Reading Eggs

I found this site with a free trial called ReadingEggs.com

Baby Girl was pretty enthralled with the cartoon characters right from the start.

There is a placement test, but after asking a few letters it immediately asks you to find the sentence "I am Sam" That is a pretty big jump from recognizing letter sounds.

The game is set up with a series of 12 'maps' that have a curvy road of 10 lessons on them.

Each lesson starts with very basic information showing a letter and telling you the sound then asking you to click on the sound.  (meaning letter but they say 'click the mmmmm')  Some of the lessons have sound blends, like 'am' or 'ee'.

From there you move on to other progressively harder games, such has finding hidden letters, finding words that start with the letter, or even choosing a picture to match a word you have to blend.

I could see why they asked her to read "I am Sam".  ' I' is the first sight word they teach, then 'am'... Several of the games involve make sentences from word lists.  It is very frustrating to try and make a sentence you only heard once (with siblings yakking in the same room) when your choices are all rhyming.  Did the computer want rat, cat, or bat?  There should be an option for 'repeat sentence'.

One 'game' involves clicking numbers in order like a dot to dot drawing to make the letter, each click is accompanied by a really loud annoying high pitched noise.  Fortunately you only have to make a letter twice to progress.

Several lessons seemed to 'get stuck' and wouldn't register that she had done all the steps.  I would reload and replay really quickly for her, but it did get a bit annoying.

About half the lessons require 'dragging' the answer.  A click and drag is very difficult for a kid to do, so I would frequently have to complete the lessons while baby Girl told me which word or letter to drag where.  Another required 'catching' fish and dragging them to a specific boat based on their word.  My hand got tired holding down the mouse button while she read the words.

There are also several reward type sections, like a house and shop, I am not sure how interesting these are, baby Girl hasn't earned much for them, and doesn't seem to care regardless.  I imagine they would be more entertaining to other kids, it looks like something Princess and Little man would enjoy.

The playroom is a section with the typical: kiddie stories, computer drawing and stamping, some alphabet books, music and a puzzle board.  There is also a nice group of simple games to help kids learn to use a mouse.  (like bounce a bear on a trampoline that moves with your mouse)

One major objection I have to the playroom is that the 'books' have no words and are all of the super short sound clip type, meaning only one verse, which is fine for "Itsy Bitsy spider", but for 5 little ducks they stopped after only 4 ducks came back, so where is that missing duck?   There were quite a few books that seemed to stop way to quickly.

Baby Girl still enjoyed playing around with the various games in the playroom each day.  And she looked forward to her time learning the 'lessons'.  So long as there were not too many activities in a row that required my help, she was happy to continue to learn.  And she has improved her speed of reading for the words covered.

Overall the games progress nicely, the emphasis on sight reading can be overlooked since there is a lot of phonetic back up given.  The mouse controls are often simple enough she can do it on her own, and there was enough variety to hold her interest at least for the two week trial.

I actually considered purchasing a subscription, until I saw the price.  $50  per kid for six months.  While that isn't totally unreasonable, the glitches in play and the fact that it is so focused on sight reading, and my constant need to help with mouse work, (oh and the fact that I am still broke)  made me say  no to the purchase.