“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” – Margaret Fuller
As soon as kids enter kindergarten, they are expected to be reading the bare minimum. Since kids are exposed to technology long before they are exposed to kindergarten, you can use your smart devices to help your kids start with their reading skills. Needless to say, reading is a habit that needs to be cultivated. And the benefits of this one good habit are numerous and consistent but only experienced if children continue to work on the practice.
To begin with, here's a list of some apps that parents can use to help the younger kids start with their reading skills or work on them.
Epic!
As the name suggests, the app is exceptionally good. The app gives you access to 25,000 books with read-along technology, games, and more. With hands-on this tool, kids will never get bored reading stories of all kinds, learning phonics, and just playing, as kids should.
Sight Words Learning Games
An award-winning educational software publisher introduces Action Sight Words Games & Flash Cards for Reading Success. This app helps kids develop a grip over elementary words via reading and amazing educational games.
VocabularySpellingCity
For parents homeschooling their kids, the app will be of great use. Its features for planning and tracking make it picked by many. It is a quality reading tool to help kids learn to read. Parents can set up year-long word study playlists and activities to keep kids busy, focused, and constantly learning to read.
Writing Wizard - Kids Learn to Write Letters & Words
This is a highly customizable app that helps kids practise tracing letters, numbers, and words while learning letter names and phonetic sounds. Audio and visual prompts show kids exactly where to trace from the start of the letter to the finish. The tool helps your little one practice.
HOMER
The app is designed for kids between ages two to eight. It comes with age-appropriate tasks for each level and grows with your child, so they can start early as toddlers and keep the learning going into elementary school (and beyond).
Kids Reading Sight Words Lite
The approach of engaging the child in a story with a cute character will engage children in this fun play activity that also helps with the learning aspect of it. Kids can join the character Tammy, the frog on a journey through four exciting activities. Tammy hops from one screen to the next to learn and review commonly used English words from the list of 220 words along with your child. There are five levels of vocabulary for the child to learn and study.
EndlessReader
This would be your go if your kids loved the movie MonsterInc. The adorable monster characters will help kids learn to recognize important sight words crucial to early reading with puzzles and letters that come alive and show them exactly what word they spelt.
Bob Books Reading Magic #1
Children can use this app to read with phonic based interactive games. With a simple drag and drop interface, the app is easy to use even for kids as young as two years old.
The following awards speak for the likeability of the app:
- 2012 Parents Choice Approved
- Winner 2011 Editor's Choice Award, Children's Technology Review
- 15 Great Apps for Kids, Babble.com
- Parenting Magazine "Best App for Kids"
Kids Story Books Free
It is a great app for children to learn how to read simple words, place words in their correct position, identify objects, and more. Improve your kids' preschool reading skills with this fantastic Story Book game full of stories, songs, and narration!
Phonics and Reading I Lite
Students are engaged in letter recognition accompanied by charming animations. Phonics Flashcards follow up each lesson. Students learn at a natural pace. New words are introduced right after teaching the individual phonetic components. The student then reads complete stories accompanied by the beautiful original colour illustrations.
Learn To Read Monkey Junior
Monkey Junior offers a comprehensive reading program for kids with multiple reading games which will help them learn to read and expand their vocabulary. With a wide range of reading for kids courses (and growing), you will find suitable lessons and reading activities that suit your child's current reading skills. In Monkey Junior, children can learn six languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Russian, and Vietnamese.
Learn To Read With Tommy Turtle
This game allows pre-schoolers to blend sounds into words, read and form simple words, identify spoken words, and learn word families. Divided into six sections, it is easy for kids to enjoy while learning step by step. Tommy Turtle is a delightful game that invites preschool-aged children to blend sounds into words, read and form simple words, identify spoken words, and learn word families.
Booksy: learn to read platform
This app works as learning to read platform for young students. Kids can tap on any word to have it read out loud. Not just the whole page, but the words they find difficulty with. Also, the Quizzes feature helps cement reading comprehension. The app has been featured in the New York Times: Learn to Read with Tablets article!
Reading Rainbow
Launched in 1983, it was the most-watched PBS program in the classroom featuring a library of over 150 programs. A free app from one of the most loved kids shows back in time. The app offers a huge library of digital books that kids can access and skill up while reading stories they will love.
Bookful
Using augmented reality, the app brings books to life. You can simply select a book and choose between reading or play modes. With this app, you not only read books but can get it narrated to you or zoom in to see the animation up-close and swipe pages to go forward in the story. This interactive play mode lets children complete simple activities like collecting cabbage in a basket and learning the play way, enabling fun and easy ways to read on any device.
Goodreads
If you read books, you'd know about Goodreads. Probably one of the first platform to bring readers from the world together. It the largest site to get book recommendations and help people find and share the books they love. Users can review books, build a community of readers with similar choices, read reviews and opinions on different books and more. The best part about the platform is that the user can keep track of the books they've read and the books they want to read. You can set targets to read as many books as you like in limited time, say a month or so. Without a doubt, GoodReads can be called as the search engine for books!
Renaissance Accelerated Reader
To create a reading culture, the platform guides, engages and helps children grow in their skill development. The tool offers personalized goals for children to help them stay focused on reading growth's key factors. From more than 200,000 titles, the tool recommends individual readings to the user based on their interest and reading levels. User can select their preferred titles as well. Apart from turning "just reading" to "High-Quality Reading"; the platform facilitates practice sessions enabling students to work on their comprehension, vocabulary, literacy skills and more.
Stones2Milestones
The platform is dedicated to children's reading skill and assessment. With their innovative approach and different products, they are working to build a nation of readers. The core concept is to help children inculcate reading habits and make it enjoyable and effortless for children as young as three years old. They offer two models; one for individual children at home known as Freadom and for schools, called Wings of Words.
Freadom is an adaptive mobile reading app that helps children develop the will and skill to read in English. Whereas, Wings Of Words is a pedagogical program which is instructional to help kids build will and skill to read in English from the age 3 to grade 3.
Comixology
This venture by Amazon is a dream come true for the old school people who know the joy of reading comics. The app is a library of digital comics, graphic novels and manga. The app has a similar interface to that of a kindle. It can be accessed on all smart devices. User has to purchase the comic in-app, and you'll have it for life. With more than 75,00 articles on your tips, this is a paradise for the comic lovers.
Keep adding to the list in the comments section below!
