Educational Insights Hot Dots Jr. Phonics Fun!: Reading Development with Sound Effects and Electronic Storybooks

My 4 year old loves it! Got it for Xmas and navigates through the cards easily. I didn’t know that she knew so much. I don’t know if they already have it out but I just feel like it should be able to go over words to help kids read too. I didn’t get a box included to hold the cards and that was a bummer.

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] This is exactly what I was looking for! It is easy for the kids to use, gives them instant feedback, and they stay engaged! Everyone wants to start their classroom rotations with hot dots.

I love this. Bought it for my 3 & 5 year old. Helps with concepts and reading. It is very accurate When you click the wrong thing and will only say good job when you click the correct circle. The dog is so cute and fun the kids love it. Ended up buying a second one for a gift for my niece and she loves it too! Definitely recommend

This product causes confusion, at least with my child that happened. Being taught in an old fashioned way to read, he got confused and started to guess immediately. He expected that the pen would read him words and correct him. He just put it away and said it is boring. Not worth the money and must be removed from the market or improved!

We own a few different hot dots sets but I really liked this one a lot especially for my 5 year old. It includes a lesson guide which includes very helpful tips and activities. I have been looking for different ways to teach my 5 year old how to read and she doesn't like doing flash cards so this phonics set is the perfect way to teach her how to read in a fun way. There are 5 sets of cards that focus on different areas: short vowels, alphabet sound, long vowels, blends & digraphs & reading comprehension. My daughter stays engaged with this set and loves using the Ace pen to select her answer. I love that she is still learning while being home and I can help her how to read by using this awesome phonics set. Highly recommend for anyone looking for a fun way to teach reading.

It would be nice if the cards were bound or in a book form instead of individual.

easy to use

My daughter was so excited to use this, but the pen doesn't work. It says that she is right every time so it's pretty much useless. Disappointing on a Christmas morning:(

When I ordered this I wasn't quite sure exactly how this product was going to be. I looked on youtube for reviews but couldn't really find one that showed how great this product truly is. We ordered it anyway. I ordered this set because we didn't have the pen. We opened our box upon receiving it, popped in batteries and we were already learning!! We didn't have to download anything to it, like other brands. It already knew the right and wrong answer! It came with a book to help guide you to have a successful learning session with your child. I figured the cards were going to be a little thicker than what they are, but that's okay. We will be purchasing more kits in the near future! My 5 year old son really loves hot dots!

I love educational Insights toys! I love the Lesson Guide that comes along, very helpful by giving you tips and activities you can do with your little one, my daughter is now 5 so I found this to be a little easy for her, it gives her a refresher of what she's been learning in school and I use it as a tool for reading, we've had a lot of fun and I plan to continue using this for the summer months.The pen is definitely a plus because it talks and they get to check their work. Down fall it doesn't come in a box where you can store all the cards, guide and pen, I have other hot dot jr activities and they came in a nice carrying case which makes for easy travel and less mess for mom.

So I have a closet full of Hot Dots & Hot Dots Jr cards and pens. They make wonderful car toys and fun review for concepts learned. This particular set -- Hot Dots Jr - Phonics Fun -- for some reason is not one of my favorites. This is a great all inclusive kit because it comes with the pen, but it doesn't come with batteries. It comes with 5 sets of double sided cards to help your child learn some (VERY) basic phonics. The sets are letter sounds, short vowels, long vowels, blends & digraphs, and basic reading. I think the reason I disliked this kit is because it included a 24-page book with teaching tips and extra activities and you cannot teach reading with such a limited and simple kit. I've taught 2 kids to read so far and this is missing so many skills necessary for reading (not the least of which is that they don't teach all the letter sounds) that they idea you could teach a child to read WELL with it, is nonsense. If you want to teach a child to read, use Logic of English's Foundations A-D. It IS a good product for basic review and the kids do enjoy doing the cards, though I'm not sure my blossoming reader or my 2 year old understand why they are correct when they play on their own. I do wish the cards were bound in books or even on a ring so that they stayed together better. I have done that with several of my other sets. As usual, the cards for Hot Dots Jr are full color and sturdy enough for what they are. The pens are fairly easy to use and even the two year old quickly figured out that you need to put the dog pen on the dot straight up and down.

I wish learning was this fun when I was a kid! My 4 year old loves this and caught on really fast how to use the pen. She loves the sounds the doggy pen makes and this really makes her think.

This is such a fun way for my 6 year old to learn and review! This set comes with 80 sturdy cards that are double-sided. There a variety of different lessons to go through, such as letter sounds, vowels, and blends. The activity format/goal changes every 4-8 pages, so there is plenty of variety. Every time my son started to get comfortable, the cards switched it up - and that's a good thing! This is great because as soon as my son started getting tired, the topic changed, and he was ready for more! This set also comes with Ace - The Talking, Teaching Dog - which is a "pen" that the kids touch to the correct answer. Ace gives immediate feedback after each answer: with his eyes, his words, and his sounds. After getting three correct answers in a row, Ace vibrates and gets really excited - and my son loves it, every single time! I thought that my son would get less excited about this over time, but it hasn't happened yet! We will continue to use this set for reviewing and maybe for fun quiz games/competitions. I highly recommend it for grades PreK-1st.

We are so tired of workbooks and I do not want to give the kids constant screen time. This product is wonderful because it feels like they are using a tech tool but they are working on fine motor skills via holding the pen and are learning how to read! The cards are brightly colored with fun images displayed. The talking pen is so supportive and I see a smile each time my son gets an answer right. This particular kit is great because it comes with a lesson guide so you are not just piling up cards for your child to use you can guide their activity and learning.

Hot dots sets are fun for both my almost 4 and almost 6 year old. They both find the pen engaging and fun to use. This particular set suited my almost 4 year old best as he is still learning how to sound out words. He was so eager to try this set that we went through the whole thing in two sittings. It was also exciting to discover that another hot dots pen we have from another set also worked on these phonics cards. However, the cute dog pen was his favorite. This set comes with an excellent lesson guide for parents to teach their child phonics rules and to provide guided practice when using the cards. (However, the set is pretty self explanatory if a parent does not have time to go through the lesson guide.) Then, the hot dots pen does a great job of providing support as the kid works independently. The cards were fun to go through and I know my child was actively learning phonics. However, I noticed that the way the cards were set up, especially the "Let's Read" section, that he just memorized the correct answers on the cards as opposed to actually being able to sound out the words and/or read the sentences printed on the cards when doing them again on his own. I also wish this set came with an organizer for the cards. However, I would still recommend this product. I received this product in exchange for an honest review.

My kids (ages 3.5 and 6.5) both enjoy using this. The preschooler doesn't understand any but the easiest set of cards (beginning letters of words) but it will be a great teaching tool as he goes farther into school. He loves playing with the pen and picking all the answers though! The older one has fun using it as well. It definitely requires parent help and interaction for kids who can't read yet.

My preschooler (newly turned 4) loved playing with this. He was a little intimidated at first but then once he realized he was familiar with the letters he went whizzing through it. He enjoys sitting down and working through the flash cards testing his knowledge. It's nice to see he want to play something educational.

We love the Hot Dots Jr. Phonics Fun! Ace the talking dog is a big hit with our 4 year old son. He is just starting to learn his letter sounds and this is a perfect activity for us to sit an go through as reinforcement. The only down side was he thought that Ace was a reader like another toy he has and he tried to "read" the words with it. Ace is designed to let him know if he has made a correct selection. It only took a few times for him to get the hang of it.

I am a first grade teacher and my students love these! They are very easy to use and help the students to become independent learners. I like them so much that I plan to get more sets of cards.

My 5 year old really enjoys learning and so he was really into this set! The cards included lessons to reinforce learning the alphabet, letter sounds, long and short vowel sounds, blending of sounds, digraphs, and more in an interactive and fun game format! Each card features a lesson such as find which pictures begin with the sound made of s and n blended together. Then the pictures each have a black "hot dot" below it that the child can use the Ace talking pen on to see if they selected correctly or incorrectly. Incorrect answers gently encourage your child to try again without making them discourage! It was great to have my son review and practice lessons he'd already mastered as he learned how the Hot Dots system works. Then, he was ready to move on to recognizing the difference between long and short vowels and blended sounds and it was great to be able to work with him on those concepts in a fun and easy way! Disclosure: I received this set for free to review on my website, A Mom's Take. Opinions are my own.