Reading Eggs is not new to us; We’ve subscribed on and off for the past 5 years for Angelina and Hugo and just recently Max too.
Hugo, my 8 year old, has struggled to gain confidence in reading. We’ve had a lot of changes recently- moving to Sweden a year ago, him starting to learn Swedish in August, me travelling more for my work with Inspireroo. Yet, now he is in a position where he needs a step change in reading otherwise he will fall behind at school.
Racking our brains how to help Hugo, we were reminded by a friend and then the kids themselves about our lapsed Reading Eggs subscription. We restarted the subscription and let Hugo loose on it. (As a lapsed subscribers the kids don’t lose their progress, so it was easy to start where they left off.)
In the past month, with Christmas interrupting some of the progress, he’s spent 30-40 minutes “playing” on Reading Eggs every day after school. First he used my laptop, but then we realised Reading Eggs works perfectly on the iPad. Now he grabs my iPad mini.
Playing is not actually playing at the moment. Whereas previously Hugo just wanted to go to the Playroom in Reading Eggs (he had to complete 3 lessons before being allowed to go to the Playroom), nowadays he sees progressing on the map as the challenge and he is aiming to ace tests. He rarely goes to the Playroom section.
He’s doing well on the map; currently at c.70 out of the 190 lessons.
I personally have tried to zone out of listening to Reading Eggs as the Catchy tunes are real earwigs that stay with you the whole day.
Now if I see an ant I automatically think of Sam the Ant and when we eat marshmallows we joke about Marshmallow Mouse… an insider joke that gets blank looks from others who’ve not experienced Reading Eggs. It is through this playful, repetitive, slightly annoying (for adults) tone that Reading Eggs captures the kids attention and imagination and they learn to read.
Back to the Map and the lessons: At each station there is a focus of the lesson, first it’s letters with some sight words mixed in, then it moves to more sight words and sentence formation. Each lesson has a couple of different sections, each tackling letter and word recognition in a different way, addressing the different learning styles of kids. There are games of birds flying from branch to branch or frogs jumping from leaf to leaf. When the kids do something right there is a big cheer, wrong and they are buzzed or told “No”.
At the end of each lesson there is a special egg that hatches and out comes a quirky animal like Pram Lamb, Sunny Snail, etc, Overall it’s fun and engaging!
However, I wouldn’t want Hugo to do more than 4 lessons in one go, because Reading Eggs is quite stimulating and high energy.
The way Reading Eggs motivates the students is through lots of cheering and praise, and by rewarding them with golden eggs, which is currency to buy avatar enhancement, and spend in the Playroom. Hugo currently has a mummified hawk as his avatar.
To my delight Hugo has discovered a new section: the Driving Test
Here he practices in getting sight words right and he gets to race a beatle on a track collecting more golden eggs. I love that he is interested in this for I’ve been trying for the last 3 years to play with sight word cards with him, get him reading and writing these words correctly. It’s been a big uphill battle with a lot of pushback from him.
Even on Reading eggs he didn’t want to do the sight word tests after an initial try. Then I tried and realised you get to go racing for 60 seconds if you get all 20 words right and showed him. Now he’s enthusiastically practicing on the digital flashcards. HURRAY!
and the racing his beatle. 🙂
The Playhouse is full of simple games. They are great games for the littlest ones for learn mouse coordination or working with a touchscreen. Hugo still wonders there, but less so now at 8.
The other sections, which we will use more are Storylands and Spelling at the Skills Bank. Hugo has started on Storylands, but is reluctant to try spelling …yet. I’m not pushing! It will come as his confidence grows and I can steer him in that direction.
Over the last month that Hugo has put in some concerted effort with Reading eggs and reads to us as well, he has definitely improved. (I’ve shared about the background and our efforts on improving Hugo’s reading HERE) I hope we can keep the routine going even as I or Dadonthebrink travels with work and the other solo parents.
For any fellow parent with a struggling, reluctant reader I would definitely recommend trying the Reading Eggs program: it’s fun, varied and caters for various different learning styles.
As a parent I get emails of progress and through the parent dashboard I can see where the kids are, what they’ve learnt and how well they’ve done. This enables us to take the learning offline and support by weaving it into our day-to-day activities.
New subscribers often have a couple of weeks’ free trial to test if it is for their little one. Currently they are running a 4 week free trial offer to all new subscribers. You have nothing to loose, but lots to gain, try it!
What have you found helpful to assist your struggling little reader?
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