Reading.comReviews of reading.com

My son is learning ALOT, He’s only 3.5 years old and he has already started reading a few words and is getting better with sounding out words and we are only 1/3 of the way through. The song is fun and upbeat and so far I love it. What I don’t particularly care for is how long the books are, he did fine with the 4 pages, but by page 5/6 he is done almost everytime is a struggle to finish. I think if the books were shorter he’d be happy to complete it everyday. Also, I think spending more time on sight words, in some way, would be beneficial. But all in all, I love it, my Son is absolutely learning to read before 4 years old and I’m so proud of him and so glad I decided to try reading.com. I would recommend to anyone.

Overall, I’ve been impressed. I am trained in the Orton-Gillingham methodology and have worked as a dyslexia specialist for the past 6 years, so I view reading programs through a different lens than most. Some pros: -includes phonological awareness -includes review of previously taught concepts -phoneme articulation is correct -kids love the lessons Some cons: -initial phoneme isolation should never include a consonant blend as an example of the target phoneme but it does in this. For example, “dragon” for the letter D, “train” for T, etc. I can’t recall the exact examples, but I know that the program gives consonant blend examples instead of consonant-vowel which is the SOTR-aligned method. -the letter “a” before a consonant M or N should be introduced as a nasalized sound. The M distorts the sound of the “a” in most American dialects. Most OG-based reading programs explicitly teach this before students blend am and an. -sight words are memorized. We know from research that orthographic mapping and discussion of etymology is a better Overall, I think it’s a good, basic program that could be improved with a few tweaks. My son IS learning to read. Why am I not teaching him myself? Because the program is much more fun than me!

I love the app and how it teaches but if I had to change one thing, it'd just be adding more printable to go along with each lesson for extra practice. So when each word is taught they can have a tangible sheet to refer to and practice on.

My son (5 years old) has been loving this app and we have too. My only piece of feedback is: it would be great to spend more lessons learning a letter/sound. We are on level 33 right now and he has learned almost 20 letters. He seems to be having trouble recalling the sounds because he has learned so many. We are going slowly through each lesson and have had great patience while helping him through it. Maybe knowing 10 letters by level 33 would be good so that kids can feel more confident as they progress? Thank you!