How to Make Your Child a Better Speller

Lots of people can use a little help with spelling, especially kids who are just learning.  Luckily there is no shortage of material available to choose from that will help your kids become spelling masters.  We have found some great apps, books, websites, and free online spelling games that can help make learning to spell a little bit easier.

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Best Spelling Apps for Kids

There are quite a lot of spelling apps for kids available, so finding the top few apps was a bit of a challenge. The spelling apps that we choose as our top picks are:

  1. Squeebles Spelling Test allows parents to customize spelling tests for their children by setting up tests, entering words, and then recording audio versions of those words for your children to listen to before they try to spell them. Stats on each child let you see how they’re doing and which words they’re struggling with. When the children do well on the spelling tests, they can move on to play a mini-game. This app has received great reviews on the iPhone Mom, Best Apps for Kids, Teachers with Apps, Pad Gadget, and many others.
  2. Freefall Spelling has 75+ prebuilt words and allows parents to set up their own custom spelling lists. Each new word supports a custom audio recording and image, allowing the child to practice any spelling/sight word list that may come home from school. When the child correctly spells several words in a row, and they’ll be rewarded with a new item to add to their fish tank. This app has excellent reviews from the Daily Download on TiltTV, App Advice, Smatoos, and more.
  3. Simplex Spelling Apps offer a range of very well received spelling apps that use a combination of phonics lessons, spelling/word patterns, and something they call their “reverse phonics” approach as well as contextually relevant spelling rules. The great reviews for these apps are too many to mention, but if you are interested check out their home page where they have links to the reviews.

 Books

  1. Uncovering the Logic of English is the book for you if you want to teach kids how to spell. It is a multiple-award-winning book that will show you the phonogram and spelling rules which explain 98% of English words. The reviews for this book are overwhelmingly good. You can view the author’s YouTube channel here (if you can find the time, these videos are beneficial with explaining how kids learn).
  2. Spelling Power, Fourth Edition (for ages 8 +) don’t let the size or the price of this book put you off. It is very popular with homeschoolers and parents with kids who are struggling with spelling.
  3. Scholastic Dictionary of Spelling is a great beginner dictionary for kids to do their own spell-check. The introduction gives instructions for looking up a word the reader does not necessarily know how to spell, offers more than 150 memory tricks to correct commonly misspelled words, and clearly explains general spelling rules (and their exceptions).

Websites

  1. Spelling City is an excellent site with lots of free spelling activities, games, word lists, resources for parents and teachers as well as lots of other stuff.
  2. Big IQ Kids has free vocabulary and word lists organized by grade level that you can use to play games, practice, and be tested on the word lists.
  3. Kid Spell is another free site to check out with spelling lists and games.

Top 15 Free Online Spelling Games

We looked through a lot of games and weeded out what we think are the best free online games

  • Fun Brain is always a good source for kids’ education games, and this game is no exception. In this game, you are the spell checker, and you have to pick out the word that is spelled incorrectly and then type in how to spell it correctly.
  • ABC Ya Spelling Practice (for Grades: K,1,2,3) is a simple game where you select a Dolch Word List and listen to the word the dragon speaks. Then you just click and drag the letters to spell words correctly. Press’ hint” to see how the word is spelled or press “skip” to go to another word.
  • Primary Games See ‘N Spell is another simple game for younger kids that shows a picture and has the child move letters into a box to spell the word.
  • Spelling Central makes games out of a spelling list that you input. After inputting the list, you can do a word search, arrange the words in alphabetical order, unscramble the words, and try to figure out the missing letters.
  • Learning Games for Kids have eight different games to choose from, including hangman, word scramble, and word search. Kids can even study for their spelling tests by entering their own words.
  • Look and Cover is pretty good. You see a word, and then a creepy giant hand moves over the screen and covers the word, and you have to type in the proper spelling. You can change the level of difficultly of the lists by going through the ‘Pupils Lists’.
  • Spellits (for 7 – 11-year-olds) is a site that offers interactive online activities and printable resources which teach spelling strategies, rules, and patterns.
  • Wild West English is a good site for older kids. There are a couple of spelling games on this site, to find them just click on the bull or the spelling showdown character.
  • Alpha Bot is a little different than the other games out there for older kids. You have to move letters around on a giant grid after hearing the audio of the word.
  • Spin and Spell is an animated game for students ages 4-8 that has pictures that the player can select to try to spell.
  • Swiper’s Spelling Book Game a straightforward game for preschoolers that shows a three-letter word, then Swiper takes the letters, and the child has to select the letters from a list to spell the word.
  • EduPlace has simple spelling and vocabulary games that you can select based on grade level.
  • PBS Kids has some good spelling games for younger kids based on Super Why, Clifford the Big Red Dog, etc.

Spelling Curriculum to do at Home

If you are looking for an intensive spelling program to work on at home, several programs have a full curriculum that is used by homeschoolers that might be helpful to parents of non-homeschoolers who are struggling with spelling. Some of the more popular ones are:

 

How to Help your Kids with Math (Grade 4-6)

There are some super helpful online math resources that are perfect for kids who might be struggling with math, or for kids who are looking to improve upon their existing skills.

It’s essential to have good math skills these days,  so we have come up with a handy list of some of the best math curriculum websites, apps, and games to help you help your child learn to love math (well maybe) and improve their math grades.

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*If you are looking for math help for younger kids, check out our post for kids who are pre-k to grade 3.

Best Websites with Math Games

A really easy way to get kids to practice math is to make it fun. So with that in mind, these are our favorite free websites with great math games:

  1. Arcademic Skillbuilders is a great site that has online educational video games that help kids learn basic math. The games are free, but if you are a teacher, you can sign up for the Arcademics Plus option that lets teachers customize game content to fit lesson plans, monitor student progress with data tracking reports, and motivates students to improve performance with earned achievements and awards.
  2. Sheppardsoftware is another excellent site that has fun online math games that cover all of the math fundamentals, including early math, basic and mixed operations, fractions, pre-algebra, dollars & cents, and place value.
  3. Mangahigh is a high-quality site that has fun educational Math games. The site is aimed at teachers, but anyone can use the free versions of its excellent games.
  4. Multiplication Games is a fantastic resource for learning multiplication facts and has a great collection of math games.
  5. Math Playground is another really good directory of math games, logic puzzles, practice, word problems, and math videos.
  6. Hooda Math has math games, apps, movies, tutorials, worksheets, and much more.
  7. Math for Grades 3-6 this site is an excellent resource for math games with links to all the best games on the web for different topics like algebra, fractions,  measurement, geometry, patterns, money, data, integers, and estimation
  8. Kids Numbers is a free math resource designed by teachers, for students and children of all ages. On this site, students can practice all aspects of math, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
  9. Math-Play has an extensive collection of free online math games for elementary and middle school students.
  10. Math Bingo is a free fun way for children to practice math facts on the computer. You can do addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division BINGO. You can also get this game as an iPhone app.

Best App for Helping Kids Learn Math

Of the math apps that we’ve tried, our favorites are Splash Math Apps. These apps are designed to be kind of like interactive workbooks that cover an entire school years’ worth of material. In the apps, you drag and drop shapes, pop bubbles, rotate clock hands to solve problems. A weekly e-mail report feature keeps track of student progress.

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Splash Math Apps go from grades one to five. AskATechTeacher did an excellent review of the grade 5 app saying Splash Math (grade 5) “is robust, satisfying, and intuitive enough, fifth graders will have no problem installing, setting up and using it independent of adult assistance. The start-up steps are clear. Screens are colorful and uncluttered, making their purpose easy to understand. The space theme will appeal to most fifth graders, especially with ‘space’ being a common fifth-grade unit.  Parents and teachers will be pleased that math skills are aligned with fifth grade Common Core State Standards and include an endless supply of problems on topics like decimals, fractions, dividing by two-digit numbers, place values, number sense, multiplication, division, measurement, and age-appropriate Geometry and Algebra. Each topic has between four and twelve worksheets where kids drag and drop shapes, rotate clock hands, pop bubbles, and lots more as they solve problems. The app uses an adaptive learning algorithm to determine the child’s level and gradually increase the difficulty with the user’s skill.”

Top 6 Websites with Math Lessons/Curriculum

Math curriculum sites are an excellent option for parents whose math skills might be a little rusty because they have lessons that explain concepts and then have your kids practice what they have just learned. Here are some great math curriculum websites:

  • IXL Math is a math practice site with 2,000 skills covering junior kindergarten to grade 10, and an unlimited number of computer-generated problems that adapt to your child’s ability, increasing in difficulty as they improve. It also offers immediate feedback and question-specific explanations to solidify understanding of each concept. Parents get a weekly e-mail update on the child’s progress. The child can earn awards and certificates as they reach important milestones. The curriculum can be tailored for the U.S, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the U.K. Cost– $9.95/month or $79/year, or they allow you to complete up to 20 questions per day for free.
  • Dreambox Learning is an online program designed for ages 5-8 that has educational games that are individualized for students, adapting the curriculum just for them. Cost– $12.95/month or $59.95/6 months, and they also offer a two-week free trial.
  • K5 Learning is a multi-award winning online afterschool study program for kids in kindergarten to grade 5 that uses adaptive technology to help kids develop instant recall of essential addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts. Cost-Monthly subscription First child $25 additional children $15 annual subscription first child $199 additional children $129. The site also offers a 14-day free trial.
  • Time4Learning for homeschool, afterschool, and summer skill sharpening, Time4Learning’s award-winning pre k to eighth-grade curriculum combines the technology kids love with the education they need to make learning fun. Cost $19.95/month for the first child and $14.95/month for each additional child.
  • Maths-Whizz from the U.K is an award-winning online’ math tutor’ that uses interactive animations and tutoring methods to deliver measurable results. Includes math resources and math games for kids. Cost -$19.99 per month, per child, or try the free trial.
  • ALEKS  for ages 5-18 is a web-based, artificially intelligent assessment and learning system that has a “complete curriculum solution for math with access to full course library” (U.S curriculum) that can target gaps in student knowledge. Cost $19.95/month,  $179.95/yr, or try their three-hour free trial.

More Supplemental Math Resources worth Checking Out

If you are looking for some other types of supplemental material, there are a few programs that are popular with homeschoolers that can also be helpful for kids in a school program that is worth having a look at. They are:

  • JUMP Math is a teaching program initially designed to help struggling math students by breaking concepts down into small steps. JUMP offers curriculum-based programs, materials, and training for teachers and parents to enhance math lessons for students in Grades 1-8. The program’s mission is “To enhance the potential in children by encouraging an understanding and a love of math in students and educators.” If you are a parent and are just looking for supplemental resources, a great place to start is with the JUMP at Home Worksheets.
  • Brain Pop is a fantastic site if you are on the market for a supplemental resource that kids will enjoy doing. Brain Pop is an educational website that has short animated movies for students in grades K-12 (ages 6 to 17) covering the subjects of science, social studies, English, mathematics, arts and music, health, and technology that feature the recurring characters Tim and Moby. Brain Pop has about 70 math videos with a huge range of topics.  A basic family Brain Pop subscription starts at $99, and you must commit to subscribing for the entire year. Discount codes are occasionally available.
  • Watch Know Learn has free educational videos with lots of math content available.
  • Help Your Kids with Math: A visual problem solver for kids and parents is a great resource for helping parents help their kids with math.

 

How to Help your Kids with Math (Pre-K to Grade 3)

Featuring the Best Math Websites, Apps, Software, Workbooks, and Books

How can parents help their children with math at home? There are lots of different approaches you can take to help your kids develop their math skills. You can use software packages, apps, workbooks, books, videogames, and websites, just to name a few things. So to try to help you out a bit, we have gathered up the best of all sorts of different kinds of math resources that are out there and checked out all the reviews to pick out the very best stuff.  If you have something that you have used to help your kids with math, let us know we would love to know about it.

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*If you are looking for math resources for older kids, check out our post for math help for kids in grades 4-6.

The Best Free Websites with Math Games

There are lots of sites where you can play free math games that are fun and help reinforce concepts the child has already learned. The following sites are our top four:

  • Funbrain Everyone loves this site. It’s the #1 site for online educational games for kids of all ages. It has good graphics, easy navigation, free educational games, online books, and comics that develop skills in math, reading, and literacy.
  • Houghton Mifflin Kids’ Place Math Houghton Mifflin is a company that publishes textbooks, reference works, fiction, non-fiction, and educational software and videos, and this site is their interactive math resource that is great for math practice.
  • Math Cats is another of our favorite math sites. This site has no advertising and features lots of open-ended math activities.
  • Jumpstart is an excellent free resource for online math games. No ads, great graphics, and fun games from one of the educational software’s most well-known brands.
  • Skoolbo is another interesting free site to have a look at. The site “is the world’s largest educational game ever! Skoolbo is a literacy and numeracy program with more than 50,000 questions designed to assist 4 to 10-year-olds in their journey to mastery of essential reading and mathematics skills.”

Best Math App

If you want a fantastic math app for your kids, get Park Math. This is the best math app that we have come across so far.

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The reviews for this app are excellent, it won 2011 Parents’ Choice Silver Award winner from the Parents’ Choice Foundation, 2010 Best Kids’ iPhone/iPod App of the Year Award from iLounge and it also got a Children’s Technology Review Editor’s Choice Award for Excellence in Design. In a review of Park Math on GiggleApps, they say, “This app helps kids ages 1-6 explore math concepts in a way that is bright and cheerful and above all else, never seems like work. I am impressed with how content-rich the app is, having seven activities to choose from as well as two levels of difficulty, all with a lovely theme of animals having fun, playing at a park. Recently, an iPad version, Park Math HD, has been released, which also includes a 3rd level as well.”

Websites with Math Lessons/Curriculum

There are several websites with really great math curriculum lessons that you can try out for free (before committing to a subscription). We’ve narrowed it down to our five favorites, they are:

  • IXL Math is a math practice site with 2,000 skills covering junior kindergarten to grade 10, and an unlimited number of computer-generated problems that adapt to your child’s ability, increasing in difficulty as they improve. It also offers immediate feedback and question-specific explanations to solidify understanding of each concept. Parents get weekly e-mail updates on the child’s progress. The child can earn awards and certificates as they reach important milestones. The curriculum can be tailored for the U.S, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the U.K. Cost– $9.95/month or $79/year, or they allow you to complete up to 20 questions per day for free.
  • Dreambox Learning is an online program designed for ages 5-8 that has educational games that are individualized for students, adapting the curriculum just for them. My daughter uses Dreambox and enjoys using it. Cost– $12.95/month or $59.95/6 months, and they also offer a two-week free trial.
  • K5 Learning is a multi-award winning online afterschool study program for kids in kindergarten to grade 5 that uses adaptive technology to help kids develop instant recall of basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts. Progress on every math fact is monitored until mastery is obtained. Cost-Monthly subscription First child $25 additional children $15 annual subscription first child $199 additional children $129. The site also offers a 14-day free trial.
  • Time4Learning for homeschool, afterschool, and summer skill sharpening, Time4Learning’s award-winning pre k to eighth-grade curriculum combines the technology kids love with the education they need to make learning fun. Cost $19.95/month for the first child and $14.95/month for each additional child.
  • Maths-Whizz from the U.K is an award-winning online’ math tutor’ that uses interactive animations and tutoring methods to deliver measurable results. Includes math resources and math games for kids. Maths-Whizz is aligned to national maths curricula across the world. Cost -$19.99 per month, per child, or try the free trial.

Best Math Book for Kids ages 5+

When researching this post, we came across this book that looks to be an excellent resource for teaching kids math at home.

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Family Math has over 300 pages of lively activities that use easy instructions, and simple objects such as beans, blocks, pennies, buttons, and string, parents, and kids solve problems together. It’s recommended for families with children five to twelve years old

The Best Math Workbooks

If you are looking for workbooks, a great company to check out is School Zone.

You’ve probably seen these workbooks around if you have spent any time looking for workbooks because they are sold everywhere. What you might not know is that they offer the workbooks in different forms, as well as the hardcopy books that you can easily buy in stores, you can get the software with interactive workbooks or workbooks in app form.

 

Introduce your Kids to the Montessori Method

Montessori education is devoted to helping each child achieve his or her potential and develop a lifelong love of learning (who doesn’t want that for their kids?). The Montessori approach lets children learn at their own pace according to their own choice of activities. Perhaps surprisingly to some, the principles can easily be used at home as well as in schools. With that in mind, here is our little overview DIY guide to help get you started with Montessori methods that you can try out on your own without forking out the thousands of dollars in school fees.

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Books

An excellent place to start in your DIY Montessori adventure is by checking out some of these popular books. They give you lots of ways to bring the Montessori ideas into the home.

  • How To Raise An Amazing Child the Montessori Way -This is a great and simple introduction to some Montessori ideas and ways to bring them into the home. Deb Chitwood of Living Montessori Now writes in a review of this book, “If I could recommend one educational book to parents of children ages five and under, what would it be? After thinking about all the wonderful books I’ve read, one book stands out as the book I would recommend to any parent with a young child. That book is How To Raise An Amazing Child the Montessori Way by Tim Seldin, President of the Montessori Foundation. It is an amazing book!”
  • Teach Me to Do It Myself: Montessori Activities for You and Your Child. This is an easy to follow book with color photos showing how to do necessary Montessori activities at home, and it also suggests inexpensive ways to make activities. The book is easy and pleasant to read; it’s in color and has plenty of photos.
  • Teaching Montessori in the Home: Pre-School Years: The Pre-School Years – This book was initially written in the ’60s, but most of the instructions about making Montessori materials at home with everyday household items or easy-to-obtain craft supplies are still relevant today. This book is a great starting point for teaching Montessori in the home. DiscovertheChild wrote of this book, “Beyond the introduction to Montessori theory, Hainstock presents lots and lots of activities that you can use in your home. For each activity, she lists the age range, the materials needed, how to demonstrate it to your child, the purpose of the exercise, and the control of error built into each one. “

Websites

If you really want to be a true DIYer and are feeling a bit ambitious here are some wonderful sites that give you advice on how to make your own great Montessori activities:

  • Maybe Montessori this is a fantastic site that is written by a mother who is documenting “our adventures in homeschool preschool the Montessori way (with a little Charlotte Mason thrown in for good measure)”. This site blows my mind.
  • Living Montessori Now has tonnes of great info on Montessori Method and DIY Montessori activities. You can also learn how to use Montessori principles and methods in parenting and life in general.
  • Homemade Montessori is another excellent site if you are thinking of using the Montessori method in your life at home. Lots of great tips, ideas, and activities listed for you to try out.

Materials

After checking out the books and the websites, you can start putting the Montessori theories into practice.  Here are a few good toys to help get you going if you aren’t quite up to making your own activities yet: Practical Life activities are methods that teach the child to learn how to do everyday living activities purposefully.

  • Schylling Little Helper Broom Set is a child, sized broom set that helps encourage children to learn to clean up their own messes and acquire the habits of mental and physical order.
  • Melissa & Doug Deluxe Latches Board is a reasonable, cost-effective alternative to the Montessori Locks and Latches Sets.  The Montessori Locks and Latches Sets can cost over $100, so the Melissa and Doug set is a much more reasonable price at around $20.

Sensorial These are materials that will help a child develop and refine his or her five senses.

  • Plan Toy Geometric Sorting Board is an excellent tool for teaching shape recognition and early geometry. It also helps to introduce color and pattern recognition through play. This sorting board has four different wooden shapes in four bright colors. Kids match the correct form with the right number of holes to the corresponding wood pegs. Sorting is essential in the Montessori method because it helps children understand that things are alike and different as well as that they can belong and be organized into specific groups, which ultimately helps with math skills and numeric concepts.
  • Montessori Cylinder Blocks a great Montessori tool; unfortunately they are a little pricey, but the reviews are very good for this toy. The cylinders are well crafted, and a child can learn about sequencing, geometry, weights, and shapes. Primary Montessori has a great lesson on how to use cylinder blocks.

Language

  • Montessori Lower Case Sandpaper Letters w/ Box can be used to help familiarize kids with the look and sound of each letter while the child is also developing muscle memory of the letters in preparation for writing. To use them, trace one of the letters with your pointer and index finger while saying the sound of the letter. Do this several times so that it is very clear to the child what you are doing. Then have the child trace the letter, the same way you just did. As they are doing this, continue to make the phonetic sound of the letter.
  • Montessori Small Movable Alphabets w/ Box can be used to practice reading skills, word building skills and even help children identify phonograms in words.
Mathematics

  Kid Advance Montessori Cut-Out Numeral and Counters can help to teach kids some of the basics of counting and numbers. More specifically, it reinforces the sequence one to ten, gives another perceptual experience of quantity as a collection of separate objects, and also can help introduce the concept of odd and even.

Apps

There are several Montessori apps available, although we’re not sold on the idea. One of the basic concepts of the Montessori method is the hands-on learning approach, so it is worth questioning whether you will get anything like the same experience or result from these apps. It is a bit of a controversial topic that you can explore a bit further if you go to Maria Montessori.com. But people love the apps, so here are some of the most popular Montessori apps you can check out if you are so inclined, and you can make up your own mind.

 

The Best Teaching Kids to Type Tools

If you are trying to find some websites for kids to learn how to type, you are in luck. There are A LOT of typing websites and software around for typing practice that offer fun games and lessons that will have your kids typing in no time. Here are our top picks:

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Best Free Typing Websites for Kids

  • Dancemat is probably the best free site to start with for small children who want to learn to type. The site is run by the BBC and uses animation and games to introduce touch typing to children aged 7 to 11.  The character voices can get a bit annoying for an adult, but it’s a fun free site that will keep your kids engaged.
  • E-Learning for Kids offers a relatively elaborate online typing course for kids that has pretty cool graphics and a whole storyline having to do with an alien and a space ship.
  • Typing Class is easy and straightforward to follow. It doesn’t have the fun animation that some of the other sites offer, but the lessons are suitable, and the site shows you your speed and your accuracy.
  • Typing Club is a free touch typing tutorial site that is very well done and easy to use.

Best Typing Games for Kids

There is no shortage of typing games for kids. Here are just a few games to check out for the beginning typist.

  • Super Hyper Spider Typer -this game from fun Funschool has lizards with words on their backs that are after Berry, the hairy spider. The point of the game is to save Berry from the lizards by typing words quickly as they appear on their backs and to stop the spider from getting eaten. If you type in the letters or words you see on the lizard’s backs as soon as they appear on the screen, it clears them away. Some words are more challenging than others, so you have to type fast to win. Each round ends when the spider reaches the top of the tree.
  • Typing for Tots is a simple game that shows a short sentence and then lets your child type the letters and words from the sentence into your computer. It marks the letter the child is supposed to type in green.
  • Key Board Game at Big Brown Bear is a keyboard review game. It basically shows a giant keyboard, and you are supposed to press the key shown in red to score a point. If you press the wrong one, you’ll lose a point- it’s pretty simple and a useful review of the keyboard.
  • Games from Free Typing Games if you can deal with all the ads, this site has some good games. They are a bit more advanced, so if you kids are just starting don’t go to this site first.

Best Typing Software for Kids

If you are looking for a more intense program to teach your kids how to type there are a few different options available, some of the ones we looked at are JumpStart Typing, Mavis Beacon Keyboarding Kidz Typing, Ultra Key, Typing Quick and Easy and Typing Instruction for Kids Platinum. If we were going to be buying a software package, we would choose Typing Instructor for Kids Platinum.

The skill-building typing games are fun to use and will keep kids interested. Some users might have trouble running this software on their OS, so make sure you check specs if you are thinking of buying it.

Typing Instructor for Kids is a top pick because it is a reasonably priced, well-designed bit of software that gets pretty good reviews overall. It was also the #1 best-selling typing program specifically designed for kids. You can also get this program as an App.

 

Top Products Parents are Using to Teach Kids to Read

Teaching kids to read can be so rewarding, and yet so incredibly frustrating at the same time. It might seem that everyone else’s children are reading earlier or are finding it much easier than your kids. If that is the case, you are probably looking for a bit of extra help. If you are then great news because we have the secrets to teaching kids to read that other parents might not be telling you about. There are some amazing products available that you need to be aware of that will get your kids reading successfully in no time.

Since the ‘Phonics’ marketplace is pretty swamped, we have put together a little guide to help get you started with the best free websites, the best system, DVDs, books and apps that we could find that can help kids learn to read in a fun and hopefully stress-free way.

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Best Videos for Teaching Kids Phonics

If you are looking for a DVD that will help your kids learn their phonics sounds LeapFrog: Letter Factory is a great video to check out. It won’t teach it won’t teach your kids to read, but it will give them a great start by teaching them their phonics sounds.

If you have younger kids, getting this DVD is a perfect place to start. It basically teaches children the phonic sounds of the alphabet in an entertaining, easy, and fun way. You and your kids will be singing the songs, and your kids will learn precisely what sound each letter makes. It is an excellent foundation for pre-reading since it is a fantastic teaching tool disguised as entertainment, and your kids will love it.

The Best Book to use to Teach your Kids to Read using Phonics

 

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is the book to get if you want to get your kids reading. This book is amazing if you can find 20 minutes a day for 100 days and are willing to put it the time and get the lessons done – it really does work. A bit of a warning though, there is a good chance your kids will not want to do the lessons because they aren’t bundled up in a cute package with super kid-friendly illustrations. You will have to be creative in getting them to do the lessons, but if they do the scripted lessons when they are finished, they will be reading at a second-grade level (second grade!).

If your kids are starting to recognize phonics sounds and you want to get them some storybooks to practice with, you should look for books that are known as ‘phonics readers.’ The British book company Usborne have a really good set, but they don’t seem to be easy to find in the U.S, you can look for some like Starfall’s Learn to Read series.

Best Online Phonics Program (Free)

There are a few free phonics websites around; we checked out ABC Fast Phonics, Progressive Phonics, and Starfall. The site we liked the best that offer free phonics resources was Starfall.

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Some of the paid sites (ClickNKIDS.com, Time4Learning.com) have free lessons that you can find on the sites, but we are just reviewing the entirely free sites in this section. Starfall is a free website that teaches children to read with phonics by using phonics games and online interactive books. Kids can learn pre-reading skills that help them gain the skills to eventually read short online books. With this site, kids can practice letter sounds, word recognition, and reading comprehension by going through the site’s excellent online books, songs, and games. The site reads the books back to the child, and it offers lots of resources for parents and teachers. They also have a paid version for home or school.

Best Phonics Program (not free)

The two Phonics Systems that we narrowed our search down to were ClickN KIDS and Hooked on Phonics. Ultimately we choose ClickN KIDS, mostly because of the cost.

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The Best Phonics Toys and Reading Systems

Two of the most prominent players in ‘the learn’ to read educational toys space are Leapfrog and V-Tech. Both companies have lots of different toys or systems that you can choose from that are, for the most part, pretty reasonably priced. If your child is just starting and is still learning the phonics sounds, a toy that you should consider is the LeapFrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet Set. You really can’t go wrong with this super popular toy, it’s cheap, it really does teach kids their sounds, and it is a significant first step to learning to read.

If your kids know their sounds and you are looking for something a little more complex to help get them reading, you might want to consider the super popular LeapFrog LeapReader Reading and Writing System. People love this system, but the only drawback is that you have to keep buying books for it.

 

photo credit: cuellar via photopin cc

photo credit: John-Morgan via photopin cc