Reading Eggs Has WORKBOOKS!!! ~ A New TOS Review!!!

One of my all time favorite products to suggest and recommend to homeschool families with children who are just beginning to learn to read or who might be struggling readers is Reading Eggs. I have been using the company myself since at least 2012 - that should be a testament about the company for itself. I've also written about Reading Eggs in prior posts and you can read about them here.  BUT, I have even more exciting news!!! Reading Eggs has created workbooks to go along with both their reading and math sections of the online program!!! For this time we chose 200 Essential Reading Skills for Third Grade  ($19.95) to use with Seanan. He's going into 4th grade so I thought going a little under his grade level since he's still in Reading Eggs and hasn't graduated into Reading Eggspress yet.

What is Reading Eggs?? It is an online website to help children (age 2 - 13) learn to read, become more proficient in reading and comprehension, and even has a portion called Mathseeds for ages 3-9 to teach core math skills. Since it is an online program you can read all about the technical requirements here. Both the reading and math programs have the same engaging and fun games, activities, songs and characters to keep your children interested while learning.

Their process includes five essential keys - phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and fluency. It has proven to me to be very successful. Before you begin you take a placement test so that your child can start right where they need to start. They also have over 2000 levelled books online to help build reading comprehension through a quiz at the end of each of the books.

Activities within a lesson.

Finding the words to match the picture.

While your child goes through the lessons they earn golden eggs as rewards which then can be used for their avatar or their house to change or add things to them. Each set of lessons is set within a map. Each map has 10 lesson. Each lesson within the map has a variety of sections (8 to 12 depending) that makeup the lesson. At the end of 10 lessons there is a quiz and at the end of every map the child earns a completion certificate. All of what they learned will be emailed to you in a detailed report. And if you think your child needs more repetition they can repeat any lesson to build up those skills.

Clear instructions for each section and they are read aloud.

Find the missing letters

There is also Reading Eggs Junior which is aimed for 2 to 4 years old and is similar but geared for pre-readers. Then your child progresses to Reading Eggs (ages 4/5 - 7/8) which continues to build your pre-readers into readers by using self paced lessons. Once they have completed all 12 maps (120 lessons) they will "graduate" into Reading Eggspress (ages 7/8 - 13) to hone in on reading comprehension with over 2500 fiction and non-fiction books to read and complete 16 question quizzes.

Variety of activities to keep them tuned in.

My eldest has graduated out of the entire Reading Eggs system, but she still loved to Reading Eggspress up until then. Now both of my younger two are fully immersed in the program and use it at least 3 times a week if not every day. My middle was a struggling reader and she had recently graduated out of Reading Eggs into Reading Eggspress. I expect to continue to use this with her to help build her confidence while reading and to keep an eye out for any comprehension issues we may have by going over the email results from the quizzes she takes.

My son LOVES Reading Eggs just as much if not more then both his sisters. He also LOVES Mathseeds and tries to work on it daily if not more then once a day (if I let him). But now we have the brand new workbooks which are super awesome! Let me tell you a little about them!

They have created workbooks for both reading (K - 5) and math (K-2) which are meant to coincide with their online program. We received 200 Essential Reading Skills for Third Grade which from the sample seemed that it would be a little difficult, but not so much that he could not accomplish it, so I went with it. After receiving the workbook I realized that it is actually keyed to correspond with Reading Eggspress, which my son has not graduated, so it's been a little trying and tricky. We will still continue to use it throughout the year and combining with his continued use of the online portion I see no reason that we can not complete the workbook this year.

List of the contents and what will be taught in each daily lesson.

Planning Chart with the review week shown.

The workbook we received is set up with 36 weeks doing a page a day. Every 9 weeks there is then a review which can be completed as a one day long test or over a few days, however you feel fits you and your child best.

The weekly lessons have the same pattern for the entire year -- 2 comprehension lessons, 2 spelling lessons, and 1 Grammar lesson. Each days work should only take about 15 minutes. For us some of the days took longer (like the spelling lessons), but he was having to learn words and meanings of words that he had never heard so we needed to look them up before we could answer some of the questions.

The first two days are focused on comprehension. Seanan would read the same story on both days but focusing on different aspects. There are yellow boxes surrounding the text that give you clues on marking up the passage so you can find the answers to the questions at the bottom of the page easier. Since you mark them up on the first day the passage is repeated on the second day's page so you can mark up the 'new' answers to the days' questions.

The spelling lessons give a rule and then about 20 words that go along with that rule. Then there are a variety of exercises like grouping, filling in the missing vowel, naming the picture, find the missing word, completing the sentence, among others. On the fourth day you also get some challenge words that also go along with the rule, but can be a bit more tricky in their presentation of the rule.

The 5th day of work focuses on Grammar - things like common and proper nouns, pronouns, adjectives, action verbs, linking verbs, noun phrases and much more! I love the way they have broken down the days to fit in all the different avenues of learning English. And when you combine it with the online portion it truly is a one of a kind full reading and language arts program! Oh, and at the front of the workbook there is a planner for the year and content pages that tell you exactly what is learned and what page you can find the lessons on.

My son has completed 3 weeks of the workbook. The biggest struggle for him has been on the spelling days (Days 3 and 4) since we have not had a lot of focused time with spelling. He also was a struggling reader and until this past year had not shown much interest in reading really at all. But with the help of consistently doing the online lessons and now also using the workbook I can already see growth in his reading and spelling. 

We will continue to use the workbook, but we may double up on the online reading lessons so that he can 'catch up' to where the workbook has him placed. We did not do as much school over the summer otherwise I think he would have also graduated out of Reading Eggs into Reading Eggspress and then the workbook would not be as hard as he thinks it is.

Now hear this!!! YOU can get 4 FREE weeks to this amazing program online AND you can also get a 10% discount to purchase these new workbooks for yourself. To purchase the workbooks click the link and then enter this code: WK1055SWWP9  I'd love to hear from you if you do try out the program so leave a comment below!

You can also find them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. And you will want to read all the other reviews from other Crew members because we all received different workbooks and had different experiences with the program, so click the link below to read those!!