Montessori Crosswords for Kids App Reviews

Educational and fun! Thanks for fixing the sizing bug so quickly. It is nice to see a company that cares about good customer support.

My two kids really like this ap. My 6 year old likes to use it to practice spelling and it makes her feel grown up because I do the crossword and she does this game.

this is an excellent app for working on sound sequencing, blending and identification of initial, medial and final sounds. Reinforcers are loved by elementary kids and adults alike and is varied. worth the purchase. Thank you.

I think this app is well done and deserve a greater attention from homeschooling families. Not only it will help you child to discover the sound of each letters but it will introduce spelling while making crosswords. My son, Dominic – age 7, has tested this app with me sitting next to him. Dominic is a bright child but he struggles a little with his reading. So I was curious to see how well he would do. He started with the first level in the app which introduce simple word with 3 sounds. He quickly found this too easy for him and decided voluntarily to go to a harder level. So he went to the 2nd level which introduce 2 words with consonant blend. He had some difficulties with some of the words but he excelled nevertheless. I found that it was nice to have the sound of the letter being pronounced when he selected the letter before dragging it into the crossword. Each time the child gets the crossword, an animation happens and you can interact with it. The child can also have the word be repeated simply by clicking on the image. Finally, the word’s spelling is hiding on the side so that if the child has trouble with it, he/she could discover how to spell it properly. Dominic said that he liked this app which sort of surprised me because he had problems with his reading ability. But recently, I realize that he is getting more comfortable in reading and I see some improvements. I think he loves the fact that he can interact with the animation when he completes a crossword. For him it is some sort of reward. Personally, I think that the rewards are always the same (even though the colours change) and I would like to see different types of rewards. Nevertheless, this app is fabulous and I highly recommend it to help you child to discover the spelling world (as well as the fun of doing crosswords…)!

My four year old grand-daughter is loving this app, It is her favorite game to date and teaches while having fun.

I am very pleased that such strong educational content is coming out for the iPad. Both my kids really enjoy this application

My 2.5 year old girl has just started to sound out and read simple words. This app has contributed to her current success. Excellent program. We are looking forward to more from this company.

What We Liked: I really like that Montessori Crosswords has both pre-selected levels of difficulty that increase, as well as detailed lists of words that you can use to really focus in on phonograms you’re currently teaching or any trouble sounds that need extra reinforcement. Montessori Crosswords also keeps vowel teams together in the empty white squares, helping children to understand how two vowels or two consonants come together to form single sounds. When those empty spaces are tapped both of them highlight in white together to show their connection as a single sound unit (I love this). The letters also change in the phonics alphabet beneath the crossword to make the sound their combination of letters makes. There still aren’t many apps that do phonics well in the App Store, and Montessori Crosswords is really one of the best. It is filled with options (love that it includes cursive letters) and is easy to ramp up and down in difficulty. My eight-year-old also really enjoys Montessori Crosswords, she loves the animated reward screen (my five-year-old is harder to engage with literacy-oriented apps). The phonics enabled moveable alphabet can even be used to teach simple blending, segmenting and early reading skills for kindergarteners (short consonant and vowel sounds only). I like to tap each letter in a row to show how the individual letters make single sounds that then combine to form a word. You can even overlap the letters slightly to simulate true cursive joins. What We Didn’t Like: The phonics sound for ‘q’ sounds more like ‘k’ than it does like ‘kw’ which is how we teach it. When in crossword mode, the letters in the intersecting squares don’t always make the sound you expect them to. For example if the words pencil and cup align on the ‘c’, it makes the sound ‘ssss’ instead of ‘cccc’, the letter in the alphabet also makes the ‘sss’ sound, so while it lines up for pencil, it doesn’t line up well for cup. There are also a few cases where letters aren’t making quite the right sound – the ‘i’ in pencil says ‘uh’ for example. The cursive alphabet is European style letter formation as opposed to North American. Overall: Montessori Crosswords is one of my most often recommended apps to parents teaching with phonics. The flexible lists and many options of this app make it a great choice for both beginning and emerging readers and spellers. This is a good one, if you are teaching with phonics you should definitely check it out! I received a promo code.

Great app, my 5 year old loves it. Some of the sounds are unclear, for example, n and m are too similar. Otherwise, very useful.

Worth every penny!! My four year old is learning to read and spell in one app. Loved that he tries to sound out the words and than spells it!

My son loves this app! What more can I say except thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Ive had this app for almost two years and my child still uses it. It has definitely helped in developing her reading skills.

A nice app but fundamentally broken in many ways. Most obviously, the app is not navigable by a child that cannot read fluently. Instead, the parent needs to manage the app at all times. This is fine but it limits children who may want to explore the app or switch between apps and come back to a new activity. This app assumes that the parent is there every step of the way. The instruction screens are always there and there are lots of sub-menus you need to read. It would be much better if a parent could configure a reading level and then let the child play and join in when necessary or fun. Instead the app becomes a teaching prop -- theres nothing wrong with that but there is so much more that the app could do. Just be aware.

At last someone has devised a way to take advantage of the benefits of the Montessori method online! I am working with an adult who has lost some of her language skills due to a stroke and she loves this app, as do I. It makes teaching the alphabet, phonics, and beginning words a delight. Thank you! A grateful school psychologist (retired)

My daughter has been using it since 5 years old. It has really helped her on spelling. She loves the beautiful rewards.

And, entertaining enough for my kids to want to play it.

I like the app and my students like it as well. However, I think the phonics should be more in line with true phgonics. The "er" sound should be a true "er" and not split into an "e" sound and an "r" sound. Placing sounds into their rightful patterns would help students not only understand the sound better but also help them with spelling.

This is an incredible software. If parents are actually serious about teaching their kids English then this software is a must!

Sound for letter L is the same for M only deeper in sound, this cant be right...

My 4 year old is in Montessori program and this is a fun app to reinforce the phonics she is learning.