“I participated in an Influencer Activation on behalf of Influence Central for Rosetta Stone. I received a product and a promotional item to thank me for participating.”
One question we started getting even before G was born is, “Are you going to home school?” Although this question is still a bit premature, we have been thinking about the answer to it for quite some time because G is such a great learner – she truly is very teachable. But the one thing that concerns me about homeschooling during the early years is teaching someone to read. I don’t remember learning to read, I just know I knew how to do it by the time I got to kindergarten. And I have no experience with teaching someone to read. It seems so daunting to me! The English language is VERY complicated! So, I am always looking for all the help I can get. We already are on top of the reading-every-day-with-your-kid thing, since G and W are book obsessed; but I know that is not sufficient to teach them to read the words themselves. When I was given the opportunity to try out a program for kids (preschoolers and early elementary), Rosetta Stone’s Kids Reading Program, to teach her the building blocks of reading, I was so excited!
I was offered a subscription to Rosetta Stone’s Kids Reading Program in exchange for my honest opinions. It is designed to help little ones (ages 3-7) jump-start their learning by developing basic literacy skills. The program is done entirely online and requires constant supervision and interaction of the parent – don’t go thinking it is an independent activity for your kid!
But it is really cute, simple, and interactive for the little ones. The program recommends that our age group shoot for 10-15 minutes of play/screen time a few times a week. So the Kids Reading Program is not a huge commitment and it is self-led. G’s favorite part is the dancing characters when she gets an answer correct. She loves being correct!
We did run into a problem with the program when we came up against activities she does not want to do. There are four different categories of activities on each level: Ready, Set, Rhyme; Letter Match Up; Picture Sort; and Nursery Rhyme Time. G really liked doing the Picture Sort (a categorization activity) and Nursery Rhyme Time (a sequencing activity). And she liked the Letter Match up (an identification activity) at first, but it was honestly too simple for her to feel challenged and she got bored. The Ready, Set, Rhyme (a rhyme identification and sound activity) was the one she had the hardest time with and after a while she refused to do it entirely. Since the program requires that you do all the activities on a given level before moving on to another level; the road block was up and we have yet to get past it! She is teachable, but stubborn. She is simply not interested in doing the remaining activities in Ready, Set, Rhyme and Letter Match Up. We will likely give her some time away from the program and then return to it when she wants to.
I really like what we have done and seen with Rosetta Stone’s Kids Reading Program! We received a year’s subscription to the program, so I am sure we will return to do it for quite some time and will likely introduce W to it, as she gets older. It is obviously a good mix of challenging and fun for our 3-year-old. And I know these activities are truly helping with the building blocks of reading! If you are interested in checking it out, you can get a FREE demo for the first level of the program by clicking here.
