Does anyone have personal experience using any online learn to read programs such as Hooked on Phonics, ABC mouse, etc?
Our county is moving forward with 1 week on, 2 weeks virtual for the upcoming school year. I have a rising Kindergartener who can’t yet read at all (other than identify a VERY few sight words). I am thinking I will supplement with some type of online tool since he will be getting limited in school learning.
Post by sillygoosegirl on Jul 5, 2020 15:53:32 GMT -5
We're about 2 weeks into a 30 day free trial of Reading Eggs and really like it so far. DD is a rising kindergartener, although we've been working on kindergarten at home for a year due to her being ready and having just missed the birthday cutoff to start this year. I can see SIGNIFICANT improvement in her confidence and accuracy in both sounding out and remembering sight words when we do our regular reading lessons together. Plus she seems to really enjoy it. The subscription is, I think, $60/year, and also includes a math program (Math Seeds) that is supposed to also be pretty good for K-2nd, although she hasn't tried it yet.
My one complaint about it is that even though we selected "American English", the accents are still strongly... Australian, I think? And some of the terms used are unfamiliar because they aren't in common usage here. For example, yesterday DD was very confused by the word "pram" for a stroller. It's mostly not a problem, but occassionally it's a source of frustration.
Post by iknowthismuchistrue on Jul 5, 2020 18:30:23 GMT -5
I know you asked about online resources but both of my kids started reading with the Bob book series in preschool. They are old and outdated and I have no idea why but they both LOVED them.
We're about 2 weeks into a 30 day free trial of Reading Eggs and really like it so far. DD is a rising kindergartener, although we've been working on kindergarten at home for a year due to her being ready and having just missed the birthday cutoff to start this year. I can see SIGNIFICANT improvement in her confidence and accuracy in both sounding out and remembering sight words when we do our regular reading lessons together. Plus she seems to really enjoy it. The subscription is, I think, $60/year, and also includes a math program (Math Seeds) that is supposed to also be pretty good for K-2nd, although she hasn't tried it yet.
My one complaint about it is that even though we selected "American English", the accents are still strongly... Australian, I think? And some of the terms used are unfamiliar because they aren't in common usage here. For example, yesterday DD was very confused by the word "pram" for a stroller. It's mostly not a problem, but occassionally it's a source of frustration.
Thanks! This is one that came up in my search that I didn’t know about before. Will check it out!
I know you asked about online resources but both of my kids started reading with the Bob book series in preschool. They are old and outdated and I have no idea why but they both LOVED them.
Ha we do have the Bob books and my kid finds them annoying. Well actually he considers most forms of learning annoying... hence my struggle!!!
I was really liking ABCMouse for about the first month that DS1 (5y) was using it when we first went into shelter-in-place. But then he earned a bunch of “tickets” in the game and bought a bunch of animals and crap for his room in the game and all he wants to do now is mess around with that stuff. He doesn’t want to do the learning games to earn more tickets anymore. So, if there’s a way to like lockdown the pet store and toy store in the games or just pretend those things don’t exist, that would be my rec.
I know you asked about online resources but both of my kids started reading with the Bob book series in preschool. They are old and outdated and I have no idea why but they both LOVED them.
Ha we do have the Bob books and my kid finds them annoying. Well actually he considers most forms of learning annoying... hence my struggle!!!
My youngest enjoyed Teach Your Monster to Read. We had Hooked on Phonics that they liked, too. To help with the concept of reading, both kids loved Super Why on PBS.
Post by timorousbeastie on Jul 5, 2020 20:13:45 GMT -5
DD really likes the Teach Your Monster to Read app. Also, she loves Epic - it’s an online library with tons of books; the Read To Me books really seem to have helped her pick up words, as it highlights the words as it reads the book.
Post by arehopsveggies on Jul 5, 2020 20:41:15 GMT -5
My 5 yr old LOVES teach your monster to read and made the most progress with that. He also uses Starfall and epic. We found a set of books that go with Starfall and so that let’s me support what he’s doing online having him read the books to me.
On abc mouse he just played with the pet and never seemed to do any learning?
Not online, but about 6 months ago we ordered the “4 Weeks To Read” program when DS was about 4.5. We worked through it very slowly (not in 4 weeks) and DS really picked it up. He can read most of the Bob books now, and loves trying to sound out words. I liked that it was an easy program to work through.
I used to love the Homer learn to read program, but they changed it in recent years and it has totally lost focus and I no longer use it with my students. ABC Mouse is okay, but it does have a lot of "rewards" that tend to distract. You can turn off the ticket buying feature as a parent. My kids personally use it, but I don't expect them to learn too much (it's nice to use as a reward/screen time for them when I need to get stuff done though). I'm not a big fan of any of the reading apps right now. I do like letter school for writing skills and reinforcing letter sounds. I've heard good things about Reading Eggs as an educator, not I've never used it.
Mostly, I think learning to read is best supported by books. We like the BOB books and there is another series called "I like to read" that's a similar level, but with full color pictures and more engaging stories. If you use Epic, they have some of them there. They also have a series of decodable early readers called "the case if the missing ___" (pup, pig, cat, etc) that are similarly good. Oh and a magna doodle is a really good tool for learning word families (cat becomes hat, sat, bat, etc...).
Not online, but about 6 months ago we ordered the “4 Weeks To Read” program when DS was about 4.5. We worked through it very slowly (not in 4 weeks) and DS really picked it up. He can read most of the Bob books now, and loves trying to sound out words. I liked that it was an easy program to work through.
We used this too, and I like it a lot. It definitely has taken us way longer than 4 weeks to get through though.
Teach Your Monster is a hit here, too. Also, once the year starts, you should get access to various school-paid programs like ABCya, Raz-Kids, and others. I mean I know you don't know what those are, but I'm just saying that school (even in non-covid years) has log ins for some sites for you to use at home.
Finally, we really have liked education.com a lot - there are both worksheets and online games.
Teach Your Monster is a hit here, too. Also, once the year starts, you should get access to various school-paid programs like ABCya, Raz-Kids, and others. I mean I know you don't know what those are, but I'm just saying that school (even in non-covid years) has log ins for some sites for you to use at home.
Finally, we really have liked education.com a lot - there are both worksheets and online games.
Oh yes thank you for the reminder about these! My soon to be 2nd grader uses these sometimes but I was forgetting about them. Will also check out education.com
Does our county school email address/login work during the summer?? My oldest was going on there plenty during school times but we have been slacking lately with anything educational now that it’s summer.
Teach Your Monster is a hit here, too. Also, once the year starts, you should get access to various school-paid programs like ABCya, Raz-Kids, and others. I mean I know you don't know what those are, but I'm just saying that school (even in non-covid years) has log ins for some sites for you to use at home.
Finally, we really have liked education.com a lot - there are both worksheets and online games.
Oh yes thank you for the reminder about these! My soon to be 2nd grader uses these sometimes but I was forgetting about them. Will also check out education.com
Does our county school email address/login work during the summer?? My oldest was going on there plenty during school times but we have been slacking lately with anything educational now that it’s summer.
I missed that you had an older kid. I also have a rising 2nd. Your systemwide ID should still let you log in and there are a bunch of resources there; the username is your [county]ID number. But for the things that you got from individual teachers, I think it depends on whether they have cleared out last year's kids as part of closing down the school year. I hope that makes sense. Like some programs it seems like the teacher sets up a class and has a classroom login, and i don't know if those will still work. Dreambox should still work I think, but I don't know what happens if they've already gotten to the end of the whole first grade material on Dreambox.
We paid $40 for a year's membership to education.com and used it *heavily* this spring for printable worksheets. Like 90% of what the kids did came from there. I also really like the app portion - you can create assignments for your kids by assigning different games, and then on your device you can see how they're doing and which skills it means they are struggling with and then suggests skills to work on. I could go on and on. And the app games were fun for my rising 2nd. She liked it so much. Here's a screenshot of the results of one of her "assignments" I gave her (which was a bunch of ELA games):
ETA: But then here's the overall assessment it has done about her math skills based on all the games she's played, where it shows me that omg we need to work on math. lol. imgur.com/a/HnZy89B