Reading Eggs

I'd been dragging my feet on the online educational games because of $$. And it's a game, will it keep them from wanting to do our face to face lessons? I knew I needed something exciting to get us all back in the groove after being incredibly unorganized for a couple of weeks. I pulled up Explode the Code Online, but was disappointed to find it didn't have a free trial. Hmmm.... I'd already told the girls I had something new for them to try so I wandered over to Reading Eggs. Ah ha! Two week free trial.

I started Lemur at the beginning. There is an optional test. Tamarin tested out of quite a few levels. I think she could have made it further, but her experience with the touch mouse is lacking.... I watched her take the test. After getting two wrong on accident I started moving the mouse for her.

One complaint I have is you can't retake the placement test. I tried to add another profile for Tamarin, but it would have had to be a different name and she wasn't happy about that. Ergh. Oh well.

The other complaint is one of the recurring games is hard for Lemur to do with a touch mouse. The word fish they have to catch move too fast for her to hit the button in time. Each time she reaches that game, after trying a few times, I have to do it for her so she can move on.

Six days and the girls are still enthralled with it. The best thing is I can plug in the earphones. One of them is working on the computer in one room while I work through the paperwork with the other. I let Tamarin listen to music on the kindle while doing her paperwork.

 

This is wonderful because Tamarin is bad about wanting to know what everyone else is doing. She cannot leave anyone alone. Even if the two of them are doing the same sheet she has to see how her sister is doing it and absolutely will not focus. I think the music might just solve this problem.

There are math games on Reading Eggs as well, but we've not dug far into it. Tamarin tested right out of the math section. Lemur started in the middle and she's done a level of it. It appears to be more videos than games. Howler tried the math games, but didn't get very far. *shrug* She'll get there eventually.

If their enthusiasm remains at the end of this week I might just break down and buy a year of it. Lemur wrote cat today without help. That is definitely a sign of progress.