Free complete phonics program!

The people behind "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons"  have created an interactive computer program, Funnix.  They are offering this program free for the month of January!  This does not seem to be a temporary trial, but the full, two-year program.  This program was wrote by Siegfried Engelmann and he says on the website, "We've been trying for years to do things that make schools successful, particularly with young kids and lower performers....Why not make the electronic package available to anybody who needs it? It doesn't cost us much to do it, and it could help in a small way to counteract the effects of bankrupt schools and dismal times."



I have downloaded and installed this so that I could check into it before I recommended it.  I really like the theory behind the 100 Easy Lessons book, but it was a little boring for my kids.  Add color, stories, and interactive games, and this becomes really tempting!  Especially when it is free.

This is not something that you sit your kids down in front of  (thank goodness!) but instead you are running the mouse and observing, while the children listen and respond to the program.  They have to talk, read, and point to the screen.  There seems to be a lot of 'introductory' type material here, so with my kids who have already learned a lot of phonics, we are going to skip to lesson 10 and maybe even later.

If you have never read one of Siegfried Engelmann's books, you do need to know that material is presented rather quickly and in a different order then most phonics programs. You can go to this page to learn more about the team behind this program.   So far, this looks like something I will really like, and I think it will go great along with the Progressive Phonics books we are using now.  This has quite a bit of material in it so even if you have early readers who are past the phonics stage, there may be something here for them in the form of sight words and practice.

Check it out at the Funnix site!