Dyslexia Gold Review

Jenny/ July 1, 2019/ Homeschool Reviews

 

Do your children have dyslexia or another reading/learning issue?  Our children haven’t been diagnosed with one but I thought I would try this program to see if it helped with some letter mix-up problems one of our son’s was having, so when we were given the chance to review Dyslexia Gold and their Dyslexia Gold Full Bundle which is a subscription program designed to help children who are struggling with a learning problem.  We received a lifetime family license!

 

What the program consists of:

 

It’s completely online and available on PC or tablet but all the features didn’t work for us on our tablets.  All of the features did work well on a PC.

 

It has a speed reading fix, spelling help, multiplication section….

 

It has special games designed specifically to help with eye tracking problems. These are “whack an alien” and “target practice”.  On the target practice your child wears special, colored glasses. They provided these for us to use.

 

How we used it:

• It was very easy to set up a student account. I set one up for both Jake and Gabe. 

• A placement test is available at the beginning and it places your child in the appropriate place for them to start.

• We started with target practice. We tried this on the tablet but you have to use the arrow keys so a PC was necessary for this part.  Jake did extremely well on this. You use the special glasses for this one. It’s supposed to help train your eyes to track evenly and improve reading ability for those with eye problems. 

• Gabe also used the target practice. He did well after he figured out how to use it. It was more difficult for him, mostly because he had a harder time understanding how to move the arrows to shoot the target accurately. I really don’t think either had eye tracking problems.

• We also used the whack an alien with both boys. They both liked this one!  It’s supposed to train you to move only your eyes not your head to see the target quickly. This one is easier to do on a tablet because you tap it quickly and it was more difficult for the boys to move the mouse and click it. My kids don’t spend much time on the computer or tablet so they aren’t super rapid at things like that, as a general rule.

• We tried multiple times to use the fluency builder and couldn’t get it to go past the first problem on our tablet but it worked well on our PC. 

• We used the spelling tutor with Jake (Gabe isn’t ready for that yet).  I let him read the sentences through first.  Then it would read to him and he was supposed to write them on our dry erase board, making sure to properly capitalize and punctuate the sentence.  I had to reread the sentence to him because this company is from the UK and he couldn’t understand the accent, lol.

• I checked out the times table tutor but we haven’t utilized it yet because neither boy is ready for that yet..  It does look very helpful and I plan on using it with Jake later this year as he gets into multiplication.  It is a very visual program so this should really help your visual learners ALOT!

• The reports section gives you a clear idea on how they are doing on each section.  It also gives you a “reading age” of your child.

This program is designed to improve your child’s reading and spelling abilities quickly, so did it work for us?

 

Jake had improved since using it.  I don’t think he’s actually dyslexic, but I do think it’s improved his speed.  Gabe is now closing his non-dominant eye when he is using only one eye, which he wasn’t previously doing.  Is that from this program?  I can’t say with 100% certainty but it seems very probable.

 

What we liked:

 

• The setup is simple!

• It’s bright and attractive to kids!

• Reports are easy to understand and access.

• I’ve seen improvement.

• Much more cost effective than outside therapy.

 

What wasn’t so great:

• Several glitches in the system.

• Both boys said the glasses hurt their eyes afterwards. (neither is used to wearing glasses, so that might be the issue).

• Repetitive, so they did get bored with doing the same things.

• Need to use the PC instead of a tablet.

 

Would we purchase this program ourselves?

 

I think the answer would be yes if our children had learning problems with reading, spelling ect…It think this would definitely be a better alternative than going to therapy once or twice a week.  It only takes 15 minutes a day and could be accessed at a library if you don’t have a PC at home!

 

If you have a child with dyslexia or a similar issue I would really recommend you checking this out! Read what our other reviewers thought at the link below!