BrillKids’ Little Reader Version 3 – Better than Ever!

If you’ve been wondering about the dearth of new Little Reader flash cards being released, it’s because we’ve been busy beta testing the newest and latest version of BrillKid’s Little Reader – Version 3. If you already have Little Reader, you can go upgrade your copy now (all BrillKids’ license holders get free upgrades to the latest version of the software released). If you haven’t got Little Reader, you really, really can’t miss this one. We love Little Reader and I honestly didn’t think they could really improve upon it but they have!

What’s New in Little Reader Version 3:

• Customizable Courses
  You now have full control of your course curriculum – edit your existing BrillKids courses OR create your own courses from scratch!
• Playback Settings Presets
  Use Presets to easily apply playback settings to your categories or courses – you don’t have to manually set each playback option anymore!
• Re-organized Playback Settings and Override windows
  They’ve overhauled the entire Playback Settings and Override windows to make it easier to navigate and use!
• Game Mode
  To make reading time even more exciting and interactive, you can play a picture or word game at the end of each course lesson, or play a game based on your selected categories!
• Split Mode
  With the new Split Mode playback setting, you can display words in split colors AND have pronunciations in split audio, where each part of the word pronounced separately for your child!
• Child Profiles
  Using Little Reader with more than one child? Now you can keep track of each child’s lesson playback history with Child Profiles!
• Subtitles and Translations
  Subtitles now show translations during playback – especially handy for teaching different languages! We’re also working on translating the software interface into several languages so you can use Little Reader in the language you’re more comfortable with!NOTE: Subtitle translations are provided courtesy of Google Translate
• New Progress Diary
  They’ve revamped the built-in Progress Diary so that it updates itself whenever you edit or add new courses!
• Performance Optimizations
  As with every update, they’ve fixed a lot of bugs and enhanced the software interface to make Little Reader easier to use!

It’s not just the software that’s been improved but the curriculum has been upgraded significantly, too!

What’s new in the Little Reader Curriculum:

They’ve added new lesson types – now you can show sight words, word split and game lessons to your child!

Also, all lessons are now shorter, more varied, and several times more exciting! Here’s an example of a typical day in Semester 1:

• Picture Flash
• Multisensory 1
• Pattern Phonics 1
• Multisensory 2
• Pattern Phonics 2
• Multisensory 3
• Sight Words
• Word Split
• Game

More Stories
The complete Little Reader Storybook Series (25 storybooks) is now incorporated into the curriculum, starting from the very first day of Semester 2 (Day 131). All stories come with professionally-recorded pronunciations in three voices and colorful animated videos.

High-res Pictures and Videos
Pictures and videos have all been upgraded to high-definition versions to accommodate the ever-increasing screen sizes and screen resolutions. Animals and Transportation categories now come with animated videos in addition to real-life HD videos.

What We Especially Love about the New Little Reader

Hercules has been on the new Little Reader curriculum and these are our favourite bits:

• Personal profile – he loves seeing his picture up on top of the screen. This is also really helpful when you have two or more children going through the curriculum so you can easily keep track of who’s on which lesson.
• New stories – he’s mad about the stories and keeps asking for them over and over even after the lessons are done. He also enjoys reading along with them – which is our first step to encouraging him to start reading on his own. Since he started reading along with Little Reader, I’ve noticed he’s been pulling out his own books and “reading” them to himself. The new stories were also great for me because I recently had a case of laryngitis and lost my voice so I couldn’t read aloud to Hercules. Hercules was happy to listen to Little Reader stories while Mummy’s voice recovered.
• Games – up until recently, I have never really “tested” Hercules on his reading abilities. I was so concerned about “stressing” him and putting him off learning that I avoided it. The games setup of Little Reader is so fun that he enjoys playing it. It’s also great for me because I finally get to see just how much he can read (and all this time I thought he only knew colours, fruits, actions, numbers and transportation – because that was all he would point out to me without me asking).
• Update: Hercules (a.k.a. G2) at age 5 was able to read Level 10 Peter and Jane books without difficulty

You can also read our original Little Reader Review here.

If you would like to buy Little Reader from the BrillKids online store, you can get 10% off your purchase with the following code: BKAFF36716.

Related:

• Download the accessory Little Reader flashcards we made (free!)