Website Spotlight: Reading Kingdom

I recently had the opportunity to try out Reading Kingdom, a new website designed to help kids learn to read.

There are some great strengths to this program. The animations are cute, it makes use of a lot of repetition so kids get very familiar, it uncovers words in phonics patterns, and it has a very strong academic foundation that combines all six elements of reading (as opposed to just working from a phonics-based approach or just sight-word-based). In fact, the way they've designed it, most kids won't actually realize it's getting harder as they progress, at least not at first.

Most of the cons have to do more with my daughter than most people would run into. For example, it placed her incorrectly too low, and there is no way for me, as the parent, to adjust that (at least, as far as I could tell). Also, although some students may like the repetitive nature, my daughter got bored with the activities being so similar. And there are some nonsense words, where I'd prefer to see all real words.

Overall, I think the educational theory is sound, and this would be a great way to start from emergent reading skills, but if your child is already beginning to read, I don't know that this is your best option. A one-year subscription is $199, or you can get it for $19.99/month. Try it for your first month for free, to see if you like it.

For more information, you can find Reading Kingdom on Facebook or follow @ReadingKingdom.


Disclosure: I got a free trial to facilitate this review.