Best Reading Products?

Early Learning Teaching Your Child to Read
1

Hi, thought I’d start a thread to see what reading products people like and if you could share the reasons why. And maybe even the cons of some products. What made me think of this is that I have bought a few products and have spent a fair bit of money already and some have been great and others not so much.

For me I love LR as it’s quick and only takes less than 5 minutes a day which is great for my 7 mth old who lost interest in YBCR very quickly. Also love how the word fonts change and that you can customerise it which helps when you are in Australia and we don’t use words such as diaper and pacifier.

I also love Monkisee, especially the parents guide to teaching babies to read. If anything I would recommend buying this as there are so many tips on how to teach your baby without spening alot of money.

Look forard to hearing what others like.

Amelia

2

I love Little Reader too. Especially that there are so many downloads and that I customize them to meet our needs. I also love being able to make my own lessons with it too.

I like Starfall.com because there are lots of interactive phonics games and reading exercises.

I like the iPad/iPod app “Teach Me Kindergarten.” It teaches sight words, spelling, addition, and subtraction. Actually so far at level 2, the spelling is just initial and end sounds of words. The great part is that the answers are multiple choice so my daughter can do it despite not being able to write her letter and numbers very well. Worksheets hold her back a bit because her writing skills haven’t caught up with her intellectual skills. She tries to do “Teach Me First Grade” but it is frustrating because it doesn’t recognize her writing even when her answer is correct. The letters and numbers must be very precise.

Finally I like Kumon Workbooks (Mazes and Tracing) for developing fine motor control.

3

Your Baby Can Read was the first product we used and my daughter really enjoyed it when we first used it. We barely made it through DVD 5 because it basically was a review DVD with a few new words thrown in , of course towards the end so i couldn’t keep her attention long enough to learn the new words so I dropped it.

It took me a little while to learn there was more products out there than YBCR.

We’ve used Monkisee and really enjoy that and Little Reader. Righth now my daughter is on a Little Reader kick so I’m going with that. I’m sure it will switch again it always does).

We’ve enjoyed Starfall, and I’ve used Headsprout with my 3rd daughter last year and she really enjoyed that.

As for my favorite homeschooling reading programs:
Christian Light (www.clp.org )

K12 Reading ( www.k12.com)

4

We have used so many products, I found I needed to mix it up to keep it interesting

  • Hooked On Phonics
  • www.iseesam.com 's Little Books
  • Reading Eggs (was good at the beginning, and helped my son learn some basics, but seem to be less effective for us in the later lessons/maps)
  • Headsprout (This is what really give my son his first MAJOR boost in transitioning from flashcards to books)
  • Starfall and Starfall Readers
  • YBCR
  • YCCR (Not as effictive for us as YBCR, but I believe helped a bit with understanding phonics)
  • Bob Books (not the best readers in my option, but once in a while my son will request them)
  • Little Reader of course
  • Tweedlewinks
5

I love LR because it is flexible and easy. Instead of arranging the lesson we just follow the curriculum. If we want more subject or language just do more files or download it from the web. Totally user-friendly for non-IT literate like me. :smiley: I use Baby Einstein too. I think it’s great with my girl and she likes it too.