Our reviewers evaluate products and services based on unbiased research. Top Consumer Reviews may earn money when you click on a link. Learn more about our process.
Wednesday, October 4th
As you might guess, Kiz Phonics is a phonics-driven program intended to teach children to read. The company is based out of Hong Kong and was originally created to teach English to non-native speakers. However, it is now used to teach any child how to read.
Pay for six months or a year
The website has a variety of membership plans to pick from for whatever your needs may be. A single child for 6 months is $39 and 1 year is $59. For up to 10 users, 6 months is $69 and 1 year is $99. For up to 20 users, 6 months is $99 and 1 year is $159. These plans do not automatically renew when they expire so make sure to pay for another if you are still interested.
Plenty of free resources
Upon clicking around on the website though, we discovered a fair amount of the content is actually free to use without paying for a membership. Kiz Phonics allows customers to try 3-5 items in each category before paying. If you are interested at all in this program, we strongly encourage you to watch the tour video provided at the top of the website. It gives an extremely thorough overview of what Kiz Phonics has to offer.
Variety of materials used to teach
Kiz phonics uses a wide variety of materials to teach children how to read. They have games, songs, worksheets, apps, cards, charts and assessments. The website is set up with the ability to search for your desired level in two ways. The first is by grade level which ranges from pre-k through 2nd grade. The other way to search is by material and you can pick out just a song or worksheet and jump around as you see fit.
Free materials to explore
Kiz Phonics was set up as a standalone way to teach your child to read or for use as a supplement to other programs. As you explore the free materials, it is worth noting that they tell parents and educators what to do with each item whether it is a song, a worksheet or an activity. It guides you to be able to teach your child and add on to the materials they provide you. Teaching your child to read with this program requires a hands-on approach which makes sense as it is a full curriculum.
Variety of materials and activities
As stated previously, they offer materials out of a variety of categories. There are worksheets designed by level, flashcards and charts to print out for children or to decorate classrooms and 21 phonics stories created specifically for this program. There are also digital media materials included. Phonics games are for practicing phonetic awareness, reading sentences and word games. Phonics video lessons allow the child to see and hear phonetic sounds, sentence structure, and word blending. Finally, there are listening materials with mp3 and word songs to tie everything together.
Help accelerate children's reading
Most of the reviews about Kiz Phonics state the variety and detail given has assisted in advancing their children's reading ability. The program is fun and keeps children entertained and engaged while learning. The biggest downfall to this program is that if you need assistance, you have to contact the help desk in Hong Kong. Thankfully we didn't see many reviews stating the need to contact the company.
Give it a try for free
Overall, we feel Kiz Phonics is a well put together program for teaching children to read. They have covered many different options for teaching and the website is well organized. Since you can try them for free, we suggest checking them out and seeing if it is a good fit for you and your child. The cost overall is higher than others, so you will want to make sure it is for you before committing to the program full time.
The most common tools used to teach literacy to children are phonics and sight words. Phonics tends to be an easier skill for children as they are able to sound out the letters to create a word. Sight words can be trickier because they are words that just need memorized as they do not follow the rules when it comes to reading the English language.
Learn to read programs can be helpful for children as they tend to be game-based. Children love to play games and they do not necessarily realize they are learning. When looking at a learn to read program, you can expect it to offer some type of fun activity for children to do. Some programs go above and beyond this with other school subjects being covered or worksheets to print out.
Also, spelling can be an important part of learning to read. This helps children find patterns in words and how to read multiple that follow the same rule. An example is if you can spell light and know that the "gh" is silent, then you can read might, tight, and so on.
As you consider different learn to read programs, there are a few key aspects you'll find to be most important:
To help your child learn to read, TopConsumerReviews.com has evaluated and ranked the top programs available today. We're confident that this information will make it easy and even fun!
Select any 2 Learn to Read Programs to compare them head to head