Review Detail

We tried it, and my older son did benefit from it, and enjoyed the arcade-style games..except where the student is required to place an animal in increasing danger of getting killed, eaten, splatted, or exploded. None of us understood why it was necessary to include that kind of subject matter.

However, we found that that kind of content seemed mainly limited to the earlier lessons which are ostensibly aimed at the younger users, and at the end of the Reading Eggs lesson range, when my older son completed all Reading Eggs had to offer, there didn't seem to be any of that. Unfortunately, there was plenty of it at the earlier end, where my pre-K son was, and it really upset him.

If they removed the content depicting willful harm to living creatures, I would find no fault with Reading Eggs whatsoever.

My older son did, however, find ways to "game the system" and I had to watch him to make sure he wasn't just clicking on wrong answers until by elimination he got the right one, because he wanted to be done and doing something else, and didn't feel the need to actually TRY.

Reading Eggs did supplement my phonics lessons with him, and he did graduate from it, and benefit from it, and move on to reading books of his choice.

My younger son, on the other hand, reached his point of saturation with C-V-C words and was unable to put sentences together. He is just too young, and no amount of teaching is going to make him ready to move into real reading yet, and that is fine. It isn't developmentally appropriate to expect reading that young.

Overall, I would recommend Reading Eggs as a way to help children learn to read, particularly if the parent wants something self-paced and automated rather than teacher-intensive.