Talking Fingers

Say, I've got something to Say....
No, can't stand in my way...
I talk and my fingers obey..
I can read, I can read, I can write, I can write, I can type whenever I say, YES!
~~ Read, Write &  Learn Jingle

Is your child learning to read, struggling with phonics or just needing some review? Then Read, Write and Type from Talking Fingers might be just what you need. This program uses your child's eyes, ears, mouth and fingers to learn their phonics while learning to type. This program is for K-3 or you could use it with children who are late readers. The Home edition is good for 5 years.

The program uses two talking hands to rescue letters from the bad guy. Each lesson introduces you to a new letter and it's sound and the child has to recognize if the pictures have that sound at the beginning, middle or end of the word. Then they move on to the playground where they practice typing to get all the way across to get to the story tree. At the story tree the child types a few short phrases that make up a story, once the phrases are typed there is a short animation of the story they made. If they make to many mistakes they are sent back to the beginning of the section.

My daughter (and her sisters who aren't doing the program) really like the jingle at the beginning of the program. Every day Alaina gets on the computer for Talking Finger time we all have a short intermission from school to sing along with the jingle. They also really like the email portion of the program. They can send and receive emails from kids throughout the world. This helps them with their typing, spelling and reading skills. You could also use this as a little geography lesson, by showing them where the email came from on a map.

There were a few times during the program that my daughter could not hear the word correctly that she was suppose to type. There is a pair lips to click on to hear the word or words again, but sometimes they just weren't clear enough for her to hear. The other thing that frustrated her was that when she learned how to type capital letters, she would sometimes hit the caps lock and then the next letter would not type because it was not suppose to be a capital. It never told her what she was doing wrong. She knew she was typing the correct letter, just not realizing that the caps lock was on.

While Alaina was using this program we did not change her regular curriculum phonics order to match this one. It was good review of the sounds she already knew and when we came to a new sound in her school books she would say "I already know this sound from Talking Fingers." It boosted her confidence to think she already knew something in her school book.

I think this is a very good program for younger kids to learn to type & recognize their sounds while having fun. Talking Fingers was very generous to us, they gave us a one-year subscription to use with my 5 year old daughter. She has learned a lot in the month we have been using it & we plan on finishing the program.

Wow! You can get a FIVE-year subscription to Read, Write & Type online program for $35 per child, there is a discount for multiple children.  The program can also be purchased in CD form for $79 here.  You can check out other products from Talking Fingers here. You can sample the first eight of lessons for free.
You can check out what other TOS Crew members had to say about Read, Write & Type here.

As a member of the TOS Crew I received a one-year subscription to Read, Write & Type to use in our homeschool in exchange for my honest review.