Reading Eggs offers a plethora of ebooks, activities, and resources that unlock the realm of reading for every student.
Are you in search of an interactive method to assist your child in learning to read? It’s highly probable that you’re familiar with Reading Eggs! This blog post will examine its features, drawbacks, and advantages in detail.
What exactly is Reading Eggs?
Reading Eggs is among the numerous literacy apps available that claim to be phonics-based and promise to teach your child how to read. Interestingly, it happens to be the most widely recognized one, even gaining popularity in schools. This means that children often use it during their English lessons, and there’s a possibility of receiving a free subscription for your child directly from the school.
Reading Eggs employs an array of interactive games, songs, and activities, catering to children aged 2 to 13 years old and accommodating various reading abilities.
Does Reading Eggs prove to be a quality app?
While Reading Eggs has its merits, it is important to be mindful of a significant issue that, in my opinion, detracts from its overall value. This particular problem is the reason why the app did not make it into our list of the best literacy apps.
However, before I disclose the nature of this major issue and provide suggestions on how to address it (since it’s possible that your child is using the app at school and you may have a free subscription), I will also highlight the positive aspects of this app.
Benefits of Reading Eggs
1. The app imparts correct letter sounds to learners.
Reading Eggs refrains from including the unnecessary /uh/ sound at the end of consonants, which has been extensively discussed on this website. If you’re unfamiliar with this topic, there are other posts available on this website that delve into the significance of acquiring accurate letter sounds and its direct influence on your child’s blending skills in the future.
2. Children appear to thoroughly enjoy their experience with the app.
In terms of design, it has been exceptionally well-crafted. It encompasses engaging exercises, activities, games, and catchy songs that children thoroughly relish. For instance, my younger child, who currently utilizes the app the most, adores listening to certain songs repeatedly. These songs incorporate rhymes and effectively educate children on letters, sounds, and more. In essence, they serve an educational purpose.
3. The system of rewards is thoughtfully designed.
Based on my observation, some children can become quite fixated on the number of collected eggs and the rewards they can obtain in exchange for them. In fact, children genuinely adore the delightful “din-din-din” sound that accompanies the accumulation of more eggs as a result of their correct actions and task completion.
4. The app incorporates blending activities that effectively teach the proper way to blend sounds.
This aligns with what I previously mentioned: when letter sounds are learned correctly from the start, blending becomes significantly less challenging.
The lessons employ vibrant animations, entertaining characters, songs, and rewards to maintain children’s motivation. The program is entirely interactive, ensuring children remain engaged in their tasks. Upon starting the program, children have the option to take a placement quiz to ensure they begin at the appropriate reading level. Parents can access comprehensive progress reports and a plethora of downloadable activity sheets that align with the program’s lessons. Furthermore, the program offers a vast collection of over 2000 online books for children, each concluding with a comprehension quiz to assess their understanding.
Reading Eggs Conclusion
Reading Eggs has both positive and negative aspects. In my view, it offers a balanced approach to learning how to read. This means incorporating a mixture of phonics and whole word methods. The balanced approach involves encouraging children to guess and read materials they may not be fully prepared for based on their current phonics knowledge. As a result, they rely on clues, guessing, and memorization.
The phonics component of the app is well-designed and commendable. However, if you choose to use it, it’s essential to be aware of the guessing element as well. If you prefer to teach your child with a synthetic phonics approach rather than a balanced approach, you may need to monitor and guide the exercises accordingly, as I do.
In addition to the lessons, the app offers games, songs, and other enjoyable features. It also includes a separate math curriculum known as Mathseeds, although we won’t focus on that in this article.
Furthermore, this article primarily concentrates on utilizing the app for young children in the early stages of learning to read.
