Reading Eggs

[OneForTheRoadThen]

Has anyone used these? I'd appreciate an honest review before I buy them as they are quite expensive.

My son is 3 and starts school in Sept 2020. He has been diagnosed with a speech disorder and is having therapy - his problem is mainly backing and pronounciation. The SENCO at his nursery suggested he might benefit from phonics so I bought the Jolly Phonics books but he doesn't show any interest and I don't want to put him off learning before he has even started.

We do attend an activity called 'Phonics Stars' which he loves but I'm looking for something we can do at home. I know it's probably silly but I'm worried he won't make friends at school because the other children won't be able to understand him.

Any ideas or experiences would be really useful to hear. Thanks

You can usually get a free 2-week trial. I'd recommend trying it out before you pay for a subscription.

My DD used it a few years ago when she was a preschooler.

It was useful for her as she picked up reading from it very quickly. One thing I didn't like about it was that sometimes there was a big jump in expectations from one activity to the next. An example was early on when DD was still getting used to the early phonics sounds and suddenly there was an activity where she had to memorise the word "dinosaur". It seemed a bit of a pointless exercise.

I don't know if it's still the same now but it came with it's own online library of books to read. They weren't the greatest quality of books but DD seemed to like them.

Overall I'd say it worked well for DD but if you can I would look out for the free trial first.

Thank you very much @ApacheTomcat 😀

I used it because the school dd went to didn’t use phonics. It was ok and my dd enjoyed itbut it was ten years ago, before iPads and apps. There are a lot of resources available now.

The best way to help him if for you to learn the sounds ‘properly’ yourself. Then you can whip through the sounds yourself with flashcards when you are having breakfast or waiting for swimming lessons or whatever.

www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mr+thorne+does+phonics

www.amazon.co.uk/Read-Write-Inc-Speed-PHONICS/dp/019846035X/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Phonics+speed+sounds&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1572200630&sr=8-2

It should be noted that Reading Eggs isn't phonics and wouldn't be recommended by any phonics teacher.

My daughter loved the app, but it doesn't introduce phonics in the way the her nursery /school have, I don't think it's what you are after.
How about the Jolly Phonics songs on YouTube? They are a massive hit in our house and tie in well with what is taught in eyfs.

Thank you all for your help. I will keep looking for something that fits

We used Reading Eggs with our pre-school DD. We did start with Jolly Phonics activity books though and feel these did a much better job of teaching phonics. But Reading Eggs re-inforced it and was good practice. It isn't pure phonics but this didn't seem to be an issue. We had a two-week free trial first, then a further two weeks were offered. Have you looked at Teach Your Monster to Read? Much smaller but free on PC and fun, DD's school recommends it.

My kids found reading eggs really boring, I didn't think much of it either. I wouldn't concentrate on finding apps, I would try to engage him in conversation more; the more time you spend chatting with him, the more exposure to sounds he will have and the better he can become at pronunciation. Im not saying it'll fix everything, but I think it'll help more than apps.

Both my Dds love reading eggs but I found it worked best until they started school. They both are confident readers now and were early readers but not sure if it is down to reading eggs , think it played a part though. Both are fussy with games and apps in terms of what they do like etc so there must be something which keeps them engaged. We tried other ones mentioned e.g. teach your monster to read but both found it a bit dull.

Teach your monster to read is free and phonics based!

Sure that may well be but my kids found it dull.

I’m not sure about the recommendation to start phonics with a young child with a speech sound disorder. I would have thought you would be better off focusing on some of the pre-phonics skills, rhyming, copying rhythms, long and short, loud and quiet sounds etc. What does your SLT recommend?

We quite often get recommendations from SaLT which include Jolly Phonics materials.

For a three year old?

Yes nursery children upwards

I second the recommendation for teach your monster how to read.

Also the NESSY suite of apps are good, and specifically designed for dyslexia and language disorders.

Reading eggs is phonics in context so not what you are looking for.

We've used reading eggs for my two (who are now 7 and 5).

We love it. It's not all phonics based but the kids like the games and they are introduced to new words throughout.

The later lessons start on comprehension, great for when they go into juniors

You get a free trial so look at that first.

Thanks for all your recommendations. It looks like Reading Eggs is not quite the right thing for us. I'm looking at speech blubs now.

@Elisheva our SLT has given us exercises to do around pronounciation but they are very repetitive and my son struggles to concentrate on them. I try to model words correctly and we play Orchard games every day and listening games but he is really quite incomprehensible and I'm at a loss of what to do to help him.

We have looked into private speech therapy and could afford a few sessions but I don't think he could concentrate for the whole hour.

What are the pre phonics things you mentioned? Is there a good place I could find information in this? Thank you

www.readingrockets.org/reading-topics/phonological-and-phonemic-awareness
Could you share his speech targets? Maybe we could suggest some ways to make them more engaging?
Don’t worry too much about his speech at the moment, there is a long time until he starts school So plenty of time for his speech to improve and I’ve found that young children are pretty good at understanding each other, even with speech sound difficulties.