Red Apple Reading from Red Apple Reading Inc. is a fun and educational program to help children learn to read. The online program and the six mobile apps cover three levels that are highly effective for young learners. They are well suited for children the ages of four to eight and cover phonics, high-frequency words, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension for preschool to Grade 3. 

Red Apple Reading works well for struggling readers and early readers using videos and games.  The family subscription can be purchased by the month, six months, or twelve months. There are over one thousand activities to provide a fun learning experience.  Children can earn rewards to help create incentives to complete the activities. 

With a family membership, families get access to all three levels, the ability to use on a PC or Mac in a web browser, six Android/iOS program apps, printable offline content, and support for the parent.  A subscription to Red Apple Reading costs $12.95 per month, $59.00 for six months or $99.00 for twelve months. This includes three child users. There is an additional cost per child after three.  

Parents can easily add children as users so that each child has their own login. There is a detailed user guide and lots of tips and videos for getting started.  Parents have a separate login to see detailed progress reports for each child and each level. Parents can also change what areas the child has access to. Parents can decide what the students focus on.

Level A is called Carnival Fun and is great for preschoolers who are starting to learn their letters and sounds. Through seven principal areas on the main screen, this level teaches phonemic awareness activities, rhyming, basic vocabulary, letter-sound correspondence, memory, and sequencing activities, ten storybooks and more. There are videos, songs, slideshows, letter art, and many fun games such as whack-a-letter, spin to win and ring toss.

Level B is called Park Planet.It is split into two parts: fifty phonic & sight word lessons that are best for children ready to start reading and twenty-six ABC tree lessons that are best for a review of letters sounds before beginning the phonics lessons. The fifty phonics lessons are divided into ten units that consist of five lessons each. The lessons cover short vowels, word families, digraphs, blends, an introduction to long vowel sounds. There is instruction on blending and segmenting words.  Each lesson starts with a video and then your child works on two or three practice activities and finishes with a review and quiz.  At the end of each unit, there is also a unit review which includes a storybook, coloring book activity, a quiz, and an optional reward game. 

Level C is called Island Adventures and consists of fifteen units of five lessons each. It covers the foundational reading skills for Grade 1-3. It reviews the Level B concepts and covers advanced phonics skills, prefixes, suffixes, syllables, compound words, contractions, vocabulary, and comprehension skills. The lessons each start with a video and follow with three to four practice activities and your child ends the lesson with a review and a quiz. Like Level B, at the end of each unit, there is also a unit review.  The Level C unit review includes a storybook, a quiz, and an optional reward game.

There are numerous products to download that help parents plan and extend the child’s learning.  There is a detailed planning guide in PDF format with objectives, activities, and list of support materials. There is also a workbook for each level, stories that can be printed for extra practice, game ideas, flash cards, and other great resources.

We thoroughly enjoyed Red Apple Reading in our home and look forward to continuing to use this online membership for learning to read.  My six-year-old and three-year-old loved playing the games and watching the videos on the apps and the online program. Ideally, we would use the program for fifteen to twenty-five minutes per day for about four days per week.  I saw a huge improvement in my three-yearold’s letter recognition and letter-sound knowledge.  My six-year-old has been improving his blending skills and getting better at recognizing his sight words.  The rewards that can be achieved in each level are a great incentive to encourage progression through the units and lessons.

I highly recommend the monthly subscription for Red Apple Reading from Red Apple Reading Inc. for children ages four to eight.  It is an interactive and fun curriculum with a wide variety of activities and games for children learning to read or for strugglers readers. 

-Product review by Kari Lynn Dundass, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, April 2019