As a homeschooling mom, I’m always on the look out for new ways to introduce,  review, reinforce, and refresh skills we’ve been learning. When a friend recommended I check out Reading Eggs, I decided it was definitely worth a visit. I was especially pleased when I found it here on PTPA, as an award winner!  I signed all 3 of my boys up for a trial run of the site. 

Reading Eggs is designed to help teach phonetic skills through fun, creative, colourful interactive games and stories. Before they start, each kid takes an assessment test. Unlike some other websites, the assessment was fairly easy – stopping when the child gets several wrong – and placing them on the path at the level they should be. Of course, all 3 of my kids decided that no matter where they were officially placed, that they would rather start from the beginning instead.

It starts with the introduction of Sam the Ant and progresses along a path, awarding the student with the hatching of various eggs along the way. Every time they work to hatch an egg they earn golden eggs, which they use as money in the game to buy things for their house and gear for their character. At the end of each map (there are 12 maps), they complete a quiz which tests them on the skills they just finished learning and practicing with. When completed, whether a pass or not, an email is sent to the parent to let them know their child’s progress. If they don’t do so well, they get to try the test again or repeat the games to review the lessons.

We haven’t used them, but you can also print out worksheets that follow each level and lesson. Handy!

I cannot tell you how amazing it has been to see the results of this program with my 6 year old. We have struggled with reading concepts over the last year or so – he just hasnt’ had it “click” or really been interested enough to focus on it for very long. But, even in the short 4 weeks of trials with this program, he’s had a huge breakthrough. He’s now go the basic concepts of phonetic reading and has progressed LEAPS and BOUNDS above where he was when he started. He can recognize sight words like “she” “is” “the” and is able to connect sounds with letters. It’s enabled us to move from doing letter by letter learning to word learning – making it so we can work towards reading early books.

But the best compliment of all that I can give Reading Eggs is that during their allotted 1 hour of computer time each in a day, the kids actually choose to play it instead of their other “fun” games. This must mean the site is fantastic.