Help your grandkids to be good readers.
By Shayne Packer
According to a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy, 32 million adults in the U.S. can’t read. That’s 14 percent of the population. 21 percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th-grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates can’t read.
We grandparents know that one of the secrets to success in school and life is to be an early and proficient reader. The illiteracy statistics are shocking and we don’t want our grandkids falling into a life with poor reading skills. What can we do? Here are two solutions:
Fun Pre-Reading Apps for Grandchildren
By Shane Packer
DaisyQuest $2.99
Dragon! Wizard! Treasures! Fluent early readers first learn to distinguish sounds before focusing on letter recognition. DaisyQuest is a stimulating iPhone/iPad educational adventure game that teaches children sound recognition. Children play this enchanting game in search of Daisy, the friendly dragon. They are taught by a magical wizard.
DaisyQuest teaches phonological awareness (sounds in words). This app focuses on beginning, middle, ending and rhyming sounds. Children are taught to listen to and recognize the sounds that make up words. DaisyQuest is beneficial for non-readers, pre-readers, and struggling readers alike. This award-winning app features 17 high-quality scenes and professional speech. It also tracks of different players.
Phonological awareness is a combination of auditory skills: listening, rhyming, recognizing beginning, middle and last sounds, blending sounds together to make a word and then segmenting a word into its individual sounds. These pre-reading and early reading skills have been proven through extensive research to be part of a fluent reader’s skill set. Phonological awareness is pre-phonics, and is strictly auditory, with no letter identification used. Children focus on the sounds that make words—not the letters. Letters are learned later with phonics.
Great readers naturally acquire phonological awareness skills and struggling readers or new readers can be taught these skills directly. Research has shown that learning these skills dramatically improves a child’s reading ability.
Download DaisyQuest
Endless Alphabet $6.99
Continue on the road to reading success with this delightfully interactive phonics app. Children will have a blast learning their ABC’s and building vocabulary with the adorable Endless monsters. Each word features an interactive puzzle game with talking letters and a short animation illustrating the definition. Before you know it, your child will be using words like gargantuan and cooperate!
Features: Over 50 words to learn and play with. Delightful animations teach children the definitions of the words in a fun way. Word game teaches children letters. Endless Alphabet was designed with your children in mind – there are no high scores, failures, limits or stress. Your children can interact with the app at their own pace.
Download Endless Alphabet
Author Bio
Shayne Packer develops iPhone and iPad apps. His passion is enabling grandparents to connect with their grandchildren using the latest technologies. Shayne is a husband, father of 5, and grandfather of 13.
