Strengthen Reading Skills with Reading Eggs {Product Review}

If you have a child and have ever mentioned that your child struggles in reading, or that you would love a website to help boost reading skills, I'm sure that someone has mentioned Reading Eggs to you! This online learning resource is ranked high in the list of "must-have" reading programs--I had done the free trial when my youngest son was 6, but was curious to explore it more thoroughly. Over the past few weeks I have been able to review the full Reading Eggs website to see all the things they offer!

About Reading Eggs

Reading Eggs is an online reading resource designed to boost your child's skills in reading and reading comprehension. With the online reading games and activities, reading will be a FUN
activity for your children. Reading Eggs offers different levels based on your child's age--three different categories covering different developmentally appropriate material: Reading Eggs Junior (2-4 yrs), Reading Eggs (4-7 yrs), and Reading Eggspress (7-13 yrs).

You don't have to wonder where your child should start--before they begin any of these levels, they will need to take a placement test, and the test will start them in the area that fits the best. If you don't like where it started, you can reset the test and have them take it again.

The most popular of these three programs is the Reading Eggs reading program for ages 4-7. This program includes self-paced lessons, teaches phonics, sight words and essential reading skills--as they progress through the program they will also gain stronger spelling, vocabulary, and comprehension skills. 

Once Reading Eggs has been completed, your child can move forward into the Reading Eggspress program which focuses on reading real books, improving spelling skills and building reading comprehension--the next step in their reading fluency! Packed with hundreds of interactive reading activities, online children’s books, and literacy games--it really works to strengthen your child's skills!

Additionally, there are FREE printables that coordinate with every lesson in the Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress program. These provide not only common core connections, but also offline supplemental work to what was covered in the online lessons. 

Example of a printable from the Reading Eggs program for Lesson 111--
page one provides the information about what will be covered in the lesson.

Just released by the Reading Eggs program are the BRAND NEW downloadable Homeschool Guides available for FREE from the Parent Dashboard of Reading Eggs. These guides provide a way to use Reading Eggs, Reading Eggspress, and MathSeeds (more on that later) as your homeschool curriculum core for grades K-2, providing you with ideas to fill in the rest of your school day with coordinating material--most of which can be found through the Reading Eggs program. It maps out when you can do each lesson over 36 weeks!

Ideas for using Reading Eggs for Grade 2 (Click for better look)

Reading Eggs is offering a FOUR WEEK FREE TRIAL of their award winning program, so that you can experience it for yourself! This link will expire on NOVEMBER 30, 2017, so go ahead and get signed up now!

You can purchase a subscription to Reading Eggs as Monthly ($9.95/month), 6 Month ($49.95), or Yearly ($59.00). A monthly and yearly subscription will also grant you access to Mathseeds! 

Mathseeds is a comprehensive online math program for ages 3-9. Designed to function similarly to Reading Eggs, it is full of games and interactive lessons which make math fun for them! They can collect golden acorns along the way which can be used to "buy" items for their treehouse or avatar. 

Children receive a certificate after successfully completing the quiz at the end of every map. As with Reading Eggs, a placement test will ensure your child is placed right where they need to be skillwise!

For the last several weeks, we have been using a 6 month subscription to Reading Eggs, Reading Eggspress, and Mathseeds with my youngest son, age 7.

Our Thoughts on the Program

Wow. There is NO WAY I can even REMOTELY cover even half of what is offered by this incredible online resource. We previously signed up for a 4 week free trial of Reading Eggs, and it placed my son (age 6 at the time) in about Lesson 50ish in the Reading Eggs program. Considering he was finishing 1st grade, this was an appropriate placing. He fell in love with it right away! The program is very game oriented and highly interactive. He rejoiced when he earned new eggs, and had fun designing his avatar. Through the course of our 4 week trial, we achieved lesson 80. 

Student Dashboard for Reading Eggs

It was interesting that when we signed up, he was able to take the placement test again. THIS time it placed him at 111--in the last portion of the program--also exactly where I would expect him to be at this point in 2nd grade. He eagerly dove into it, and was tickled to see he still had the same avatar and the eggs he had collected earlier this year when we did the trial. Lesson 111 really his blending letters hard and I was happy to see he quickly knocked it out of the park. He played the reading games, completed tests/quizzes, and gathered eggs right and left--then enjoyed "spending them" in the store buying things for his house. 

There is so much more than "just" lessons that can be done on Reading Eggs. Your child can write their own stories, read stories by other children, work through age/skill appropriate spelling games/quizzes, practice sight words with a race track, read online books, create an online house and purchase things at the mall for it using their reward eggs, spend eggs to play additional fun learning games, complete puzzles, collect pets, and so much more!

Game Page choices

Shopping for house furniture

Here is an example of what your child sees when they click on the "My Lessons" button.

Here my son is on the final map for the Reading Eggs program. As he completes each lesson (which consists of many interactive activities) he will move forward along the path until he finally reaches his "certificate" of completion. 

Because he was so close to finishing Reading Eggs, I also had him work in Reading Eggspress. It definitely takes it up a notch as it focuses on reading skills, and not so much the act of reading itself. They cover analyzing stories, covers, who/what/why/when/where, comprehension questions, and more! There is also a 2000+ book eLibrary that your child can access. The Lexile number is noted for every book, and the program keeps track of what Lexile levels your child completes--there are even quizzes for every book read to test comprehension. These books can easily be read online, or on your handheld device.

Here is a video of one of the activities that is part of Reading Eggspress:

As with Reading Eggs, your child can earn eggs to "spend" on gear for their apartment and are able to collect trading cards of different things--real and fantasy which you can do other things with. There are trophys to be earned for different achievements too. 

Matching Printables to our Current Lessons in Reading Eggs, Reading Eggspress, and Mathseeds

As I mentioned above, both Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress offer supplemental free printables which coordinate to the lessons being covered online. Here are the last lessons my son did--and I've printed off the worksheets to go with them. Great for offline practice to further what they are learning.

You will notice there was also a Mathseeds printable. Mathseeds is an additional resource from Reading Eggs which is geared for ages 3-9. Like Reading Eggs, Mathseeds offers a placement test and then begins your child where their skills put them. My son did fantastic on the placement test and was placed at lesson 111--towards the end of the program. It is so very similar in design to Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress that if your child enjoys using the reading programs, they are sure to love Mathseeds. Like the other two programs, your child can collect acorns (instead of eggs) and use them as "coin" to dress up their treehouse and such. A great way to make math fun!

All of these programs work on our Kindle Fire via the online website, but there are also a few apps that can be added to iPhone, iPad and some android products. My Kindle Fire 8 unfortunately is having issues getting them--but I would love to have some of the apps available for them to use. I like that the online program works on my Kindle though because it is a great resource to take with you--and my son can play it through either the Hotspot internet on my phone or any wi-fi connection. 

Parent Dashboard

The dashboard for my son is very easy to use and can be logged in from the homepage or through my parent dashboard. My parent dashboard gives me all sorts of stats of how he's doing in any of the programs. His latest scores. His current Lexile number. His last lessons. All sorts of great information. 

Finally--before you get started using the program, the #1 best thing to read is the Parent User Guide--a free 30+ page pdf which goes into great detail about everything the website has to offer including step-by-step information regarding logging your student in and getting them set up. 

Cons?

Really the main con is that even if your child is finding a lesson super easy, you cannot "skip" games or slides to move them forward. They unlock as they are completed. The only way to skip ahead really is to retake the placement tests. This means my son gets board on some of the games that he has down pat and thinks are "taking too long!"

I think the best pro is the price--$59 to a whole year access of the entire site--and access to Mathseeds! Really it's the way to go--and you can add on a second or third child at the same time for 50% off their subscription price!

Don't forget that if you want to try before you buy--CLICK THIS LINK FOR READING EGGS--and you will get a FREE FOUR WEEK TRIAL to the resource for you to decide if it's right for your family. This offer ends November 30, 2017, so don't delay!

Want to Know More?

For the last several weeks, we have been enjoying our 6 month subscription to the online reading resource Reading Eggs! I have only scratched the surface of what is available with this site, so please hop over and visit others on my team to learn more!

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We will be continuing to use our subscription to Reading Eggs as just extra supplemental reading exercises, because my son really enjoys the program. We also like having the adding of Mathseeds to play with. If you haven't signed up for their free trial, I highly encourage you to do so!