Introducing: Phonics Museum App created by Veritas Press. This creative app makes learning to read very easy (on the parents part) and an absolute blast on the child's part! Elias (my 4 year old) got the opportunity to review this app with me!
Your young reader will explore a Museum with Percival (a suit of armor that comes alive after the museum closes) and Miss Bridle learning the sounds and shapes of letters and basic lessons of how to read. Together, they will learn songs, watch extremely educational instructional videos, play multi sensory games, practice tracing letters and words, as well as read short stories all on the app! They'll get lost exploring and learning with the many different themed rooms and find new sounds and exciting surprises in every nook and cranny of the museum!
Pros:
* Independent Learning: The app is designed to be able to hand over to the child and let them learn! Your child will know exactly what to do and will learn so much more then just phonics as they explore items throughout the museum. My son hardly EVER asked for help.
* Child Can't Skip Instructions: One feature I appreciated was that my son couldn't quickly click through the game instructions, but had to listen to them before beginning the game or activity.
* Short Videos Interrupted by Activities: As thorough as the teaching aspect of this app is, it's not overwhelming in length and is interrupted after a few minutes for an activity of some sort. This is brilliant for keeping a short attention spanned children engaged.
* I Saw Definite Improvement in Reading Skills: I must say I saw definite growth in my son's reading level since he started using this app. He's excited to read when we go through our normal phonics lessons in his phonics book and he is much more confident in his reading ability. I am very impressed and pleased at this!
* Large Family Friendly: This is so perfect when Elias finished his formal schooling with me (usually about 20 minutes in the morning). He can play it on the sofa for an hour while I do school with his older siblings.
* Phonics Lessons Do Not Go Alphabetically: I loved and appreciated this about the Phonics Museum App. Instead of going from A-Z, this app skipped around and allowed the child to learn different letters so they could start sounding out words sooner. For instance he learned the letter "a" first then "m" then "b" ect.
Cons:
* Screen Interruptions: Something that really irked me was any time I got a text message or a news alert on my phone, the instruction video that my son was watching would stop and start over... and there is NO way to override this. So if he watched 6 minutes of the 7 minute video and something came up on my screen, his video would start over. I wish it would automatically pause instead of revering to the beginning.
* Grey Tracing Hand: When Elias was tracing his letters, a grey hand with a pointed finger would appear on the screen. This was very distracting and frustrating for my son since he would try to keep the grey finger on the letter instead of focusing on just tracing the letter with his own finger. He would get frustrated and want to give up on the game because of this feature. A way to turn this off would be a nice option.
*Price: The price of this app is a con on my list and simply a manner of my opinion as a mom of soon to be 6 homeschooled children. $9.99 per month or $99/year is just not something my family would pay for an app, no matter how good of an app it is. However, something to keep in mind is that this price does allow you to have up to 3 children included in the subscription. I would consider paying half this amount, but $100 of the money we set aside to school our large family is not reasonable for an app. If we only had 1-2 kids this would definitely be an option.
Would I recommend this app? Absolutely! I saw tremendous growth in my son over the last several weeks of him consistently using it and it gives him something to do that's educational while I school the other kids. It's engaging, complete, and I am very impressed with this app! :)
You can download this app by clicking here.
No comments:
Post a Comment