Learning to Read with Reading Kingdom – Introduction

 A little background about us: I am American, my husband is German and our family lives in Austria. My children are learning German in the “real world” and English at home, from me. My children’s language and sentence structure flow in a realm that I consider “Germish” –  a mix of English and German.

Henri, the little guy learning to read, is almost 5 years old and LOVES to play on the computer. I don’t mind computer games, as long as they are not affecting his mood or ability to concentrate on other tasks. Most days, I allow him to play on the computer for a couple of hours, and try not to allow it to get out of control (a.k.a. turning into a small computer zombie).

Back to Reading Kingdom…

The program is new for both Henri and I. We listened to the instructions for the Skills Evaluation, which clearly state that the child is to do the work without coaching or help from the parent or teacher. Why? So that the program can accurately assess exactly what the child knows in order to best present future learning materials. I can honestly say it was very hard for me not to help, and I struggled but managed to keep my comments and remarks for after each task was complete. The program leaves time for congratulations,”way to gos,” and high-fives.

Henri was able to concentrate and mostly understand all of the tasks – he did need the assistance provided by the program to understand just what was required for a couple of the different games. He also purposely messed up at least once, just to see what happened.

Toward the end of the assessment, Henri did get a little bit bored – he wanted to play his usual computer games and skip all of the reading. It was OK, though, because the test portion was complete right at the end of his attention span.

As a mother who is very excited to see her child learning to read, I am looking forward to working with him in the program tomorrow. I will be explaining the system to my husband so that he, too, can get involved.

I will be checking back in every other week to give updates about my thoughts on the program as we go through it.

If you would like to check out Reading Kingdom’s program for yourself, please visit them at http://www.readingkingdom.com/