Bob Books Reading Magic Sight Words App Review
App Info
Price: $2.99
Overview
Bob Books Reading Magic Sight Words presents ten stories about characters from the Bob Books series that will be familiar to many young readers. Learners arrange letters to spell common sight words, tracing and spelling the words, and even placing them into the sentences to complete the story.
Features include:
- Four games
- Ten stories
- Thirty sight words
- Colorful, animated rewards for success
- Pleasant, uplifting stories
Quality
This app is very high-quality. The illustrations match the printed series, so children will find many familiar faces if they’ve already been using other Bob apps or books. Developers included several types of interactions, including drag and drop, tracing, and a letter spinner. Every aspect is very responsive, and the usage is intuitive which is perfect for the young audience. And developers have included a “reset” button in the parents’ section, so users can start the activities over again if they wish.
Education
Bob Books Reading Magic Sight Words helps young readers learn 30 very common words that every young reader needs to master early in the process. Sight words are notoriously difficult for some children to master because they often do not follow phonic rules. There is no way to “sound out” many sight words. For example, words like “come” and “said” simply do not follow the usual rules. This app tackles 30 of these most common words and since each word is presented in many ways, it will help your child by engaging many modes of learning (seeing, hearing, tracing, and more) and through repetition.
The app presents the focus words in short stories with a single sentence on each page. The target word jiggles until the student taps it, then it breaks apart into its component letters scattered around the page. Children drag the letters back to the blanks to respell the word, then the page will change from a black and white line drawing to a colorful animated scene from the story. In later levels, kids can trace the words, spin letters to spell the words, and finally put the words into the correct place in the sentences to finish the story.
With so many types of activities, this app will really help most children learn these thirty words backwards and forwards, so they stay learned. And as with all of the Bob Books products that I have used, developers did an outstanding job of presenting the words and offering practice in easy, comfortable steps that will be very effective for most learners.
Entertainment
While this app is not really intended to be entertaining in its own right, developers did a great job of motivating young users to keep going. Each page of the story begins as a black and white line drawing. After the activity is completed, the page becomes brightly colored and animated to match the sentence on the page. Other levels include several different types of interactions, which will help hold young learners’ attention.
Value
Bob Books Reading Magic Sight Words is a good value for families or classrooms with multiple children who are learning these basic sight words. The app costs $3.99 in the App Store, but with its ten stories and four levels, it thoroughly teaches the thirty sight words targeted. The activities are fun and engaging, and best of all, they are effective.
Child Friendliness
This app is very child-friendly. The parent gate requires fairly high level reading, so the young children in the target audience are not likely to be able to bypass it.
- Protected parent area (can contain external links & social media)
- NO external links
- NO social media
- NO in-app purchase
- NO 3rd party ads
- YES “more apps” (protected, but visible)
