{Review} Talking Fingers Inc.: Talking Shapes

Peanut and I were blessed with the opportunity of reviewing Talking Shapes: A Supplemental Curriculum for Early Literacy by Talking Fingers Inc. We received a one year subscription.

{The link in this review is for the app but Peanut and I reviewed the online program and we used our computer to access the program.}

Talking Shapes takes seven stories and introduces all forty phonemes in the English language as well as introduces the alphabet to young children. Every story builds upon what the child has learned in the previous books.

To access Talking Shapes, you log in through an internet browser. It may take a few minutes to load so please be patient!

Once loaded you will see a scene with seven books in it. The completed books will be filled in and the uncompleted books will be grayed out. The books must be completed in order. There are four sections in each of the books; Story, Letters, Spell, and Read.

Patrissa & Natalia, who their friends call Pat and Nat, and living in the ancient world and love to tell stories about the letters and alphabet that they have invented. While students listen to the entire story they learn the alphabet, their sounds, and how to blend CVC words.

Students are given fun ways to remember how to write the letters. The students trace the letter a few times and then move on to blending them together with other letters they have already learned in the prior books. When blending they trace the letters, connect them together and when the letters are connected they hear the blended sound. Peanut did have a bit of trouble connecting the tiles together using a trackpad mouse and will ask for my help with dragging and dropping. If your child is able to drag and drop with a trackpad mouse then they should not have any problems with this task.

The students work on spelling CVC words such as hat, cat, pan, man. Each book has three games for students to do. In Game 1 the students work on spelling the words by draw the letters inside the picture. In Game 2 the students work on the same set of words but they now draw the letters inside the guidelines. Then in Game 3 they work on the same set of words but this time they draw the letters inside the picture without any guides.

Before the student finishes the book they listen to the story one more time. The word that is currently spoken is lit up so the student sees it on the screen as well. After the paragraph is read the CVC words scroll across the screen on balloons and the students work on filling in the blanks of the paragraph, one sentence at a time. If the student needs assistance they can click on the lips and the sentence will be read back to them. When they select the correct answer the balloon pops and the word appears on the blank.

Peanut loves talking shapes and asks daily to play it! I think it is a nice program overall. Talking Shapes has kept Peanut engaged and she asks to use it regularly. It has a lot of opportunities to practice tracing the letters and blending as well as learning the sounds.