If you’ve done any research on affordable reading programs for younger students, you’ve probably come across the website Reading Eggs from Blake eLearning Inc. It’s been nearly 6 years, when I first started homeschooling Garrett, that I came across their website and it caught my interest. At that time, it was only one program, the original Reading Eggs program. I remember signing up for a free trial at that time, Unfortunately, Garrett had issues with sensory sensitivities and couldn’t work with the program. However, some years later, we tried again and Reading Eggs quickly became a website that we came to enjoy in our household.
6 years after that first attempt, the Reading Eggs website has grown considerably and now consists of Five separate portions that target students at different levels of their reading journey.
Reading Eggs Junior is designed for those students just beginning. Using funny animation, this portion focuses on toddler games and preschool activities for children 2-4 years of age using alphabet games and songs to develop phonemic awareness.
Reading Eggs is the original Reading Eggs program designed for students aged 3-7. This program uses many activities such as games, songs, animations and quizzes to help students learn phonics, spelling, and develop strong reading skills.
Fast Phonics is designed for children ages 5-10 who are either beginning to learn to read or might be struggling with their reading skills and need some extra instruction.
Reading Eggspress is for children ages 7-13. This portion of the program helps to improve reading comprehension as well as to help students improve their Lexile reading level.
Mathseeds is designed for ages 3-9 and focuses on math skills.
For each program, students follow a designated learning map. Each map follows a fun theme to keep learning interesting. As they progress down the map, they build upon what they learned on previous maps. Each lesson is numbered and picks up where the student left off on the previous session. For each activity they complete, the student earns golden eggs, a digital currency that can be spent on digital rewards on the website.
The child friendly dashboard makes it easy for students to either continue with lessons (the center button), visit the library where they can read leveled books, visit the arcade to play games, go to the mall to spend their golden eggs on clothing for their avatar to wear or for furniture and pets for their digital apartment. In the stadium, students can compete with other students on the website in games involving grammar, spelling, and reading. (Students are not able to chat or communicate, so no worries of inappropriate contact with your student).
Fast Phonics is a new feature that teaches and reviews foundational phonics for kids ages 5-10 as well as older students who are struggling with reading. Using a yeti theme, each of the levels, or Mountain Peaks as the program calls them, covers one set of letters in great depth, and includes a series of interactive activities, animated videos, and decodable books. These activities help to book letter sound recognition and to build key phonics skills quickly using a systematic, synthetic phonics approach. The program has 12 “peaks” or levels for the student to work through, and levels can be adjusted by the parent if needed.
Another recently added feature to reading eggs is the Mental Minute drills. If you are unaware, Reading Eggs also has a math portion of the program called MathSeeds which helps teach students aged 3-9 the core math and problem solving. It’s also a great option for those who have older students who struggle with math facts and need extra help. As a new addition to the Mathseeds portion of the website, REading Eggs recently added Mental Minute Drills. These are 1 minute drills for students to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Students have 1 minute to answer as many problems as possible. Each drill is over a particular math fact family, such as multiplying by 5, subtracting from 6, ect.
Parents can easily keep an eye on their student’s progress with the Progress report found for each student. These reports show the progress made for each program (Reading Eggs Junior, Reading Eggs, Reading Eggspress and Math Seeds). With this report, parents can see how many Lessons have been completed, how the student did on the quizzes they have taken, How many books they read through the program. Parents can also track their child’s Lexile level and see how it has improved over the course of the lessons.
In addition to the various Reading Egg programs, the website also offers a nice selection of leveled reading books that students are able to access and read on the webpage. Books can be searched by reading level or subject of interest such as fairytales, Cats, nonfiction and more. Students read these books on their own and are awarded golden eggs for reading a book and then taking a comprehension quiz over it.
How We Used It
Garrett and Ashleigh have both used Reading Eggs in the past. Ashleigh had used it about two years ago but we continued our subscription for Garrett for another year afterwards. His membership lapsed a few months ago, so he was very happy when he was able to log back into the program. He noticed that there had been some changes since he last used the program – most notable the addition of the Fast Phonics option.
Ashleigh decided to work using the Reading Eggspress portion of the program, while Garrett used both the Fast Phonics as well as the Reading Eggspress portion. Typically the kids worked with the website 15 minutes three times a day. This allowed for me to complete our daily spelling test with one kid while the other stayed productive while working on Reading Eggs. This allowed for the kids to complete 2-3 sections of the portion they were working on for that day. With roughly 9 sections for each Lesson on the map, this had the kids completing a lesson every week.
For those who have used the original Reading Eggs that is for ages 5-7, Reading Eggpress is completely different. Where Reading Eggs focused on letters and phonics and learning to read, Reading Eggpress is designed to help students who are reading to improve their Lexile reading level and develop comprehension skills. Both of my kids are reading well enough to use the Reading Eggpress program rather than the early learning programs.
Some lessons would take a bit longer, with the only completing one section per day. This was on days when they were required to read a section of a chapter book and then answer questions about what they read. Garrett especially would take longer on these sections as he tried to pass the quiz without actually reading and learned that he could not do that. Once he slowed down and actually read the passage, he could answer the questions, but reading the passage often took him the entire time and he would return the following session to complete the questions.
| Garrett works on reading one of the books. |
| Comprehension Quiz following reading |
From the parent’s dashboard, I was able to easily adjust the reading level for each of the kids so that the material being presented to them either wasn’t too easy or too hard. That way both kids could work at their own level since Ashleigh is at a much higher reading level than Garrett is currently at. There is an assessment test available on the Reading Eggs website that can be used to place students in their proper level before starting with the program.
As mentioned, Garrett also used the Fast Phonics portion of the website. The aim of it is for younger students than himself, but I think him reviewing phonics is a good thing as there are many letter blends that he still has issues with.
We were a bit late finding the Mental Minute drills, but once we found them (They are found on the Math Seeds Dashboard), Ashleigh quickly took a linking to them. We already do daily math drills with our current curriculum, but I’m not going to complain if Ashleigh decides to use a few minutes practicing her math skills. These drills are exactly that – one minute is placed on the timer and students answer as many questions as they can. They must get at least 10 questions correct to complete the level.
I think Reading Eggs has been a great addition for a supplement for our homeschool. However, it would be very easy to use it as a dedicated reading program for younger learners. For students who are more sensitive to sounds and busy animations, it might not be a good fit as the programs feature lots of flashy animation and songs, but outside of this, I would recommend it for those looking for a proven program to improve elementary reading and math skills. The website still offers a 30 day free trial, so it's easy to try it out to find out if Reading Eggs will work for you.
For more information about Blake eLearning Inc and Reading Eggs, be sure to visit their website. You can also find them on the following social media platforms:
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/readingeggsUSCA/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/readingeggs
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/readingeggs/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com.au/readingeggs/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ABCReadingEggs
Members of the Crew were given a one year subscription to the Reading Eggs website to use with their families. Be sure to click the banner below and read their reviews as how they used the program with various ages and grade levels.
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