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Reading Eggs is a multi-award winning reading programme for 2-13 year-olds which has been developed by experts to make learning to read easy and fun for young kids.  The programme uses the five pillars reading which all children need to become confident readers, phonics and phonemic awareness, sight words, vocabulary, comprehension, and reading for meaning.

*Some of these terms are actually a little lost on me (Mum) but Lily seems to know what it all means!

When I mentioned to friends that we were trying out Reading Eggs, they all said – “Oh we’ve heard good things about that”.  It has a really good reputation and statistics reported to Reading Eggs record 91% of kids improving their reading as a result of using it.

Over the Summer I have been trying out Reading Eggs with my eldest who is moving from Year 1 into Year 2.  We’ve taken to using it as a treat, a chance to use my laptop and some time for me and her to have one on one time.  I hoped that by encouraging her to see the programme as a treat rather than as just something to do, she would find the scheme exciting and relish the challenge – I was right!  More on the challenges to follow.

Now I know we are lucky that Lily loves to read.  She reads every night before bed, so I’ve never been worried about her reading ability or whether she reads enough., However with SATS tests this year (love them or hate them) which will test her knowledge to read and write certain words, I thought it would be interesting to find out what her ‘reading age’ was according to Reading Eggs.

There are three levels to Reading Eggs – Reading Eggs Junior (ages 2-4), Reading Eggs (ages 3-7) and Reading Express (age 7 – 13).  There is an initial assessment which your child completes which gives you their ‘Reading Level’.  For Lily this was age 7.5 (she is actually 7 next week so not far off her actual age either).  The lessons after that however were a little unbalanced in how difficult they were so definitely worth keeping an eye on them using Reading Eggs the first few times. The spellings for that level seemed a little easy but I found the comprehension at times a little impossible and that made her cross with me when I got it wrong.  Whilst I know sometimes you get into these type of questions I’m not sure a 40 year old lawyer should be failing 7 year old comprehension questions!  Anyway that aside we decided to move her up a couple of levels for the other activities and that suited Lily better.  What she struggled with a little, and which made her get things wrong, was rushing and not reading the instructions carefully enough.  This can be a trait of mine and clearly one I’ve passed onto my daughter which was interesting to see.

The Reading Eggs Dashboard allows to you to see how each of your children are progressing and there is a 50% discount on the subscription fee for additional siblings. We didn’t actually use it for the twins going into Year 1 this September simply because we wanted Lily to have something just for her. No other reason as they would have loved it to.  You can share the information with your child’s school if they use Reading Eggs too.

Whilst there are numerous activities you can take part in and we did in the 3-7 year old section such as Lessons, Spelling, Driving Test and My Avatar (like other reviews I’ve read she loved being she loved being able to personalise her own avatar) we spent most of the time whilst using Reading Eggs in the Reading Eggspress section for 7-13year olds in the Stadium  ‘competing’ against other Reading Egg users across the world!  This we loved!  There are 4 contests that tests skills in spelling, vocabulary, usage and grammar. These contests are timed and children progress through 5 levels of difficulty.  I once caught myself wanting to beat a particularly good child on there and did wonder if it was in fact his parent too!

I think you’ll find an activity on the website that suits your child and his or her particular loves or struggles!

Summary

I’d really encourage you to give it a go.  There is currently a trial on until 30th September so what better way to complement your child’s reading as they start back at school! It’s fun, it is interactive and you can try it for FREE here!