My 5-year-old daughter, Kayla, is usually pretty interested in reading—she'll pick up a book here and there, but sometimes gets distracted. In terms of her reading skill, she's right at grade level, but I wanted to know she'd be entering first grade next year with confidence and be able to keep up the pace. It's hard to stay on top of all this, especially when I come home after a long day. I want to help her, but I'm not a teacher, and I'm not always sure how to approach teaching sight words. And to be honest, I'm usually exhausted by the end of the day. Another mom at school told me about HOMER Reading, a learn-to-read program for kids. She explained that the program caters to kids ages 2-8 and taps into their specific interests to teach them the fundamentals of literacy. I was instantly intrigued at the thought of Kayla learning through topics she's actually interested in.
Our experience with HOMER started by answering a short questionnaire, where I told them all about Kayla's interests and determined her reading level. The fun part was picking what she likes best, which Kayla was eager to help me with. (She picked princesses, outer space, fairy tales, and sports!) I also answered questions about things like how well she's able to recognize words and how well she can hear sounds associated with certain letters. In just a few short moments, HOMER created a personalized program for my daughter to help her with the basics of forming words, spelling short words, learning new sight words, and more.
Kayla's first days with the app were exciting to watch. I introduced it to her as a game, and since the stories and lessons were bright, fun, and interactive, she hardly knew it was a learning program. She learned to pronounce words in a game called "Tap the Mat", and she was even able to record herself reading and play it back.
The best part: HOMER Reading has been shown to increase early reading scores by 74% with just 15 minutes per day, but Kayla is loving it so much, she usually ends up asking me to "play" for longer. I love that it's guilt free screen time, unlike the other games she used to play for hours on end. Plus, it helped me as a busy mom, since I don't always have time to sit down with her after a long day to work on reading lessons.
As Kayla gets ready for 1st grade next year, I feel much better about her skills than I did before using HOMER. She's been exposed to the fundamentals of reading—letter recognition, phonics, sight words, and more—so much so that her kindergarten teacher noticed and shared that she had made great progress! She also told me that she noticed how much Kayla's confidence has improved. She feels more comfortable tackling assignments and volunteers so much more in class than she would before. That, above all, is a win for me.
UPDATE: The Homer team is offering a special Limited Time Offer to our readers! Follow this link and get a 30 day free trial!
