Child aged 2-13 in the UK? Read feedback on the trial of Reading Eggs NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

We have been asked by the team at Reading Eggs to find MNers to try their reading programme and to report back on this thread for MN.

Here’s what, Rebecca, Direct Marketing Manager at Reading Eggs has to say “Reading Eggs makes learning to read interesting and engaging for your DC using online reading games and activities. It works on desktop and tablets. Children love the games, songs, golden eggs and other rewards which, along with feeling proud of their reading, really motivate children to keep exploring and learning. It also keeps them engaged leaving you more time to Mumsnet
My DC have used the programme and love it, so we wanted to know what Mumsnetters thought!"

Testers - please post on the thread below sharing your Reading Eggs review below – please let us know what your DC think of Reading Eggs (3-7), Reading Eggs Junior (2-4), Reading Eggpress (7-13) or Mathseeds (3-9). Do also feel free to share on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with #readingeggs
Feedback now live here

Thanks
MNHQ
Standard Insight T and C apply
Prize draw will be done on 23 October - open to everyone who uses the free MN trial and then shares their feedback on this thread.

I really wanted to like this and my son was excited by something that he could play with in the kindle. However he was put off by the placement test. It seemed to last forever in his opinion. It was hard to navigate in places and it was not as responsive as I would have hoped. I do not think we will be subscribing

Ok, this is shite! DC not interested at all. They do not understand what they need to do, and tbh neither do I! Using IOS but not an intuitive site.

I was surprised to find myself quite impressed with Reading Eggs, I find most stuff like this gimmicky and crap. I haven't used it much with my 5 year old as we have reading and spelling and homework coming home from school as it is but it's something I'd consider getting for the summer holidays

I tried this app on my iPad but there appeared to be technical problems as the sound wouldn't always work. DD aged 3 normally really likes apps but wouldn't play this one. A bit disappointing really

My almost 3-year -old quite enjoyed it. She loved the songs and seems to know them all by heart now. It seemed to jump quite quickly from letter sounds (which she knows) to sounding out words (which is new to her) - I think we might not have navigated it well. Will have another look.

It was great for 5year old but the games aimed at younger children were often unresponsive, not making sounds etc.
Found it quite hard to navigate. I don't feel anything was really gained from it in terms of reading but it was a bit more fun than the usual battle with dire books!

3yo enjoyed playing on the app, couldn’t get it to work on the kindle so used it on my phone. Not sure u would subscribe as we have all of the games that come with kindle kids and there are quite a few maths/reading ones that are all included in the price of the kindle for a year and pretty cheap after that

My 5yo tried Reading Eggs and like me, was not overly impressed. I was hoping that I'd really like it. The placement test went on for a long time and stayed at the same level for quite a while.The cars race was similar. It just seemed too repetitive overall and somewhat clunky.

I thought this would be good to try with my 3 dd's Ages 4,6 and 8.

I liked the idea of how I could create a seprate user account for all three of them and each one's progress would be individually marked. My children only have one tablet to use between them, and this is what they used. We weren't aware of the Reading Eggs app and so accessed it using the website and they were all allocated time slots.

When signing up for the free trial, I thought it a bit of a disappointment that my eldest daughter, whose details I registered first got the full duration of the free trial but my other two dd's only got 12 or 14 days??

My eldest two really enjoyed exploring the different elements of the site, and they liked to be able to see their results - see what their reading age was, reattempt activities to improve their scores etc. I liked the fact that I would immediately get a report emailed to me on how well dd had completed a certain task. As far as I'm aware, they haven't explored Mathseeds fully yet but have spent most of their time on Reading Eggspress and Reading Eggs. My youngest dd, aged 4, seemed a little lost and needed guidance but given time I'm confident she would have picked it up and enjoyed it.

If this was a one time purchase app, then I would seriously consider purchasing it for my children, as I am sure they would benefit and fully enjoy it. However, as my children are not frequent users of the tablet/Pc (yet!), I would be reluctant to pay for a regular subscription which I feel we would not make the most of, for example, the girls played with it for the first time, the second time must have been two weeks later as the younger two dd's free trial had already expired by then. Eldest has probably been on it once again after.

I tried this with my 3.5 year old. My 7 year old seemed pretty keen to take over (possibly becuase she felt it was 'playing' rather than reading). The fact that they want to do it and engage in the reading eggs app makes me feel like I should like it. There is a mass of choice - all in sections - to choose from. However, my 3.5 year old just wanted the same thing over and over again! Not too much of an issue as it's the phone rather than me repeating myself x 20! I think, although she's quite keen, it's not as engaging for her as me reading her a book and we tended to do it when I needed her distracted as I was busy with something or when we were in the car. What ended up happening was that she would start on that... but end up on Toca Boca moving around ponies and dressing up people! Hey ho - she's only 3! I think my 7 year old would have benefitted a lot more bit with hardly any hours spare in the day once school and homework are done, we didn't get around to it much.

The team from Reading Eggs have asked us to post the below:
Hi All,

Thanks very much for agreeing to give Reading Eggs a go and also for providing your thoughts.

It’s great to hear that some of you have had positive experiences, and that your DC have enjoyed the programmes.

We can see that there have been some issues encountered, that have led to an understandably disappointing free trial period.

We’d be really keen to provide some technical advice to improve the experience here – we hope the tips below are helpful, should you be interested in taking another look:

When using a desktop/laptop, we tend to advise Chrome as the best internet browser to use – due to the built in flash player that updates automatically, it makes programmes like ours run a lot more smoothly.
Unfortunately, the Kindle does not currently support our programmes – there is a lot of demand for this, and we’ll make sure to keep passing all feedback and requests on to our developers.
While you may be able to access Reading Eggs on a phone, we wouldn’t recommend this as the optimum device to use, due to the screen size and set-up. Computers, iPads and Android tablets should be fine, as long as they meet these requirements.
Some of you mentioned that having the programme accessible via an app would make things a lot easier – we do have an app available for iPads. This is the Reading Eggs ‘learn to read’ app, and can be downloaded for free from the app store. As long as you have previously set up your account via a browser, you will then be able to log straight into the app without having to navigate on to the website each time.
There has also been some feedback regarding the content and also the beginning placement test – the level can be adjusted at any stage by clicking ‘redo placement test’ on your dashboard screen. The next page will give you the option to either change the lesson number or reset the test.

Please give us a shout if you have any questions or would like any further information and thank you once again for your feedback.

Our customer service team can be reached at [email protected] we look forward to hearing from you.

I'm not impressed. I actively wanted to like it - I wanted something that would capture DS's attention instead of cartoons for the occasions when I need to entertain him with a phone/ipad.

It wasn't user friendly. I wasn't sure what to do myself. I tested it a few times before showing DS and I found it quite repetitive and boring. DS wasn't keen either and we both lost interest quickly. Its a shame, i think there is a market for this type of app, but unfortunately it needs improvement to be user friendly.

I'm really impressed. DD is 6 and completely unable to read prior to trying reading eggs and she's been learning so much! She wants to do it every day (sometimes several times a day) and has gotten pretty good at using the mouse too. She does find some of the songs irritating (as do I...) but enjoys the rest of it.

Have noticed some weird things though, sometimes on the picture match game it says the word and then vocal like "gloves vocal" and some other slightly odd things, small mistakes in the coding I guess.

I tried the reading eggs with my three children who are 2, 5 and 6. Unfortunately my 6 year old would not engage with it at all. She preferred the apps at school! My 2 year old enjoyed playing but I found her section really difficult to navigate which made it a lot less fun to do. My 5 year old did enjoy playing it the first time and went through several sections but then did not want to play it again as he said it was boring! Sorry!
That being said however if it was a one time purchase app I would still buy it as I think it is something they would come back to if it was on the iPad but I would not pay a subscription.

Signed up for Ds2 who is 6. Initial placement test gave a level which was far too easy. He took the interminable test again and was given a far more appropriate level. He enjoyed this and I thought it would be something really helpful and useful. Unfortunately when we logged out it didn't appear to save the level. He took the very long test again and it placed him somewhere in the middle of the previous tests. It definitely works better on pc, the entire screen can't be viewed properly on his tablet and many of the buttons don't work properly on a tablet screen. It had a very limited appeal here and I won't be buying it.

Both DC really up for trying this. Like others we had problems using the website on the iPad as it kept having to reload the page which made it really disjointed. I got it to work much better on our laptop using chrome as our browser. However neither of my children is great using a laptop mouse so they found it a bit frustrating that I had to 'drive' for them rather than being able to use it interactively themselves. I'm going to download the app to see if this is any better.

DD age 9 was not impressed with this on the computer. We had problems with the iPad app but will try it again.

I was really excited to try this out with my two boys. Unfortunately, DS2 age 4 lost patience really quickly and gave up after a few minutes.

I had more hope for DS1 (age 6) as he loves maths and has really enjoyed other maths apps but we found it really clunky to use.

I was also put off by the subscription payment. Would much prefer a one off purchase.

We have loved trialing reading eggs and I don’t know who enjoyed more me or my two daughters.lol.
My eldest daughter (coming up to 5 years old) loved it, we made it part of our nightly routine to sit and do some of the tasks on reading eggs each night before bed. she loved the animal characters and their amusing names, and clicking on the egg at the end of a section to see what would hatch. I found she was very engaged with it and found it easy to use ( I only had to help her navigate the site a few times).
I felt the range of activities was very varied to keep her engaged and she enjoyed being able to go from reading eggs to mathseeds.
She enjoyed following the map and completing the lessons to continue through the map.
My daughter also enjoyed listening to the songs and exploring the critters which she found very funny.
I found the progress reports helpful and to keep track of where we had got up to.
I like the characters and backgrounds on reading eggs,everything is appealing to children,bright colours and eye catching to gage their interest.
Through sitting with my daughter to do this together I was surprised by some of the things she was able to answer correctly and also quickly.
My youngest daughter ( 3 1/2 years old) want3d to join in also so we had a go at the junior reading eggs,she loved the videos of children playing and having fun, the songs and rhymes and joining in with the activities. she was very keen to continue playing on reading eggs after her first turn and concentrated for a long length of time on this.
I would recommend reading eggs to parent’s I think it is brilliant and having just attending a phonics workshop at my daughters school discussing how parent’s can encourage reading and writing skills at home I can see how beneficial reading eggs could be and would love to continue using it with my daughter.

I used this with my DS's, aged 3 and 5. My 5 year old loves it. He has just started school and is very motivated to do anything that involves phonics and reading. The test starts the beginning seemed accurate for him. He was able to grasp the mechanics of the games quickly and it supports what he's been learning at school well.

My 3 year old has been excited to try this, however his test placed him at a similar reading age as his brother, which he absolutely is not. He can only recognise three letters, whereas my 5 year old is blending 4/5 letter words, so I wouldn't say that the test is that accurate.

Overall I am pleased with this product, however I feel that the subscription is far too expensive, so I won't be signing up.

My 4 year old DD has enjoyed the trial. She is getting on much better with mathseeds than with reading eggs, which reflects her higher ability and interest in maths (at the moment).

One concern I have with mathseeds is that you introduce the written forms of the numbers and colours as sight words. As I understand it, children should be learning to read all words through phonics. DD can't read words like 'yellow' yet and, although she was able to complete the exercises simply by matching the shape of the letters, I think that builds bad habits. Why not make the maths parts purely based on digits rather than words so that they are more accessible to children who can't yet read.

On both mathseeds and reading eggs she found the progress a bit slow in terms of introducing letters/numbers but I think she would benefit from more help with segmenting and blending for reading. So less on recognising the letters/sounds and more on what to do with that. Perhaps that comes a bit later on but they seem to be expected to 'read' before there's much explanation of how to do that.

Thank you for the trial, which DD has definitely benefited from.

From first glance this looked fun and bright and engaging but sadly Lucas (age 6) didn’t even see through the test. He only tends to maintain interest for short bursts of time and this was too lengthy for him.
Flicking through the test myself I tried answering to what I felt is his ability but he couldn’t really be coerced back into it.
I don’t think this is necessarily the fault of Reading Eggs but more to do with the fact that he sees the iPad as something to watch YouTube rather than a learning too. When it comes to reading he just prefers a physical book and the ability to go back to the pages he likes over and over again.
As a parent it was great to have the chance to take a look at an alternative way of learning but sadly it ultimately wasn’t our child’s cup of tea.

Thank you for the trial, and for the update from the reading eggs team.

My 3.5 year old loves her reading eggs and keeps asking to go on it, she loves the 'eggles'. We are working with her to try to ensure she knows all her sounds and basic blending for the start of school next September, and this is a really nice way to do it.

I need to get to grips with the navigation, and will use the updates from the team to do this.

We tried it on our PC & couldn't get the website to work on internet explorer, Firefox or chrome. We did manage to get it to work on the laptop but it was a bit confusing & the DC didn't get on with it very well. We HE & I know of others who love Reading Eggs. I was excited to try it out & hoped it would be the sort of thing I could set one child up with while I got on with something else with the other. Sadly, it's not for us it seems!

DS absolutely loved Reading Eggs. He's just turned 7 today and loved the app. He was keen to do both tests and lessons and loved the car racing game as a reward! Considering subscribing for him.