Review & Giveaway : My Virtual Tutor

Posted by chinsk13 75 Comments

GIVEAWAY CLOSED!

Wow!! “My Virtual Tutor: Reading”, created for Nintendo DS, is a wonderful, educational “game” that encourages fluency, comprehension, vocabulary building, and reading skills advancement. It sounds almost too good to be true- but it’s not. I was recently given the opportunity to review this great new product and I have to say I am truly amazed.

My children are ones who love to play video games and although we strictly monitor the time they spend playing them, a product such as My Virtual Tutor: Reading takes much of the worry out of that idle play time on the DS. My Virtual Tutor: Reading, created by Mentor InterActive, is a children’s educational game that concentrates on five reading areas including Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Comprehension, Fluency, and Vocabulary- all recommended by the Department of Education to improve reading proficiency.xx

My daughter, age 5, is one of the most advanced readers in her kindergarten class. We chose to review the Kindergarten through 1st grade version of My Virtual Tutor: Reading, and it was a bit of a challenge for her. The game itself is fabulous with great graphics and a wonderful, clear voice directing the game. Each version includes eight interactive books with four modes of play:

Read to Me- Virtual tutor reads the story with exciting animation
I Can Read- Beginning vocabulary word-based activities
Interactive- Clickable animations with interactive quizzes to test reading and vocabulary comprehension
Paint- Unleash creativity and illustrate scenes while listening to a story.

We started with the first book, Underwater, and went through all four modes of play. My daughter very much enjoyed each of them, but the interactive mode held her attention the longest. During parts of the story, a line from the book is read out loud and then a recorder mode allows the child to read the same line aloud, record their own voice, and then replay to check for accuracy. This was by far her favorite part- she loved being able to hear her own voice reading the story.

In addition to the storybooks their are also Phonics mini-games and quizzes to help with reading comprehension and word knowledge. The Parent Mode allows parents to monitor book progress and see their child’s aptitude in the phonics games. It helps parents track the progress their children are making while “playing” their video game.

We loved “My Virtual Tutor: Reading” and would recommend it to any parent whose child loves video games and is a beginning reader. It is available for purchase in Pre-K, K-1st, and 1st-2nd grades, allowing consistency as your child advances from level to level.

Buy It! “My Virtual Tutor: Reading” for the Nintendo DS is available at mass and specialty retailers such as Toys R’ Us, GameStop, Best Buy, and Amazon.com.

Win It! We have been given one copy of “My Virtual Tutor: Reading” to share with one of our lucky readers. Here’s how to enter:

One Mandatory Entry- visit the My Virtual Tutor website and try the demo version. Leave us a comment telling us what you enjoyed about it.
Two Additional Entries- Follow us on twitter and tweet this giveaway. Please leave an additional comment including your twitter id and your tweet url.
Five Additional Entries- Read one of our Parenting Articles. Leave a comment about it on the post and return here to leave a comment including the article’s URL.
Giveaway open to US shipping addresses only.
This product is for use with Nintendo DS (US region only), which is not supplied.
Giveaway ends 3rd May 2010 and a winner will be picked using Random.org. We will not be emailing winners, so please make sure you subscribe to our feed or check back here for the winner announcement post.