Reading Eggs
Reading Eggs is aimed at ages 4 to 7. There is a separate program called Reading Eggs Express for ages 7 to 13 and a Maths program called Mathseeds for ages 3 to 9. This review is just of the Reading Eggs program. Level one is for ages 4 to 5 and level 2 is for ages 5 to 7 years old.
I subscribed for a discounted year of Reading Eggs and Mathseeds back when my youngest was still napping once a day and I wanted something to keep my 5 year old occupied while I was either taking a quick nap myself, or busy catching up on housework. He did the placement test and was assessed to start at level two (map 5). He progressed along with the online lessons – very sporadically when we were outdoors a lot for summer and then when his younger brother stopped taking naps and I didn’t want a 2 year old having the same amount of screen time (and tantrum following the removal of the device).
About 9 months later we went back to Reading Eggs more regularly, but I felt that my son had been able to get lazy and/or cheat along the way with the online lessons. He’s the kind of kid that doesn’t have any interest in repeating lessons – he just wants to keep going on to the next one. For some lessons he could just keep guessing answers until he found the right one. If he couldn’t do that then he was getting frustrated and mad with the whole thing. Because he wasn’t forced to learn all the words as he went along he was approaching the end of Map 8 and it was just too difficult.
So, we went back to the start. Literally. I ordered the Reading Eggs Multi-pack which gives you physical copies of the books in the lessons and activity worksheets for each lesson. It also comes with maps of each level and motivational stickers for finished each lesson, book and activity worksheet. I reset my son to Lesson one and told him it would be super easy for him to go through the lessons but that he would be focusing on his writing skills initially.
This time he has flown through all the maps at a rate of almost one a week. Generally I would break out the books for each map first and get him to read them to me before starting the lessons. This gave me a good idea of how comfortable he was with the words and forced him to read each word. He’s an early riser and does the online lessons when he wakes up in the morning and everyone else is still in bed. He got a critter sticker for the online lesson and a book sticker for each book. Then the last sticker was given as he completed each activity worksheet. For some additional practice he would write out the new words he’d learnt at the end of each activity book.
He became obsessed with completing each of the maps from 1 to 8. There are still an additional four maps that are only online, and we are printing off worksheets for those. I’ve found that doing the physical worksheets along with the online lessons works far more effectively for us along with general reading practice. His confidence and abilities have grown greatly within only a couple of months. Once he has finished the remaining maps we will hold off on moving on to Reading Eggs Express and I will switch him to the many tests and games that are also part of the Reading Eggs program now that he has the basics covered.
Overall I would recommend the Reading Eggs program to others so long as you don’t just subscribe to the online lessons. There are worksheets you can print out for free at all levels if you don’t want to pay for the convenience of having the workbooks. We didn’t get a lot of use out of the books that came with the multipack but there’s a second child still to do the program when he’s older that will get use out of them too.