Reading Eggs Review

Several of my friends with pre-kindergarteners have been talking about teaching their kids to read.  I shared with them a program that was a lifesaver with Reef: readingeggs.com. 

Reading Eggs is a phonics and sight word program with 120 lessons to work through, including tests after every 10 lessons.  As the child completes mini-lessons within each lesson, he earns eggs to spend on games and avatar accessories later.  At the end of each lesson, an egg hatches and reveals what creature the child has earned, usually a funny combination of 2 animals beginning with the same letter.  This program worked wonders for Reef when we hit a major roadblock to his reading, and we've already started Jonas on it.
Reading Eggs retails for $75 for a 12-month subscription or $49.95 for a 6-month subscription.  If you add a second child, his subscription would be 1/2 off.  The company also sends renewal coupons as your expiration approaches. 
The Reading Eggs company also offers several learning apps and a program called Reading Eggspress for older readers (it is included for free with your readingeggs.com subscription).  A math program call Apple Seeds is in the works, and we're pretty excited to give that a try too.

This is Jonas doing his lesson.  Lachlan (age 3) likes to watch, and I can tell he is picking up some stuff already!  Even Poppy (age 22 months) was repeating the words and letter sounds today!

How we've used the program:  Reef did one lesson daily in Kindergarten until he finished the 120 lessons.  He also got to spend about 20 minutes "buying" games with his eggs.  Jonas is working the program now.  He gets to do a lesson after reading a Bob book with me about 3 times a week.  We will increase to daily in the fall when we start "real" kindergarten.  He just discovered the games today and is super-excited!
Reef has also done a little bit in the Reading Eggspress section for older readers.  He still finds this area a little difficult.  The "books" to read are pretty long for reading on the computer screen, and most of the games are a little over his head still.  We will probably give it another go in 2nd grade.

Pros: This program is really fun and has worked so well for our family.  It's simple enough that even Jonas (in pre-k) can work the program without much assistance from me.  It works!  The game incentives are enough to keep my kids trying when it gets tough.

Cons:  There really aren't many for this program, in my opinion!  $75 for the year seems a little much, but for us, it has been totally worth it.  I wish there wasn't such a gap between the end of the Reading Eggs program and the Reading Eggspress program, too.

I would (and have!) recommend this to my friends, and  my 2 boys have given it 2 thumbs up!