Customer Reviews

Earobics Step 1 Home Version: Sound Foundations for Reading & Spelling

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There is some question about my son having some sort of auditory processing disorder. You cant test for this throughly until your child is 8. There arent many options out there, but earobics has been a lifesaver for me. There are other programs out there that are more time consuming and expensive (Fast Forward I believe). So when I found Earobics I was quite pleased with this home version. Nick can do as much or as little of it that he wants in a day. It has helped his listening skills so far. It has helped his short term and long term memory. I have been very pleased with his progress in his language and listening skills. HIs expressive and recessive skills are growing everyday.

There are different games that build on different listening skills. It has many different levels. You can go at your own speed. I can hit the repeat button if Nick needs more time to process what has been said. There is alot of room for improvement in Nicks listening skill and there are many different levels and games on this disk that we will be working on for years to come. It is rated for 4 and above.

I would highly recommend this learning disk. Your child will need to use both visual but mostly auditory skills to move through the games.

I highly suggest this program for children 4 and over. I love how simple it is yet how the difficulty level increases as the child is ready. My son loves the games and doesn't realize that he is really having to work hard to listen to the sounds. I know that this is helping improve his auditory listening skills.

This software is great. My son has a lot of fun and it has a lot of educational value as well. It has really helped with his auditory processing and understanding.

I purchased this product for my 7 year old son who has issues with attention and following directions. The level of phonics taught in Step 1 is easy for my 7 year old but the real challenge is to stay focused on instructions while those are being given. Even though some of the games were tedious (which my son needed) and at times right down frustrating for my son, he still enjoyed playing and was willing to go back to them. The real gain for my son is that he learned he has to focus hard on tasks that are more difficult, and that it is impossible to get a job done (get points) if he did not hear instructions. He also learned to recognize when he did not hear instructions, and that in those situations he should ask for instructions to be repeated (there is a speaker button to click in order to hear instructions repeated). We are moving on to the the Step 2 now (for 7 to 10 year old children) so he can learn new skills and keep practicing ones that he has acquired through Step 1.

both of my kids, four and five year old love to play with all the different games in this program!
it is very entertaining!!!!
strongly recommend it!!!

This game is interactive, fun as well as being educational. It develops many of the phonological and auditory processing skills that children require to become successful readers and writers, making it a great teaching tool.

This program and the other Earobics titles are clearly designed for North American users.

This is a shame because most of the activities work quite well.

What is more problematic is the English vs American accents.

Some of the differences are very frustrating for the kids, and leaves them stranded on the same level, unable to progress.

(This review is of Earobics Step 2 - but also applies to the other Earobics titles.)

In the Fireman sounds game - the short vowels u and o sound almost identical.

For English speakers (UK, Australia, NZ, Sth Africa etc) these sounds are very different.
with the short 'u' sound clearly being pronounced 'uh' as in 'cup' or 'but'
and the short 'o' sound pronounced as 'o' as in 'cot' or 'orange'

However the Nth Amercian pronounciation of the short 'o' sounds very close to the 'u'/'uh', and comes out sounding somewhere between 'ah' and 'awe'.
So instead of 'cot' it sounds like 'c-ah-t' ... which is ok in the word recognition as there are the surrounding letters to help with the sound interpretation.
However in the individual short vowel sound recognition - it's quite hard and confusing for the kids, as it's clearly very different to what they learn in school English classes.

Similarly for the Pengiun game where there are sounds syllables given for words which are just confusing for the kids' spelling.
eg lemon ... instead of being sounded out as le-mon ... is sounded out as le-min
chicken ... instead of being sounded out as chi-cken ... is sounded out as chick-in
kitchen ... instead of being sounded out as kit-chen ... is sounded out as kit-chin

Finally the Hippo - find the mismatched sound in the sequence game, has very similar problems to the o/u issues above, along with r/l, with the kids getting stranded on a level unable to progress. At times, even as an adult who is well versed in accents - I cant hear the difference between the ruh/luh/rah/lah. The audio is also quite clipped short ... so this makes it even more difficult to determine what sound is being said.

Summary:
The Pirate/Parrot word/syllable matching games and the Luck Duck sound/syllable/word recognition games dont seem to suffer from these issues.

The beginner & intermediate levels of the Fireman sound recognition game are also good. With the English/American accent confusions only arising in the advanced level games.

Apart from the pronounciation issues - the Penguin game works well too.

Probably the most frustrating one is the Hippo game as the kids can easily get stuck on each of 8 the beginner tasks without progressing at all. Any background noise can make it impossible to hear the subtle sound differences, which are not familiar to non-American accent speakers.

***
The games are repetitive by nature, so can become a bit boring. So offer some kind of incentives to get them thru it. We did the program over the school spring break - getting thru all the beginner & intermediate levels within 2 weeks, except the Hippo, which I'm considering abandonning if the higher levels' audio isnt clearer as it's too frustrating.

I am a young adult dealing with auditory processing issues, have since I was a child. I didn't have the help or attention that most kids have now. My listening skills and differentiating sounds could improve. Has anyone at all tried the adolescence/ adult version? Or have any feedback?
Thanks