Hooked on Phonics Learning

Overall, the Hooked On Phonics app is a really good tool for emergent readers and also pre-readers. My son gets good use out of this app and it does provide adequate feedback where your child will likely need to revisit based off of how well they do on the games. That being said, one of the issues that I believe is problematic for the learning skills of an emergent reader, is the fact that visually you cannot differentiate between a capital I and a lowercase L within this software. Establish readers don’t have difficulty with this because they’re able to gather the context clues surrounding the word to be able to interpret the information in front of them. An emergent reader is still building the decoding skills, and therefore can’t tell the difference between the two letters. It would be beneficial if software developers would adjust this, so that emergent readers did not have the confusion of trying to pronounce words with I’s that look like L’s and the readers wouldn’t be faced with the challenge of trying to pronounce words that do not exist within the English language.

I am well aware of how kids are being taught to read in schools... and it’s all WRONG (listen to the ‘EDUCATE’ podcast, and you will see just how bad it really is!) Anyways, when my son was about 16 months I introduced him to Hooked on Phonics. This. Changed. Everything. By 19 months he could recite his ABC’s. By 21 months he would rearrange the fridge magnets with the entire alphabet. By 24 months he would SPELL things to me like when he wanted water, he would literally SPELL out ‘W-A-T-E-R’ as well as other things like ‘ I LOVE YOU’. Today, he is now 3.5yrs old, my child is reading level 5 books. There is not a single word that he cannot decipher. He isn’t just reading, he is actually COMPREHENDING the text. I encourage parents to use HOOKED ON PHONICS. It is also critical to understand how schools are teaching kids to read (see podcast ‘EDUCATE’ on NPR.. it is an award winning podcast,) & to look at the actual SCIENCE behind how children are learning to read. Hooked on Phonics is absolutely vital in a child’s journey to becoming a good reader. I cannot express to parents just how important it is to teach your child PHONICS first and foremost. I suppose you don’t need to take my word for it, just see the science for yourself!!

We have so enjoyed watching our now almost-5 year old son become a reader during quarantine using only this App and the related practice packs mailed to us. He went from reading words like ‘cat’ and ‘mat’ in March to reading full stories from our shelf, and he is loving the freedom it gives him to explore books in a new way. We have used the program inconsistently over the last 5 months depending on our family’s bandwidth, but it has been easy to move at our own pace and review areas where my son was not quite confident by revisiting sections of the App. He loves the songs (and so does his little bro), and they like the silly animals and their antics, particularly the rhino on the bulldozer and the strange but funny meerkat. There was a period where we saw problems with the App loading, and we reached out to customer service and they told us the developer team was working on it. This most recent update fixed any issues we were having and all seems to be in order. We can’t wait to finish the program as we start homeschooling more officially in September! We’re on the beginning of first grade now, so it won’t be long!