Review: Reading Kingdom

In January I received a 1 year subscription to Reading Kingdom to use with my first grade daughter in exchange for my honest review of the product. Reading Kingdom is an online reading program designed to teach children to read and write up to a third grade reading level. Reading Kingdom goes well beyond phonics by teaches six skills necessary for successful reading.



Reading Kingdom was created by Dr. Marion Blank, an expert in literacy.

When students begin Reading Kingdom they take a Skills Survey designed to place your student in the appropriate level of the program. From their they move on through the different levels of the program.

A subscription to Reading Kingdom will cost your family $199.99 for an entire year, or you can choose $19.99 per month. But before you buy, there is a 30 day free trial.

I'd like to share our experience with Reading Kingdom.

Because Luci previously had very little experience with keyboarding, the program suggested she start with Keyboarding and Mouse Training. This took just a short time to complete and then she was moved into the Pre-Reading Level. I was a little disappointed in this since she has been doing well with her first grade reading program.

In the Pre-Reading level there are two components: Seeing Sequences and Letter Land.

In Seeing Sequences kids are shown a group of letters and are then asked to select those letters, in sequential order, from another group of letters.

 In Letter Land kids are shown an onscreen keyboard and are asked to click on a set of letters or symbols.

After doing that correctly they are asked to click the letters on the actual keyboard. This portion of the program proved extremely frustrating for Luci. There is not enough time allowed for children to locate the keys on either the on-screen keyboard or the actual keyboard. By the time she located the correct key to click or type she was being corrected and told how to do it. Luci did not enjoy Reading Kingdom for this reason.

The Pre-Reading program is supposed to take 4 to 6 weeks to complete, however Luci has been using the program 3-4 days per week since mid-January and has yet to advance past this level. She is currently at the fourth, and final, level of both Seeing Sequences and Letter Land, but I regret that we didn't get a chance to get into the actual reading part of the program before this review was due.  I even spent the last couple of days doing her lessons myself trying to see if I could get past that point. Because of this, I am not able to give you our opinion of anything beyond the Pre-Reading level.

While our experience with Reading Kingdom was not a positive one, that has not been the case for all of my fellow crew mates. You can read other reviews about Reading Kingdom here. Every family is different and what works for one may not work for another.

I received this product for free as a member of TOS Homeschool Crew. My opinions are solely my own and are not influenced in any way. I am not being reimbursed in any way for this review. What I have shared is simply our experience, your mileage may vary.