Reading Is For The Birds
Reading Raven is a great app for developing reading skills
If you are like me, you want your child’s screen-time to mean something. I love games as much as the next person, but my son is three. There is a lot he still has to learn about the world. I’d rather he be learning playfully than wasting time and developing bad habits.
So, enter Reading Raven, an app for kids aged 3-7 that takes a phonics-based interactive and multi-sensory game approach to learning to read. It engages kids through game-based learning that uses hearing, sight, and touch to teach fundamentals of reading. The app is customizable, so that it grows with your child as they develop new skills. However, your child will eventually outgrow it by actually learning to read, which I consider a good thing.
Game play is at the child’s own pace, and follows the Reading Raven through a number of game scenarios and environments. Different mini-games develop reading skills, alphabet recognition, and writing/small-motor coordination. At the end of different levels, the child receives virtual stickers that can be used to decorate Raven’s home. Thus, the game promotes learning through goal-oriented behaviors.
Unfortunately, for Android users, like me, there is no Android version at this time. Also, for Apple users, if you have multiple devices, the game does not sync across devices, which means that there is little consistency for your child when playing the game across them. And, unless you are monitoring your child’s progress directly, there is no way to really chart their progress through the game.
All told, the final verdict for me comes from how my child engages with the game. And, he loves it. He’s learning, and having fun doing it, which tells me that this is a very worthwhile app.
Hear more about the app, and what my app-rating partner, Stef Tousignant, had to say about it in our latest episode of Smart App Moms.
