I have a 5 year old and we are homeschooling. He’s kindergarten age right now and I was really nervous teaching him to read. I tried hooked on phonics, abc mouse, the good and beautiful, but none of these quite worked with us. I tried this program and we just finished lesson 30- he went from hardly knowing letter names and sounds to full blown reading! I am so proud of him! This program definitely is worth it. It’s paced just right, most of the lessons were just right for him. A couple harder ones we broke into a couple different days but he got it. The program only allows you to do one lesson per day (unless you, the parent, want to do more) and I like that. It’s enough so that they are learning, but not too much that they are being overwhelmed. It also doesn’t teach the letters in alphabetical order, rather it teaches them the most common sounds used first so that they are able to start putting words together and reading. The app itself is so easy to navigate and it’s very routine so you know what to do and about how much work/day it is. It is supposed to be parent led but at this age I wouldn’t want it any other way. It very simply helps me to teach my son to read. Us parents are very much capable to teach our kids but I just wanted a guide on how to first teach reading and this is just perfect for it. We keep track of all sight words and new letters that are introduced and him and I reinforce those before beginning our lessons. So yes this app is perfect, and yes it’s designed so that the parent is the one essentially teaching your child and that’s exactly what I was looking for.

My daughter just finished the program and I am so happy that she has a reading foundation and we can start practicing and building off of that. This program exceeded my expectations and helped me a lot as a parent to teach my child to read. Took us about 6 months to complete. We could have done it in 4 months but we took our time going through the lessons. I definitely recommend this program to all my friends. I think it’s a great tool especially right before they start kindergarten. I’ve seen comments about the alphabet song being annoying to everyone which I thought it was too because of the repetitiveness but I still made my daughter sit through it and to trust the process. It actually helped us a lot towards the end of the program especially when she would get overwhelmed by vowels. My daughter memorized the song so all I had to do if she would get stuck on a letter sound is say “O makes the sound like…” or “D makes the sound like…” and she would finish the rest. I would say the only thing that I thought was kind of pointless was the last 4 lessons when it was just review and not actually learning anything. We ended up doing all the 4 lessons in one day because my daughter was so antsy to cross the finish line. I think it would have been cool to have one last book that compiled all the characters and everything that was taught at the end of the program as a “finale book” Another thing I think would help is in the hungry cloud game they should have the new sounds as part of game. Like still have all the letters and sounds but also the new sounds like “ea” “ai” “oo” “oa”.. etc Overall the program was great!

This app has been wonderful for my six-year-old and seven-year-old sons… We began homeschooling last year for their kindergarten and first grade years, where our concentration was mostly on reading. We used the teaching and methods found in the book “Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons”. This app fits perfectly with that methodology, and into our homeschool curriculum! Especially with our 6 year old, now first grader, who is still growing in his phonics recall, sequencing of sound, and fluency… Every time he completes a level he smiles so big!! This app is the perfect balance between curriculum and fun! I do believe that his foundation rooted in the book based curriculum has allowed him to move with a greater pace than the typical beginner schedule, and this app allows an adult to unlock the next lessons as I see fit. In all, this app is great no matter the experience of the learner and the teacher (caregiver)! It’s a gem that is well worth the cost! Finally, the app suggestion and emphasis on parent involvement is so important and necessary. Knowing some families don’t have that type of culture however, this would still be a good gift for a child with a device, and could be completed with the help of an older sibling or relative!

The example sounds are great, but it could be so much better if the example word audio was linked to the slider, so the child can visualize the sound being said as the slider is moving. The reason for this complaint is that the app doesn’t help provide the most important part, which is transitioning from the individual letter sounds to saying the word in one go. Also, the slider highlight the letters itself, not under each individual letter. If the child could move their finger over the slider and see the connection with the sounds, both individually and then together, that would be good. Instead, the parent has to do it for them, and I feel this robs them of the connection the app should be helping them make on their own. The book reading is not well thought out. Level 11, there is a somewhat complex sentence and then the last word is slightly larger and not really a good queue on when the child should read their word, and at what time they should be uncovering/“revealing” the image, as you essentially have three tasks going on at the same time, so it just doesn’t work well. I’d rather go read a “hop on pop” type book with very short sentences, rather than a sentence that the child can’t read 90% of and has to unveil an image, and then gets quizzed on comprehension at the end of it all.