ABeCeDarian- A TOS Review

A couple of months ago Brother Bear asked me to teach him how to read. He told me that he wanted to be able to read his LEGO comics all by himself. Needless to say, I was super excited when I found out we had the opportunity to review the Interactive A Workbook by ABeCeDarian Company.  I have to admit, at first, I was a little skeptical on how they taught reading. Brother Bear had never been interested in learning letters or their sounds before. I felt like just jumping in might be too much for him. I am so glad that I pushed my worries aside and tried it any way! We received a digital copy of the Teacher Manual-A as well. I printed mine off and placed it in a 3-ring-binder. I wanted to be able to bookmark and highlight the parts that I needed to remember. I spent 3 or 4 days reading the beginning of the teacher's manual learning about how the program works. There was a lot of information. 

I attempted to open the workbook on my laptop. The first thing that I noticed was that there wasn't any sound at all. I was a bit confused as to how this was supposed to work. I skipped ahead to lesson 1 to try and work through it on my own so that hopefully I could better direct Brother Bear.

I realized after a few moments that this would be easier for Brother Bear on a touch screen like an iPad. I did however get a better understanding on how this program was supposed to work. I was still skeptical, but I was holding out hope!

I got Brother Bear set up on the iPad to go through his lessons. He loved it! It was amazing how quickly he caught on! He wanted to learn to read. 

I took this after he finished up with lesson 4. I was shocked. This is a child that has never cared about learning letters or how to read. I am not even sure that he can say his alphabet all the way through. I know for a fact that he doesn't know all the names of the letters that he is sounding out in this video:

We worked through about 2 lessons a week. I had him do some extra practice to help cement the new words.  I purchased him some magnet letters that he could use to spell out the words below his flash cards. I printed these flash cards off of the ABeCeDarian website. There are also letters that you can print off, but Brother Bear likes to touch. I thought these would work better for him.

Overall, this was a great fit for Brother Bear. He is learning to read and he is enjoying the process. I call this a win-win!!!

There are a few things that I wish I could have changed. First off, the interactive workbook was on the ABeCeDarian website. I had to log us into the website and load the workbook every single time! This could sometimes take up to 5 minutes. I think this would work so much better as an app. I had to make sure that I opened it and had it ready before calling him to do his lesson. 

Second, everything is on the iPad or computer including the writing practice. I really feel like it would be more beneficial to have the writing pages available as pdfs. I tried to let Brother Bear 'write' on the iPad, but Daddy T and I felt like it wasn't the same as him actually learning to write. In the end, I printed off some blank lined paper and wrote the letters and words for him to practice.

Overall, this is a great program. We will continue to use it to teach Brother Bear to read, and I will probably use it when Sister is ready as well.  I love the method that ABeCeDarian uses to teach them to read. It is proving to be very successful in our house! 

You can find ABeCeDarian on Facebook.

You can find more reviews from other members of the Crew by clicking the link below: