Learning With Reading Eggs & Mathseeds

            Hey folks! I don't know if you know or not, but I am an affiliate with Educents. You may have seen some of my gift guide posts around Christmas, most recently. They are always offering sweet deals on stuff, holding giveaways, giving away free trials through their affiliates, etc. I was recently able to take advantage of a 28 day free trial to Reading Eggs through Educents. Myka and I have only been trying it out for a few days, but we both love it so much that I felt the need to share about it with you all!

             Reading Eggs is an online program geared towards 3-7 year olds. (It also includes Reading Eggspress for advanced readers 7-13 years old.) As you can imagine, the end goal of it is to help your youngsters learn to read and, perhaps more importantly, develop a love of reading. However, this program is a bit different from such programs as Hooked on Phonics (at least the little bit of it that I have explored) in that it first teaches letter recognition, which is something Myka, my 4 year old, REALLY needs to work on! For this reason, I knew we had to give this a try and was excited to!

             When you first start the program, you are given two options. You can choose to start at the very beginning, like we did, or have your child complete an assessment test to see where they should start, if they have some previous knowledge of letters and such. From what I can tell so far from the option we chose, the letter recognition portion starts out with “common letters”. For example, Myka just started lesson 3 this evening, which focuses on letter “I” and her first two lessons were on “M” and “S”. 

 

            Now that you know a little about Reading Eggs, here are some other aspects I/we like about it:

*It's engaging for young kids. Myka feels like she is playing games, which she is, but I think she realizes she's learning too, so it's a win/win!

*You can have progress reports on your child's progress sent to your email.

*For kids who can't read at all yet there is an audio option on some of the games that require it. For example, there is a game where you must choose which picture starts with the letter you are currently working on. So, even if you're not sure what the picture is supposed to be or you are unable to sit with your child and help them when needed, they are able to complete it on their own.

*I like that most of the games say the sound the letter makes instead of the letter name itself. I feel like this will really help with phonemic awareness.

*You can stop in the middle of a lesson and pick back up where you left off. You can also repeat lessons if they need to work on that particular area more.

*I kind of like that Reading Eggs is an online program so your child isn't just able to play it on your home computer. However, with our crummy internet situation, I kind of wish it was a download.

*Depending on what subscription you choose, you can also have access to their math program, MathSeeds...

             To be totally honest here, Myka has been much more interested in the MathSeeds portion. Don't get me wrong: I'm happy that she takes after her dad and naturally gravitates towards math and science, but the main reason I wanted to try this program out was so she could work on letter recognition! I'm not sure I would venture as far as saying she's behind in this area, but I'm afraid she will be before long if we don't really buckle down. I know she'll learn letters and how to read eventually, but like any parent, I just don't want to see her fall behind. Not to mention I'll feel like I'm failing her since I'M the teacher!

Shapes and patterns are included in the math portion too!

             Whether you let your children “play” on the computer much or not, I highly recommend checking out Reading Eggs and MathSeeds. My 4 year old definitely still needs some help with the reading/letter recognition portion, but I can see the gears turning in her head. :) Plus, it's only been a few days! I don't expect miracles overnight. (Though wouldn't that be nice!) She is doing excellent on the math portion. It has really helped solidify the numbers she already knows.

             You can check out both programs for yourself on their website (don't forget to sign up for your own free trial!) and stay up-to-date with them on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube.

Mixed Bag Mama was not compensated for this review. All opinions are my own and may differ from your own.