Reading Kingdom Review

Vendor Reviewed: Reading Kingdom
Product Information: Reading Kingdom is meant for children ages 4-10 years old or preschool to third grade level.  Depending on when you start this program it is designed to teach your child to read or to get them reading up to a third grade reading level.  The cost of the program is $19.99 a month with a free 30 trial period.  Or you can choose to pay for a full year up front for $199.99 for your first child.  Each child after that is $9.99 a month or $99.99 for a full year.

How we used the program: The program suggests using this 4 days a week to get the full benefit of the the program.  We followed suit with this by doing 4 days a week, sometimes all together or we skipped days depending on how well Kiya wanted to work on it.  She was excited at first because she thought it was a computer game and we do not usually allow her on the computer.  She is 7 and can not read, though she knows all her letters and sounds she just cant form the words.  The first part of the program is like an assessment that will figure out the place you need to be.  This part she hated as it was mostly learning the keyboard and sequencing letter (all of which she knows how to do already). You can email the vendor and skip forward but for the sake of the review (in case I wanted to use it later for my younger kids) I wanted to go through the whole process.  The six skills that the program intends to teach are; Sequencing, Motor Skills, Sounds, Meaning, Grammar, and Comprehension.

Things I liked: I liked the idea of teaching the keyboard as well in the introduction.  Having a child that doesn't get to use the computer much it was a great help.  They offer the option of an screen keyboard so they can click or you can use the regular keyboard as well.  I think that having it asses your child before getting into the actual program is good so that you do not have something to advanced or something that is to easy for them.  The graphics were also great and entertaining.

Things I did not like: Now let me say this is not a bad program overall and we will continue to use it as a supplement because their are benefits.  However there were somethings that were really annoying to both myself and Kiya.  The time that laps between each problem is awful long and Kiya would get bored of it.  It would be nice to have an option to click next.  Also the graphics that come up as the words are being shown are long too and makes for one short lesson of 15 problems to take you a long time to do.  Kiya does not have the attention span to sit that long waiting on things to load and to get to the next probably before she would beg to be able to stop.

Will I continue using the program? Yes, there are some good things about it but it will be less often and not a core curriculum for teaching reading.  She likes the idea of being on the computer but then gets bored with the time it takes her to get through it.  I think for a younger child learning everything from the start this might be better for.  As they would be slower on the computer anyways and probably wouldn't notice the lag between problems.