Eggy Phonics 1

My 7 year old has been playing this as he's learning to read. The app works on one word at a time. First the student hears the word and chooses the correct picture (such as they hear "cat", then choose the cat from three different pictures). They repeat this five times. Next they spell the word by dragging the letters into the correct order. Only the correct tiles are available to choose from, but in random order. This is repeated three times. Next is bubble letters. There are bubbles containing different letters floating around and again the student must spell the word. However, there are several different letters available and the student must choose the right letters in the correct order. Finally, the student must "write" the word. The word is spelled out and the student is shown the correct way to write each letter, then given the opportunity to "write" each letter. Between each level of a word, different things are shown to reward a student, and keep their attention, while the app switches modes. Sometimes it's a colorful, five-bar xylophone that the student can make fun, pleasant noise with. Other times its a few colorful bouncy balls that bounce around, multiplying as rapidly as the student can poke at them. For as old as my son is, the first level, which is tapping a picture of the word, is a little redundant. However it would likely be better appreciated by the younger, preschool aged student. Everything else, though, is just what he needs to keep practicing his reading.

My children enjoyed the app well enough, though I have been spoiled by the incredible production value of other apps and felt the graphics of this game were a bit lacking. That being said, the graphics are relatively insignificant. What would make this app far better would be increased control over the games via parent settings. Some things are just annoying: having a child identify a picture of a spoken word five times is repetitive and has nothing to with reading. Others are infuriating for a reading teacher such as myself: why must games (and here Eggy Phonics is not alone) persist in speaking the letter names of the letters as children spell words? Showing a picture of a CVC word, providing letter tiles (phoneme tiles) and three blank phoneme spaces to place said tiles is fantastic. It allows children to segment the word orally, think through which tiles belong in which spaces, etc. Telling them that they are looking at "see" "ay" "tee" just as they are working through the proper order of the SOUNDS /k/ /a/ /t/ is pointless and harmful to the process. The sounds are repeated back to the students once they have placed them in the proper order, but even here there are flaws: the letter "t" should have less of a vowel sound attached to it. It is impossible to eliminate it completely from an isolated phoneme or sound, but to call it "TUH" isn't necessary either. I've seen this done far better in other phonics apps. If the app designers must persist in calling the phoneme tiles by their letter names rather than phonetic sounds, at least give us the option to turn it off!