TOS Crew Review - BrillKids Little Reader

Brill Kids Little Reader is a program designed to teach young children (ages 6 months - 3 years) how to read. There is a Basic ($149) as well as a Deluxe ($360) version - this review is for the downloadable Basic version. Here is a chart outlining the main differences between the two versions.

The program is composed of two lessons a day, and each lesson takes less than 5 minutes each. First, words are flashed on the screen while a word is spoken - similar as if you were to use flashcards. (When I say the word is spoken outloud, I mean a voice on the program says it). Then, there is a mutli-sensory portion, during which a word is flashed on the screen, spoken outloud, and then a corresponding picture or short video clip is shown, with more audio (for example, when "cow" is shown, the picture is of a cow and the audio is of a cow mooing). The final part of the lesson is pictures flashed while the word is spoken outloud.

A neat feature to this program is the "personalize" feature. Unfortunately, because my computer is ancient and already rather slow, I did not take advantage of this option. However, this feature allows the user to upload their own photos for the words in the lessons - for example, for the word "smile", the parent can upload a picture of their smile, so their child has an extra association and connection with the word. You can also choose specific words to be taught.

According to the developer of Little Reader, this sequence of repetition, the timing of the intervals between words and pictures, as well as the variety of words, pictures, video, audio, and voices used, all help a baby or young child to quickly learn word associations, effectively "reading" over time.

My thoughts on it? Well, I only had 5 weeks to try it before reviewing, and needless to say, Judah (18 months) is not reading in only 5 short weeks. The program is designed to be a year-long program, so perhaps after more time I would have seen something that resembled reading. I did find doing the lessons to be very easy - they were short enough to fit in anytime during our day when I had a few minutes to spare, and the kept Judah's attention well.

Beyond just keeping his attention, Judah loved, loved, loved his "reading time". He would see me starting it up, climb into my lap, and clap and jabber away with excitement waiting for it to load. Then when it started, he would squeal with delight! He very quickly caught onto repeating the words, and could easily identify the picture by saying the word or doing the motion described.

Interestingly, for the first 9 Lessons, the words were from the same group. In Lesson number 10, a brand new group of words were introduced, and Judah reacted immediately - when he heard the new words, he looked concerned, and after hearing several new words, he said "Uh-oh!" when each new word was said! So even though he wasn't recognizing written words, he definitely had an association of words he knew with the program - and once those changed, he noticed! But after several lessons of the new word group, he was comfortable again.

I give credit to Little Reader to helping expand Judah's vocabulary at this young age. I believe the multi-sensory portion of the lessons helped a lot in that area - for example, he had seen pictures of pigs before, but once "pig" was on this program, followed by the sound of a pig snorting, and a video of a pig in the mud, what a pig was suddenly "clicked" with him and now points them out in books. The same can be said with many other words, such as "frog", "point", "laugh" and "drink". He isn't reading them, but connections were definitely made in his brain and he is saying and acting/pointing them out with much more comprehension than before.

Want to give it a try? You can sign up for a FREE 14-day trial to see what you think! You can also download free teaching tools, such as activity sheets, flashcards, and powerpoint presentations to use with your baby or child. Also be sure to check out what other members of the TOS Crew thought by going to the TOS Homeschool Crew Blog!

Disclaimer: I was given this product specifically for the purpose of reviewing here on my blog as a member of TOS Homeschool Crew. I received no other compensation in regards to this review.