Product Review of Alpha Writer Montessori
Your kid will learn the basic foundations of language from three internationally recognized artists: Zepton, Mike Lowry, and Marloes de Vries. They will teach your kid to recognize consonants and vowels, pronunciation, reading, word formation, and stories using over 100 illustrations available on the app.
What Users Love About the App
“It’s a little glitchy and could use an update, but this is a really wonderful tool that is helping me teach my twins to read. Thank y’all for developing this awesome app!”
“This app is perfect for my 6 year old who was finding it difficult to remember what sound each letter made. Great for kids who learn best by touching and feeling in addition to just seeing or hearing; in this app, kids have to move the letters into place to spell the words.”
“I have to mention their great support. I was having a problem with the sound on this app (user error, I might add!) and the support people responded to my email right away with a solution.”
“I love the approach to this app. It is very well designed. Also, a lot of children’s apps can be too cartoony or flashy, which is unfortunate. This app has many fun and beautiful illustrations, but they serve an educational purpose in a way that doesn’t insult a child’s intelligence. Plus, it is engaging! My niece has been playing with this app all week. She cycles through some of the spelling exercises then brings me the iPad so we can write a silly story together. Love it!”
“My 6 year old son is a Montessori kid and loves this app. He immediately recognized that this was a moveable alphabet and got straight to work! The vivid colors and clear voice are excellent and inviting. We hope that future versions will include more words to spell. Thanks for another well-designed educational tool. We hope there are more to come!”
“My 3 and 5 year old both love this app for very different reasons. My 3 year old likes the story writing portion and working specifically with the actual images. She puts a bunch of images on the screen and then tells her story to me. My 5 year old goes right to the spelling portion and loves figuring out which letters she needs through the sounds when she is stuck on a word she does not know how to spell. All the different activities on one app make Alpha Writer a new favorite for us. Another GREAT app from Montessorium.”
What Users Dislike About the App
“I wish the sounds were more accurately represented (for example, “b” says “b” not “buh”) but I do like that they say the word AND segment the word’s sounds before the child selects letters to build it. Adding “uh” to every consonant makes learning to blend sounds difficult; the app itself reads “bed” as “buh-eh-duh.” It’d be no small task to re-record the audio, but the app is not much use this way.”
“The app has kids spell simple words, choosing letters from a list of all the letters in the alphabet. However, it treats vowel diagraphs (two vowels together that make a single sound) as if they were separate letters. These are all listed at the end of the the standard alphabet. So, when a child is asked to spell the word “boy” they can’t choose the letters B-O-Y. Instead, they have to first choose B then scroll all the way past the end of the normal alphabet list and find OY from a long list of diagraphs (AI, AY, OO, OI, OY, etc.). It might make sense to a linguist, but it’s confusing for a child just learning to spell.”
“The app is not thought through. They need to break the objects down into levels, three letter phonetic words, blends, then digraphs. The blends and digraphs should have the sounds together that make the specific sound like “oo” in book, or “er” in lobster, etc. Having all the letters make the phonetic sounds can be confusing when teaching blends and diagraphs. You don’t phonetically sound out these non phonetic words. Lastly, I wish there was a self check option like the Montessori crosswords app so they can make sure they spelled a word correctly. On the “writer” section it would be nice to be able to click on the words once they are assembled and have the word read, not each individual sound. I feel like this app was not put together well. I am a 3-6 Montessori teacher with a 3 and 5 year old that attend the school and they did not enjoy this app. I feel that changes can be made to it so we can utilize it more as a learning tool and not just a silly game.”
“I wish there was a preview option as I would not have paid for this app for my 8 year olds. This is very Montessori like,but I think more towards ages 3-6 than 6-8. If you are looking for an app for younger kids, this will be awesome.”
“For spelling you must choose from a small number of pictures. Spelling is never actually checked. Nothing actually tells your child if they accomplished anything. It just keeps repeating letter sounds. You can drag any letters down. Scrolling across the entire alphabet to pick the letters is very annoying. On iPod storyboard this is limited to about three short words. It is much too small.”
