TOS Crew Review: Word Qwerty

At the beginning of this current TOS Homeschool Crew year we were able to try out a program from Talking Fingers called Read, Write, and Type. That particular program was designed to help teach emerging readers phonics, spelling and typing. The next level of program is called Word Qwerty. 

A few weeks ago my 10 year old son started on the program and loves it. Quite frankly, so do I! Not only does the program help with spelling but it also teaches typing - a very important skill is this technological age. But first, more on the program.

Word Qwerty contains 20 lessons each with six levels of "play" to help reinforce spelling and typing skills. Each lesson moves through the same levels. These include: 

1. Patterns - looking for patterns in words to help remember how to spell them
2. Karaoke - either a rhyme or song to help learn a spelling rule
3. Recycler - using word families to learn how to recognize real words and how to spell them (a child sorts the words given as either a real word or a fake one)
4. Pop-A-Word - popping balloons with words from a given phrase. 
5. Write Stories - lines in a story are given a child must type it from memory
6. Read Stories - a child adds the missing words to a story.

 At the end of each level a child has earned "spheres." One of the characters, Midi, uses these to create a musical creation that will play at the end of each level. N10 loves this aspect and I have to admit - they are really cool creations!

You can see the 20 rules covered in the 20 lessons by going here. You can also check out the scope and sequence for all 20 lessons here.

Word Qwerty can be purchased in a couple of different ways. You can chose it as an online subscription (which is how Crew members tried it out). Prices vary depending on the number of users, but it starts at $25 for one. You can also purchase it as a CD for $35 in order to download it directly to your computer. The bundle also contains the user guide in a 3-ring binder as well as Jingle Spells which is an audio CD of all the songs from Word Qwerty.

Are you interested in trying it out first? You can try Lesson 1 (Silent E) by clicking here. If you like what you see, you can save 20% by simply answering a few questions found on the demo page and joining Talking Fingers mailing list.

Overall my 10 year old loved this and he was even slightly above the age range. It's designed for children 7-9 years of age. He has only one lesson left to complete and I'm pretty sure he'll be sad to finish.

Be sure to head over to the TOS Homeschool Crew blog to see what other Crew members had to say about Word Qwerty.



Disclaimer: I was not paid for this review.  All opinions shared are my own. TOS Crew Members are given the product free of charge in exchange for our unbiased opinion of the product.