 Dot to Dot: Students learn correct letter formation with dot to dot.
• Part 4 Letter Recognition: builds letter recognition of upper and lower case letters.
• Part 5 Vocabulary: activities that build vocabulary to be able to read the books.
• Part 6 The e-book: electronic book with audio support so kids can read along.
• Part 7 The Egg Hatches: students are rewarded with creatures that hatch to add to their online collection.

With each reading program there are colorful graphics, characters, and designs to engage the student to keep going. There are fun games, videos, and e-books to also teach the concepts. The students are awarded golden eggs to be later used in the store to buy things for the house and avatar, etc. The navigation around the program is fairly simple. My daughters liked that they could change the look of their avatar, buy things in the shop with golden eggs they acquired through doing well in the lessons, and see their certificates in the My Awards section. I loved that I could see their progress at a glance.

Program Guides for Homeschoolers

Also, in the Parent Dashboard (the home page after signing in) under the menu that has "Bonus Material" you can find Program Guides for Homeschoolers. These are free and downloadable once logged in. These colorful, detailed week-by-week overviews help homeschooling parents to see learning outcomes for children in Kindergarten through 2nd Grade. Each guide contains a 36-week teaching and learning sequence for Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies. These map out online lessons, books, quizzes, and assessments.

This is an excellent interactive game that teaches kids better reading skills. I definitely saw improvement in my daughter Zari's literacy skills. My girls loved Reading Eggs and I recommend it to anyone who homeschools or wants a reading supplement for their children or students.

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My readers get 4 weeks FREE trial access to the program to try for themselves! This offer expires on November 30, 2017.

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Talking Fingers Inc. Talking Shapes: A Supplemental Curriculum for Early Literacy Review

My family had the privilege of trying a one-year subscription of the new online version of the Talking Shapes: A Supplemental Curriculum for Early Literacy app from Talking Fingers Inc. for this review to use in conjunction with our own homeschool curriculum. This is a Schoolhouse Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family.

Talking Fingers Inc. is an educational program developer that is largely funded by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Their programs help young children with early literacy. One of their educational programs is called Talking Shapes.

Taking Shapes up until just recently was an app for iPad that teaches preschool and kindergarten age children to learn to identify letters and their sounds and learn to read. It now is available as an online version in which you can access though your computer browser. Dr. Jeannine Herron, a neuropsychologist, developed this program. Talking Shapes involves both left (logic, math, science) and right (creativity, arts) sides of the brain for more proficient reading. This program is intended for ages 4-5 and shows children that the words they can say are made up of letters they can see! Talking Shapes is seven interactive storybooks that when completed will introduce all 40 speech sounds (phonemes) from the English language and the letters that stand for those sounds. This program raises phoneme awareness.

How We Used This and Our Thoughts:

My daughter Zari is going into kindergarten this upcoming homeschool year so we decided she would be great for this Talking Shapes. She has had a hard time learning her letters and their sounds. We hoped that this program would help her.

We found that the Talking Shapes online program loaded super slow on our computer, but we do have sluggish internet speeds. When you first login to Talking Fingers Inc. Talking Shapes and finally get to the storybook map you will see only the first book in color and all the others greyed out. There are seven total books/lessons to do. You must have your child do this in the order that is given by numbers by the book covers in order for them to progress through the series. Your student will be able to move on to the next book when the first story and lesson is completed, but not before.

Zari enjoying the Talking Shapes story.

When you click on a story book in the series it loads and sings a song to start about the vowels. It then has a starting menu with Story, Letters, Spell, and Read to pick from. We just clicked on the first one, Story. It tells the story of two girls from the past that want to remember their stories that they have told others and devise a plan to create letters and an alphabet to be able to write the words down. This is the listening part of the program.

Zari Drawing Letters in Talking Shapes.

This story goes on to show the child the Letters that are introduced first in this story book. The child also learns through pictures how to recognize the letter. For example, a snake in the shape of a S, a tree in the shape of a T, a mountain in the shape of a M, a pear to form the uppercase P, or an acrobat with her arms in the general shape of an A, etc. These are the Talking Shapes that help the child remember the sound and shape of the letter. When the student clicks on the pictures they say the sound of the letter. The student also goes through a sequence of tracing the letters (with the mouse pointer or finger/stylus on a touch screen) on the Talking Shapes picture with outlines of the letter, on an actual letter outlined, and a Talking Shapes picture without outlines of the letter. You also draw letters to make two-three letter words. This is the drawing part of the program.

Zari spelling words in Talking Shapes.

The Spell portion of the activities is next. Words are introduced with the letters they learned previously. The program first has the student spell, trace, place together, and sound out each letter in the picture they give for three letter words. They have to find the correct letter to place in the highlighted box, trace it, go on to the next letter, trace it, place them together, find the last letter, trace it, and place it together with the rest of the letters. We liked how the letters had to be manually placed together so that the blend could be heard. The student does this with the letter outlines on the pictures first, then just the letter outlines, then just the pictures without outlines. This is the game part of the program.

Zari reading words in Talking Shapes.

After this section is the Read section in which the program first reads the child a short four sentence story with the words they learned then it leaves out one of the words. Words go by in flying pictures at the top of the screen and the child has to click on the correct one for the sentence to complete it before the word disappears off the screen. When the correct one is picked the pictures pop and the word appears correctly in the sentence where it was. These fill in the blanks help reinforce the words that were taught before.

A Preview of Some of the Stories and What They Teach...

1. The Fat Cat: Introduces the uppercase consonants C, F, S, H, and T along with some sounds they make and the short vowel sound of uppercase A. The words CAT, FAT, SAT, and HAT are also introduced.
2. The Silly Hen: Introduces the uppercase consonants P, N, M, L, along with some sounds they make and the short and long vowel sound of uppercase E. The names PAT and NAT and the words MAN, FAN, PAN, CAN, MEN, HEN, PEN, PET, MET, NET, LET, HE, ME, TAP, SET, NAP, MAP, LAP, HAM are also introduced.
3. The Dancing Pig: Introduces the uppercase consonants  B, G, J, D, W, along with some sounds they make and the short vowel sound of uppercase I. The words PIN, BIB, BIG, JET, DIG, WIG, LEG, BAG, BED, SAD, JAM, BAT, DAD are also introduced.
4. and so on...

What we disliked about Talking Shapes:

• It loads super slow. This is very frustrating!
• To draw/trace the letter the child only needs to move the cursor or finger around the picture area until the letter is filled in. This encourages scribbling rather than actually tracing the letter correctly. 
• We have only seen the program cover uppercase/capital letters and we are on the 4th book.

What we liked about Talking Shapes:

• The story is cute and engaging.
• The program is educational and interactive.
• It is fairly repetitious which is great for this age group.
• It is great for visual, tactile kinesthetic, and auditory learners.

My daughter Zari loves Talking Shapes. I could see it actually help her grasp letter concepts that she hasn't been able to before. She is finally beginning to understand basic phonics, letter sounds, letter shapes, and how to build words better. I am very happy with this program and its ability to help my daughter learn her letters and simple words easier so that she can learn to read.

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Memoria Press First Start Reading Review

I had the privilege of testing out First Start Reading for Memoria Press free for this review to use in conjunction with my own homeschool curriculum. This is a Schoolhouse Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family.

My daughter, Zari, is starting to learn to read simple words and print letters. She is preschool age and is 4 years old right now. We have already been working with her on how to hold a pencil correctly and trace letters. I love the First Start Reading from Memoria Press! It is a perfect first start classical curriculum for having your child start learning phonics, reading, and printing. Even though these books are actually for Kindergarten age I felt that Zari was ready to learn the Memoria Press First Start Reading lessons.

The package I received included the Teacher Book and Books A-D. The Teacher Book is a guide for the student books A-D. It will guide you through the four student books while providing assessments and helpful teaching tips along the way. In the introduction of the teacher manual it has an Alphabet chart in the front which shows the proper way to print the letters A-Z in both uppercase and lowercase. Then it goes on to include a phonics syllabi for books A, B, C and D, a phonics overview, phonics approach, getting started, general teaching guidelines, proper pencil grip and letter formation, printing lessons, and games. The teacher guide covers lesson plans for all 4 student books. It is very easy to follow the plans in the teacher guide and it gives you prompts to use with your child in case you can't think of any on your own. It also has an appendix at the end that includes posters to scan and print out to use with your lessons.

The books teach a more traditional and classical vowel-consonant approach combined with word families to teaching phonics instead of the ladder approach of consonant-vowel blending. It also lays down a great foundation for the essential short vowel mastery of phonics. First Start Reading is a great first start phonics program that covers consonants, short and long vowels, 45 common words and manuscript printing. Each page in books A-D has artist-drawn coloring pictures and drawing pages for every letter.

Memoria Press First Start Reading Book A Lesson 1

We started Zari with the First Start Reading Book A workbook. We had her work at her own pace, about 1-2 lessons per day that we did it. This workbook has a total of 25 lessons with work on letters/sounds, CVC/common words, reading skills, and short sentences which eventually form phonetic stories. The book starts out teaching M and A in both uppercase and lowercase. The first and second lesson has the black and white picture of a man and a moon to color to go along with the first lesson of M and an apple and ax to go along with the lesson second lesson of A. Besides pictures to color each lesson has a spot to draw something that starts with the letter learned. For example, Zari drew a moon and mommy in one and an alligator in the second box. By lesson 3 it goes into the words "I am" in which my daughter drew herself. When taught words Zari learns to blend the sounds of the letters together. We would also take this one step further with Zari and try to find things around the house that started with the letter. This book teaches 10 letters (M, A, S, N, R, F, T, H, C, P), one digraph (th), 36 words with these letters, sounds of s and i, and one final consonant blend (st).  By the end of the book the student will also learn reading skills such as period and exclamation point placement, articles a and an, how sentences always begin with a capital letter, the use of 's, plural nouns, and inflected verb endings. The last three ending lessons are 3 phonetic stories. There is a review and assessments at the end also with word mastery and dictation practice pages. By the end of Book A Zari was getting a lot better at printing, letter association, sound-symbol association, and reading common sight words in short sentences. I was very pleased with her progress.

A is for Apple, Ax, and Alligator

Each consecutive book in the First Start Reading series builds upon the learning received in the ones previous. First Start Reading Book B has a total of 26 lessons with work on letters/sounds, CVC/common words, reading skills (all dictation with one other lesson on the question mark), and phonetic stories. This book teaches 6 letters (I, G, L, O, B, D), 116 words with these letters and the ones learned in Book A, and 13 stories to read with the words learned. First Start Reading Book C has a total of 25 lessons with work on letters/sounds, CVC/common words, reading skills (primarily dictation, quotation marks, and paragraphs), and phonetic stories. This book teaches 10 letters (E, X, K, J, U, V, W, Y, Z, Q), 132 words with these letters and the ones learned in Book A and B, and 7 stories to read with the words learned. First Start Reading Book D has a total of 12 lessons with work on letters/sounds, CVC/common words, and phonetic stories. This book teaches long vowel sounds, 4 digraphs (sh, th, ch, wh), final consonant blends (ft, pt, xt, lf, lp, lt, lk, nd, nt, mp), s-blends, r-blends, l-blends, 12 words with these letters and the ones learned in Book A-C, and 6 stories to read with the words learned.

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The entire set of the Memoria Press First Start Reading Teacher's Manual and 4 Student Books can be purchased for $42.95. If you want the Student Set of Books A-D only, you can purchase them just for $28.00. If you would like to purchase individual items you can at $14.95 for the Teacher's Manual and each student book for $7.00.

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Reading Eggs FREE 5 Week Offer

All information is provided by USFamilyGuide.com and Reading Eggs. I am  receiving 3 months FREE for posting this promotion.

Reading Eggs is a program that focuses on a range of online reading lessons, activities, and ebooks for literacy skills suitable for kids ages 3 to 12. These have been produced by a highly qualified team of teachers, educational writers, animators and web developers. Since its launch in the US and Canada in 2011, Reading Eggs has logged on more than 500,000 members and given more than 15 million lessons in North America.

Readers of Eccentric Eclectic Woman receive a FREE Five-Week Trial Offer. No credit card required. This offer is good until 9/30 then Reading Eggs will go back to a two-week trial.

Sign up to get the offer and get lessons to teach your child: phonics, letter recognition, sight words, learning to read, vocabulary, online reading, spelling, and comprehension.

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: Because I am posting about the Reading Eggs I am getting 3 months FREE. Thanks to USFamilyGuide.com for providing me this promotion information and free subscription. My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. I did not receive any other compensation for posting this promo.