I come from a family of readers. I found a love for reading at a very young age. I am proud to say my girls have also found a love for reading at a very young age. Even though I didn't use one to teach the girls how to read. I am a sucker for a good reading program and I wish I would have had Reading Kingdom when they first got started. When Reading Kingdom Online came up for review on the Crew I knew I had to try and get it. Reading Kingdom site can be found here at http://www.ReadingKingdom.com. Reading Kingdom is easy to use online reading program that teaches kids ages 4-10 to read and write up to a 3rd grade level. A yearly subscription for one child is $19.99 a month, and each additional child you add to the account is $9.99 a month. There is also a Free 30 Trial so you can try it out before hand.
Reading Kingdom uses Dr. Marion Blank's approach to reading. It teaches children 6 skills that help them to become good readers and writers. The six skills are: Sequencing, Motor Skills, Sounds, Meaning, Grammar, and Comprehension. These main skills along with elements of phonics and whole language skills are designed to help your child become a successful reader and writer.
Reading Kingdom is a self adjusting program. This means that the program automatically adjust its self for how well your child is doing. To ensure your child has all of the skills necessary to be successful at reading and writing. You will start out having your child take a placement test. This gives them a starting point for the program. You are not allowed to help your child while they are taking the placement test. You are only allowed to encourage them. The girls do well working on there own. My only issue with the placement test was that its timed and the girls do not type well yet. So they would run out of time before they could type the answer. This small issue made it so that they were placed in a much lower level than what they read at. We tried the levels that the program placed them at but they quickly became frustrated that the reading and assignments were too easy. They were asking me to make it harder! Every homeschooling moms dream right. To solve the problem I simply accessed my dash board and turned on the move student feature. This allowed me to bump them up to harder levels. They are now happy with the program. You can also adjust how long they get to answer questions. I bumped this up to allow them a little more time to find the keys. As their typing improves I will lower the amount of time they get back down. At the end of each level your child is given a progress check to see if they have mastered that level of the program. If they are on track then they move to the next level. But if they are not it gives them a set of review lessons to help get them back on track.
Reading Kingdom also offers reporting so if your child is like mine and likes to go solo on the program you can still keep track of what they are doing and if they need any help. You can also get reports emailed to you on a regular basis. I love reports they make tracking work and grades so much easier. The reports also leave me with more one on one time for the things they really need help with.
Reading came easily for the girls they were both reading simple books by the time they were 4. They were in first grade before I ever tried an actual phonics program. Because I though they have to learn the phonics rules or they will never be able to spell or write. The girls quickly became frustrated with the rules that the programs wanted them to memorize. I remember being frustrated with this when I was a child. Reading Kingdom does not ask them to memorize the phonics RULES. They are so happy about not having to memorize The RULES any more. Instead they learn sequencing, sounds, meaning, grammar and comprehension. Every lesson builds on its self and before you know it there reading and writing is getting better and better. They learn to read real stories that flow and make since. By the way the girls actually enjoy the story's. I love that it doesn't use books where all the words rhyme. In real life not everything you read is going to have the same ending sound. Reading Kingdom's books are based on sentence structure instead of word sounds.Each lesson is around 15 minutes or so. You can pause the lesson but the amount of time is limited. I believe it can only be paused for 12 minutes. You can also stop the lesson if you need to and go back to it later. We usually complete the lesson in one sitting and they are usually asking if its OK to do another lesson. Yup, its that fun for the girls! They actually ask to do more than the required one lesson a day.
Both of the girls read well above there grade levels. So I am having trouble judging if there has been an improvement in there reading or not. They just love the program. We were around week 5 of the program using it 4 days a week. When I realized Hotrod Girl's spelling is improving. Praise the Lord her spelling is getting better, I so did not expect that to happen. I was in complete shock today when she passed a spelling test. Out of 16 words she only missed one, One that's it one word. Something in this program is working where all the phonics rules didn't. She is also starting to enjoy writing. This week she ask to write a letter to an old friend of her great grandma's. I read the letter before she sent it so we could make corrections if needed. I was so excited to see that her sentence structure is getting better. Her sentences flow like they should. Her spelling was so much better she only needed to correct a few words. This program ask them to write a lot. I think that all the writing is really helping to improve her spelling.
Snoopy girl's ability to figure out words and there meaning has improved. Since she reads at a higher level than most 6 year old's she some times comes accost a word that she just has no idea what it means. With Reading Kingdom she is learning skills to figure out the meaning of those words. She is my graphics kid. She absorbs the information so much quicker if she has that visual. Reading Kingdom gives her lots of visuals and it also offers auditory learning. If she cant figure out a word she can click it and it tells her the word. It talks to her. She says she feels like "My Owl is teaching me and helping me when I get stuck."
She has recently moved to the next level in the program.
Hooray for fun reading programs that actually work!
I want to encourage everyone to get Social and check out Reading Kingdoms social media Pages
https://www.facebook.com/readingkingdom
https://twitter.com/readingkingdom
https://www.pinterest.com/readingkingdom/
I also want everyone to click the banner below and read all the other great Crew Reviews. If you have a child with Autism be sure to check out the Reading Kingdom for ASD reviews.
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