Read, Write, and Type by Talking Fingers is a program that does just what it sounds like.
Your children will start off learning the sound of a letter, while at the same time learning how to properly type that letter on the keyboard.
They will get a chance to put their typing skills to use a little more while typing more than one letter at a time.
Here is an example of how it works. If your child learned the letter T, they would have learned it as the sound "t", not the letter.
Then the computer would tell your child to type "t" and show them how to properly type it.
After they have that down, your child would move on to the next step which involves looking at pictures and saying the word to see if it has that particular sound. Sometimes they ask if it begins with that sound, or sometimes they ask if it ends with that sound, etc.
Then they will really put their typing into practice by typing something like this:
t, space, t, space, t, space. (Space is the space bar.)
It gets a little harder too, such as:
cat, space, cat, space, cat, space
a cat, space, a cat, space, a cat, space,
a fat cat, space, a fat cat space, a fat cat, space.
You get the idea.
My son that used this is 5 and it is a little too difficult for him, so we haven't been able to fully use it yet, so I can not completely give you the best overall description of this program.
I can tell you about what we have been able to do though. Sound good?
Basically the program goes pretty much as I described above.
There is this little green guy, who looks like a slime ball, that gets angry when you get the answers right, and he is trying to eat the letters.
My son doesn't like this. He says the green guy is a scary monster who tries to eat all of the letters! lol
I think it can be a little scary, and honestly, when I first logged on to get this going, I wasn't too pleased to see that either.
It is not something that I would normally buy. I don't really like to have scary looking things on the stuff that my kids do on the computer, or anywhere else for that matter.
I think the concept is really good however, and I love that it combines reading, writing, and typing in one program.
I do think that your child needs to be already acquainted with the sounds because this program moves really fast and expects the child to be able to type and spell multiple letter words really soon.
If your child is familiar with their letters and sounds, and is beginning to read or is ready, I would consider this program. This program is intended for ages 6-9.
It has a really good concept, I just wish they would change the scary green guy to something a little less scary.
Also if it had more for the younger levels that wold be good also.
I suggest trying out the free trial first, so that you can see if it works for you.
If you are interested in trying this program you can try it first for free.
Prices start at $35.00 for 1 user. You get your subscription for 5 years.
You can get this in a down loadable version or on a CD.
You can see what other moms thought about this product here.
*I have received a free one year download of Read, Write, and Type, free, as a member of the TOS Homeschool Review Crew, in return for my honest opinion. No other compensation has been given to me.*
