REVIEW: 200 Essential Reading Skills for Fifth Grade by Reading Eggs

When Holden was little and first learning to read, he loved the Reading Eggs website, so when we heard they had a new line of printed workbooks, we were excited to try out 200 Essential Reading Skills for Fifth Grade.

WHAT IS IT?:

Reading Eggs is a wonderful website for young children who are learning to read, but also for helping kids to reinforce and strengthen their reading skills as they get older.  It has 4 levels of activities that teach and entertain children ages 2-4, 4-5, 6-7, and 7-13.  Watch a short video to learn more about the website, or try out some sample lessons.

The latest product from Reading Eggs is a wonderful line of new full-color printed workbooks to enhance the reading skills of kids in K-5th grade.  (There are also math workbooks for grades K-2, which some of the other Crew members received.)  I received 200 Essential Reading Skills for Fifth Grade, which has over 200 pages and is available for just $19.95!

OUR EXPERIENCE:

The Reading Eggs website for ages 7-13 is called Reading Eggspress.  Holden is 10 now, so this is where I set him up.  Your child can take a placement test initially to start them off at their appropriate skill level, or through the parent dashboard, you can just skip the assessment and simply assign them to the grade level you feel is appropriate and have them start there.  Holden played on Reading Eggs when he was little and was first learning to read, and he enjoyed it very much.  But he took 4 years of formal phonics instruction as a young child, and his reading skills are above grade level, so I just went ahead and started him at the 5th grade level without doing the placement test. 

The website has a number of areas that offer a variety of types of instruction and play.  In the Library section, there are age-appropriate digital book selections to read.  After reading the book of your choice, you answer comprehension questions in order to earn points or “eggs.”  There’s also a Stadium section that has competitive games to play in grammar, usage, spelling, and vocabulary.  Points are also received based on how you score in the games, and you can choose from 2 levels of difficulty in each game.  I have to admit that I found myself playing the games just for fun!  The “difficult” level is fast-paced and is a great way to brush up on things like grammar skills!   In the English Skills section, there is a series of lessons in spelling.  Each lesson has a colorful instructional video, 20 interactive questions in a variety of formats with little mini-games built in, and a 10-question spelling test.  This section offers so much variety and high-interest learning activities that it almost doesn’t feel like learning!  The Targets section shows a variety of goals your children can attempt to achieve.  The My Lessons section takes your children through the daily lessons.  They will practice a variety of reading skills in this area such as reading comprehension, grammar, spelling, grammar, dictionary skills, alphabetizing, etc.  There are additional sections such as the Mall, the Trophy Room, the Apartment, and the Arcade.  These sections give your children a chance to play fun and rewarding games and activities by spending the points they’ve accrued in the learning sections.  At any time, your children can review their progress in the My Progress dashboard. 

I think this is one of the most fun and engaging learning websites my kids have ever used!  You can give it a try with a free trial before purchasing to see if it’s a good fit for your children.  The best part is that it also coordinates with the series of printed workbooks!  So as your children make their way through the lessons on the website, they can also be reinforcing their skills with the daily worksheets. 

In 200 Essential Reading Skills for Fifth Grade, there are 36 weeks’ worth of colorful daily worksheets as well as quarterly comprehensive review pages to keep your child’s reading skills sharp.  Each week, days 1 and 2 focus on reading comprehension.  Your child will have a short reading passage followed by a few comprehension questions.  They will also be asked to mark various parts of speech and context clues. 

  

On days 3 and 4, your child will focus on spelling activities.  Each week has a different spelling theme, and activities include writing a word list, sorting them by common spellings, proofreading spelling errors, exploring challenge words, finding hidden words, matching vocabulary terms, and completing sentences with the appropriate word from the spelling list. 

  

On day 5, your child will do a grammar worksheet that covers a different topic each week such as various parts of speech, punctuation, and complete sentence formation.  Sometimes, there’s even a little grammar crossword puzzle! 

 

The pages for each week offer lots of variations in the activities for each category of reading skills, so the way in which your children engage with the material changes all the time. They might, circle or underline the answer, highlight a word or phrase, fill in the blank, fill in missing letters, catch errors and correct them, rearrange syllables, complete a puzzle, unscramble a word, add punctuation marks, select words to match pictures or meanings, etc.  And with thorough review pages built in every 9 weeks, this workbook is sure to keep your children on their toes!

There’s also a nice Year Planner printed in the front of the workbook that schedules out the assignments for you.  It gives you a good overview so you can see the “big picture” of what you’ll be covering.  In addition, there’s also a nice table of contents that shows the daily topics, as well as a complete answer key in the back of the book.

 

For my kids, black and white workbook pages are usually a snooze-fest, but this workbook has such fun, colorful pages that they kept Holden’s attention a lot better.  In addition, we really liked the way the pages are laid out into small sections of work that are separated into little boxes.  It makes it seem less overwhelming.  We just tackled one section at a time, and it kept the pages from feeling like they were too much work or would take too much time.  Each page is intended to last about 15 minutes, and that’s not a lot of time to add to your schedule, yet the daily practice is so important to improving children’s overall reading skills.  Honestly, this is one of the nicest workbooks we’ve used, and plan to continue using it this year to keep Holden’s skills sharp!

Take a look at what other Crew members have to say about this line of workbooks by clicking the banner below.