Helping your child learn to read with Reading Eggs

Learning to read is one of the most important skills your child will learn. Naturally as a parent you want to know how you can help them learn to read at home. The first thing I always recommend is reading aloud to your children every night, but as they begin to show an interest in letters, words, and 'having a go' at reading themselves - I'd suggest you grab your device and give Reading Eggs a try (Right now, they are offering a limited time 4 week free trial when you sign up at www.readingeggs.com.au/teachertypes before 20 Feb!) 

This is a sponsored post. All opinions are my own :)

Miss M and I have discovered Reading Eggs these holidays and we love it! Well, she loves it and I am super impressed. I'm so glad that she is using her screen time for something educational - and that she's asking for it instead of those ridiculous YouTube unboxing toy videos that drive me mad.

First and foremost, Reading Eggs is AUSTRALIAN, developed by experienced Australian educators with over 30 years of experience, so it already gets a big tick. Some of the other educational apps and programmes out there are not which means they do not always align with our curriculum. It has so much wonderful content, books, games, videos and activities that all tie in so well together to help develop those early reading skills.

Miss M is currently on Level 8 along her Reading Eggs journey!

The main Reading Eggs program (aimed at children from 3-7) is structured like an interactive board game, where children follow the path on a map as they move up the levels. This is really motivating for them and encourages them to keep going and make it to the next level. Each step along the path is one lesson, where there are several activities focusing on the following skills:

• learning letters
• letter/sound recognition, 
• vocabulary
• an ebook
• and finally their reward!

An example of one of the activities in Lesson 15 - children have to find the particular letter within this grid. First lower case and then upper case. The stars at the bottom indicate how many they have found. 

Speaking of the reward, this is another really cool little addition that I love (and so does Miss M). At the completion of each level, the child is rewarded with an egg which they need to tap on to open and reveal their little critter to add to their collection (sounds like a virtual kinder surprise or a hatchimal doesn't it?). This is another way that the children are drawn in to the program and continually motivated.

Here is where they keep track of all of the critters they've earnt

Another thing I love is how her progress is tracked and I'm kept informed. Every so often I get an email telling me where she's at, what skills she demonstrated and some things to work on. It also has a direct link to some of the printable worksheets which are a great way to consolidate what she's been learning in the program. I can also pull up progress reports in my parent dashboard.

We've also been playing around inside Reading Eggs Junior, which is aimed at children from ages 2-4. In this section the children have more choice over the activities they want to do and can easily navigate across the scene. Here's just a few examples of what they can do;

• Practise sounds and alphabet letters and begin word building in "The Eggles" section (which follows a map of levels similar to the main Reading Eggs)
• Hang out with "Reggie" where they'll learn colours, complete puzzles, practise handwriting, counting, matching
• Listen to stories, read books and interact by turning the pages
• Play with stickers and make pictures
• Animal alphabet
• Watch educational videos - there are so many in this collection, and they are organised by category such as "Let's Make Something", "Zoo babies", "Animal Alphabet" and "Number Rhymes" which children can easily navigate along the top slider and then choose their video below. 

An example of the ebooks organised by category along the top slider

Animal Alphabet - wherever you see one of these 'eggs' that means there's an activity to do!

I asked Miss M what she likes about Reading Eggs, and she said “because it has videos on it and because we can read books and the words tell us what it says. I like it because we can learn lots.”.

Reading Eggs can be used on desktop and tablet devices – all you need is an internet connection. It's also great to use in schools to support your reading program as well as for individual children at home. Sign up for your limited time 4 week free trial at www.readingeggs.com.au/teachertypes before 20 February to see if it's right for you and your child.

I'm so excited to watch Miss M progress through the levels and see her confidence in reading increase!