READING MAGIC 2 Deluxe

This app focuses on words that use consonant blends. The app uses about 300 words broken down into 23 categories. This app is all about showing how words are made up of sounds. This app shows how to construct words from sounds and how to deconstruct words into sounds. This app has three different reading games as advertised. The first game involves, what reading experts call blending. Children take separate individual sounds and blend them together into a single word. The second game is what reading experts call segmenting. Children take a word and break it down into its individual separate sounds. The third game is a straightforward reading activity. For both the reading and the blending games, the picture is hidden, which I really like. In my years of working with children on beginning reading skills, I have seen children relying a lot on picture guessing. This app helps children practice the basic reading skills with the pictures being used to help the children check their work, rather than distracting them into picture guessing. I like how the pictures will say what word they are when touched. This eliminates any confusion as to what the word is. This app has had an update to its interface since I first used it. The interface is nice and friendly. This app has helped my children build their word reading skills. It has helped them to understand the concept of consonant blends.

The concept of this app is superb. The approach is good, the app is well set out with very clear instructions. My reservation in giving this more stars is the clarity of the recordings. Some words do not sound particularly clear when replayed. This app would be truly enhanced if the words were written on screen, and there was the ability to replay a whole word as well as the broken word sound bites.

This is my second purchase. Those who like reading magic 1, this app will be their second choice. It's layout still the same, but their content are getting more advanced. I suggest to add some sound effect and explanation to those flash card. Beside in learning the correct pronunciation, children must appreciate the meaning of those words.