Learning’s a Buzz with the Reader Bee App! – Review

My kids are obsessed with learning apps right now. I try to minimize the amount of electronics, including television, that they’re involved with throughout the day but watching what they learn when they play with a tablet is kind of amazing to me. The minute I had the opportunity to review Reader Bee, I jumped on that!

Reader Bee and the Story Tree and Reader Bee’s First Story Maker are two apps that combine to make one excellent learning tool for your child. I didn’t feel it would be right to write this review without getting some input from my girls about how much they liked their new “Bee game” and boy, they talked forever about it. Before playing the game, I asked my girls to describe everything about the app to me and be sure to mention their favorite parts. First of all, I couldn’t get them to stop raving about the content of each of the stories. They wanted to tell me, in detail, about every single story and why it was such a good story, plus which cool things the app did when they clicked on the bold words.

You can alternate between Pre-K and K and my 4.5 year old said that her favorite feature is in the Kindergarten version, where you tap a timer and type as many three letter words as you can. I’ll admit that I played this over and over again myself. It’s pretty fun! Reader Bee  refers to letters by one letter sound only (such as short or long sounds) so as not to confuse the child. Early readers struggle with all of the information we throw at them, so it’s great to tackle the letters this way. Another thing my younger daughter said is, “I don’t know how to read so I like that it will read me the story and then I can turn the page.” When you click on the small bold words, the narrator repeats them and something adorable happens, like a HEN falling from the ceiling.

My older daughter also really loves the timed spelling game but she said her favorite is where there is a small word and she touches each letter in the honey comb while the letter says its sound aloud, and then she swipes the whole word to hear it pronounced. Reader Bee sets the listing of letters up in the daisy so that they are in good order for blending sounds and working especially with three letter words. Another game in the app allows you to trace a letter, then drag it to a thing that begins with that letter, such as matching the “R” to the “ring”.

Your child can tap the question mark in the top corner for clues to any of the games, which is extremely helpful. My favorite thing about the Reader Bee app is that a star appears on the menu for each game they complete, so I can keep up with their progress.

I think that it’s so important for learning at this age to be fun and Reader Bee is so perfect for my kids. Having bright pictures, fun stories, and such sensible ways of teaching new readers, this is absolutely an app that I would recommend to any friend with children. I would be interested in any app made by the Reader Bee makers, actually. I’d love to see something for my oldest daughter as she grows, maybe math too! A+++!

Buy:
You can purchase Reader Bee and the Story Tree for $1.99 and Reader Bee’s First Story Maker for $0.99 on the iTunes Apple store!

Connect:
Follow Reader Bee on Facebook and Twitter to follow their latest news, specials, and more!

*Tiffany received compensation to facilitate this review. All opinions are those of reviewer only.