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The best reading and phonics game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 86 / 87
Date: April 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I own several phonics and reading games, and there's no doubt in my mind that the Reader Rabbit games are head and shoulders above the rest. The three main reading games: Learn to Read with Phonics, I Can Read With Phonics (also called Reading 6-9) and Reading 4-6 are absolutely a must for kids learning to read. No matter who the child is, if there's the ability to read in him/her, these games will get it out!

Learn to Read with Phonics is fantastic in that it such an incredible amount of stuff to do. Every letter has a land, and the child explores each land by going through phonics drills and reading two books. The books and the drills are divided into 5 levels, and each land requires finishing some phonics practice before the child can move on to the next. Alternatively, the parents can also elect to go to each land or each activity if they choose, so there is great flexibility here. Every word in the books is individually clickable, so the child can be certain to learn how to say each word. The drills are not particularly demanding, so even if the child doesn't know much, as long as he goes through the drills he can move on to the next level. He is not stuck there until he gets it all right, but even this can be adjusted by the parent.

Learn to Read with Phonics is a game, but not in the normal sense. There's phonics drilling here, meaning that this is actually glorified homework. If you just let your child do it on his own, he will do it for a while, like my 5 year old son did, but he will probably get tired of it after a few hours and will not go through the entire journey. (Girls are probably better at this than boys.) I got the games to homeschool my kid. I require that he finishes 5 letterland a day, and I make sure that reads out each letter in the books by individually clicking on them. This takes him an hour (longer when he gets to the end of the journey when the levels get harder and the books get longer.) When he's done, I let him have a small bag of chips. He seems to find the deal acceptable. When he is all the way through, I make him start from the beginning again.

Repetition isn't necessarily fun, but that's how people learn. I find the computer invaluable at teaching little kids. At their stage, there's more repetition than anything else, and as a formal college teacher, I don't look forward to teaching little kids stuff to my kids. The computer is perfect for the job because it never gets bored, tired, impatient, or a sore throat from saying "See Jane run" too many times.

The difference between Learn to Read with Phonics and I Can Read with Phonics is their levels: one is for ages 4-6, and the other one is for 6-9, but the age group is really arbitrary. If your child has trouble reading, he/she can benefit from both CDs. They are two totally different games, and together with Reader Rabbit Reading 4-6, which is still a different reading game, makes a perfect package as a computer reading teacher.

I highly recommend this product to anyone.

Note: another reviewer here says that this game may not run on XP. Not true. I have XP and all three Reader Rabbit reading games run just fine on it.

Just the ticket

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 60 / 60
Date: February 10, 2002
Author: Amazon User

When our 5-year-old got into kindergarten, we were surprised to find out how much they expect out of kids that age nowadays.

Just 5 years ago, when our first one was kindergarten age, they used that time to start to introduce reading concepts. Now, they expect them to know the basics already and just delve into more advanced topics. Even the teacher said she's still getting used to the new level they're expected to teach at.

So, we had to do outside catch-up work, and this program was right on-target. It led our kindergartener step-by-step to a firm grasp of the material - his improvement was immediately visible. And he's had so much fun that he hates to stop playing.

This is a combination of two programs that were previously separate. The first one (Road to Reading) goes through each letter of the alphabet and reinforces the sound of the letter, plus presents site words using that letter. The second one (Word Factory) picks up there and introduces how to build words from the basic sounds.

I should probably point out that this program does not include any tutorial material, so it can't be used by itself to teach a child phonics. It is, however, a great set of exercises to practice and extend what they've learned elsewhere.

I would also recommend that this be used with some amount of parental involvement. In spite of its game-like format, it should probably be treated more like homework, having an adult available to get them started and to make sure they're using each concept correctly.

My daughter learned to read by her fourth birthday

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 27
Date: December 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

(...)We moved to Japan, and I ordered the Reading with Phonics game.
She used to play about an hour a day sometimes, she just loved it. I would also play school with her sometimes, and we read lots of stories together every night at bedtime.

English spelling is quite difficult, because it is so irregular. However, we were surprised to find our daughter could read through books that she had never seen before, or only been read a few times, by the time she was nearly four. On her fourth birthday, she could read through a book like "Bunnycakes", with two or three sentences per page.

I give a fair amount of credit to the Reader Rabbit games, as well as Blue Clues reading games. My wife was not keen on letting her play with the computer so much, but I think it was
quite effective for teaching the brute rote memorization needed to pronounce English spelling, and to become familiar with
letter combinations such as "ch", "sh" , "gh", etc, and their irregular rules.

As a side benefit, our daughter can type pretty well and
use both mouse and trackpad. (...)

Best learn to read software program

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 15 / 15
Date: February 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is absolutely the best learning to read software game currently available. It's so rich! Kids learn phonics and sight words. Parents of impatient kids, beware. There is quite a bit of repetition in this game. But it does the job really well. If you want real, tangible results with a reading software game (and that is hard to find), try this game out.

First Rate!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: August 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is an excellent early reading CD-ROM. Buy it here, since most stores only stock games and the more lackluster "educational" programs.

A "must-have" for beginning readers....

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 12
Date: April 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is one of those "must-have" items if your child is learning to read...

We were sorry that we hadn't bought it sooner. Our daughter is the youngest child in the class, and was having trouble with reading due to easy distractibility. We tried to "force her" to concentrate, which was both frustrating and futile.

After purchasing this CD, and the companion "I Can Read with Phonics" from Amazon, the child began to play the games and fell in love with it. Every night, she insists on playing for as much as 2 hours at a time! She does not need to be forced to learn because she is having fun, and is less aware that she is actually learning and increasing her skills.

If your child is in Kindergarten and you want a head-start, or the child is in first-grade and having difficulty, I highly recommend this CD.

EXCELLENT Phonics software with tons of fun things to do.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: November 23, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This phonics software is MUCH better than the Jumpstart Phonics!! You can spend all day trying to do all the fun activities. My five year old son loved it. Very good teaching tool. I HIGHLY recommend it!

Great investment for your child

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: January 31, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love this software. My daughter loved this CD-ROM between the age of 4-6 before she went to school and now my son really likes it and it's great for him because he has problems pronouncing words. He enjoyed playing with it so much, that now he is able to match words with pictures and sound out several words.

The Reader Rabbit Toddler software has not yet been outgrown. To get the most out of it, your child should have the ability to hold and click a mouse, and should already have basic recognition of capital and lower-case letters. The lowest level is perfect for my child but would have been too difficult at ages 3 - 3 1/2. The software teaches both letter and word recognition as well as phonics. The games are cute and when your child gets tired of learning to read there are fun songs and graphics to listen to with "reading propaganda" lyrics about how fun and important it is to learn to read.

This is an excellent early reading CD-ROM. Buy it here, since most stores only stock games and the more lackluster "educational" programs.

Excellent Learning Game!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: November 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I bought this program a few months ago for my three year old daughter. She *loves* it and is really learning from it. Like all the Reader Rabbit Games we've purchased so far, it is very well done. The program runs smoothly, the animation is good and attention grabbing, and Reader Rabbit and Mat the Mouse are very endearing to children. This game keeps my child's attention and makes learning phonics so much fun she doesn't even realize she's picking it up. We do this game together with me working the mouse because she isn't quite good enough with the mouse yet to do it solo. [However, a child who has good command of "mouse use" could easily do this game on their own]. We are really enjoying it!

Recomend this program for pre-schoolers

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: July 15, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Excellent program for children who know their letters and are begining to understand the sounds those letters make. Parental assistance needed to get started, then child is able to run with program. Great progress reports, show which words the child needs help with. Used these to make "drill cards" on index cards for long rides, to practice difficult words, and "sight" words, which the progress reports separate out from words that can be sounded out. Program matches childs ability. Highly recomend as a tool to assist a child to learn to read.

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