Reading Eggs & Mathseeds

Through a Facebook group I learned about a free trial on Reading Eggs this past January.  It is an online program for kids to learn to read.  It has different levels for different ages.  While I was having my son try out the free month, I had the opportunity to buy access to Reading Eggs (and a free included Mathseeds) subscription at a discount for the year.  I love math and love encouraging both reading and math, so I could not pass it up.

My son immediately enjoyed the Reading Eggs program which is why I was happy to go ahead and purchase the subscription.  He started out on the Reading Eggs Junior (ages 2-4) program and after a couple months or so I switched him to the 3-7 year old program.  Both that one and the Mathseeds program remind me of a Mario game map.  Check out the picture map below to see what Reading Eggs looks like.  So each level in Reading Eggs goes over a different letter and as you add letters each new level has you blend the letters learned into words.  It's such a fun tool.  And that's just one basic part of the program.

Mathseeds includes not only learning numbers, what they look like and what they mean (1 = an item), but also teaches spelling the words (1=one), shapes and more.  The games to help reinforce concepts and basic math are generally fun.  There are a few that my son dislikes, but overall if I ask him if he wants to do Mathseeds for the day he happily says yes and the same goes for Reading Eggs.

One aspect that is both helpful and not are the quizzes at the end of each map.  They are basic multiple choice questions covering the material within the map and my son already claims, "I don't like quizzes."  I understand why the quizzes are part of the program, but for his age, mostly I think they deter him from learning.  So for the quizzes and the games within lessons that he does not like, I assist and sometimes cajole so he can make it through and move on to the parts he does like and he is definitely learning.

Today we spent time on Reading Eggs and during one of the games which he helped a frog cross a pond, he had to click on the word BEE from three choices to move the frog from lily pad to lily pad.  I pointed to one of the other word choices and asked him to read it (without prompting or hints) and he read "cat" and then "dog".  I am so excited to see him learning and growing in this area!

Singing off...ABCDEFG
Gina

Have you ever had your child use Reading Eggs or Mathseeds?  What did your child think?