Montessorium: Intro to Letters 앱 리뷰

I gave this app a 1 star because the letter sounds are not being said correctly. The sound for g is not /ga/ it’s /g/ you should not add an a on the end of the sounds. This app would be perfect otherwise and the other apps from this company are great! Bummed I can’t recommend this app to my students families.

I tried this app out to suggest to parents at home, but I got as far as the sounds of the letters and was sorely disappointed. The sounds of consonants should not have vowels attached; that makes it hard for children to move from writing to reading. It’s not “buh”, “cuh” and “duh” but just the one SOUND. Disappointed that I can’t recommend this…

Mandatory background app refresh - foolish. Preschool fingers have to be exact or app won’t let kid move on to next letter.

Well the circle was out of the q then weirdly the dot was going fast up the q and I’m like BTW how did that dot do that?!?! that’s weird

Drawing letters is pretty good, but has some minor issues it you don’t complete the line fully. Sounds such as ‘g’ add an ‘uh’ sound which is incorrect. Many people teach letters this way, but it makes it harder to teach correct spelling later.

Too many issues

There are no visable instructions here. Did I miss something? How does a child use this?

I was worried given two recent nasty reviews, but after trying this app out, I don't think they are warranted. For special needs, this is the perfect solution for some students who need minimal visual distractions. Clean, simple interface with options to practice tracing, or recording letter names/sounds. I like the option to jump to exactly the letter wanted. There is a page with links to this developer's apps, although it is protected by a parental gate, which is good. I would also like to see an option where I can shut off the "pencil" sound effect when tracing, while still hearing the other cues/voiceover. Some students with special needs may have trouble with this sound, and others will really enjoy the auditory feedback while tracing.

Tracing doesn't work. Bizarre "menu". Expensive junk. Some good ideas horribly executed by developers without a clue.

A good idea in theory, but the interface has poor responsiveness and the software is unstable. Better to practice drawing letters with pencil and paper. I have an iphone 6s with updated os.

... but 2.5 year old enjoying it so far.

I had high hopes for this app. However, as soon as I heard the letter sounds pronounced, I saw I'd have to delete it. There are no letter sounds that end with "uh". It's not /buhand/, for band; it's /b/ /a/ /n/ /d/. This is not an app I would use with my child at home or school to enhance reading. Shame, shame for not pronouncing the letter sounds correctly.

There are two reasons this app isn't good for my 3 year old: 1. When writing the letters, the app requires you to extend the strokes to the absolute end of the letter. It's unforgiving and makes it really difficult for my daughter to learn because she doesn't understand that she needs to fill in another tiny bit. 2. The letter shapes are poorly chosen. For example, the lowercase "t" has a tail that slopes to the right. While this looks great in a font, it's not representative of how most people actually write the letter, and is therefore not a good training exercise. I had high hopes for this app, but it's as if they didn't test with children.

One star for useless update summary.

This app is impossible for my three year old son to use properly and I wish I could get my money back. I am very disappointed. I would think for the 5 dollars it would have been a quality app. Clearly I was wrong.

I think for the most part this is app does a great job. I especially love the option of recording my own voice to do the instructing. I gave 4 out of 5 stars only because I wish there was an an option in the settings for left handed kids. My child tends to want to trace in the opposite direction of what a right handed person would naturally want to trace.

This is one very terrific program to aid a child to learn Phonics. The child hears the sound as he/she follows with their finger. So that involves 3 of the senses: Seeing the letter, hearing it's sound, and following the letter with their finger gets motor skills involved. The more involved, the greater chance the youngster will remember the sound made by the letter. It's a great program for teaching Phonics.

This app would be perfect- it's beautifully designed, great concept, etc. except that it has one fatal flaw. It forces the user to keep going with a stroke until a bell rings. However, if you don't keep pushing your stroke past the end of the guide, you don't get the bell and you can't move on to finish the letter. And when you're in that position, with the stroke done, but not pushed past the end so you get the bell, you're stuck. It takes me several tries to trigger it. Hence my kids simply can't use the app on their own, even though they do well with drawing the letters. Frustrating. Ugh.

I am not one to leave feedback, but this app is horrible and expensive. The montessori crossword, spelling with phonics is much better. This app is boring. I purchased it mainly for the voice over feature but I can't get it to work. Bottle line don't waste your money. Abc phonics animated app has a better writing tutorial.

Just purchased the app. It offers a lot for students at this level. The only flaw I caught from a motor development stand point is that not all the upper case letters are taught starting from the top (A, M and N for example ). Writing is more efficient when there is consistency in the starting place. If this were fixed, I would probably give it five stars in a future review.

Kids can trace letters in the wrong direction! Don't buy this app.

Nicely designed, just wish the small letters were not printed, but rather handwritten style. There is not much point in tracing prints

It looks nice and all, but for the price you expect more. Also in letter pairs, clicking on "er" brings up "or", "or" brings up "th" and "th" brings up "er". :S

We have had this app for a couple of years now. My daughter LOVES this app! She just started learning how to write her letters. I often find her practicing her letters on the iPad, in her leisurely time.

I was expecting the letters to be in cursive since that's what my kids are learning in Montessori school

Ok for tracing letters of you are older, but not for the young ones. If you don't trace in one clean stroke it gets buggy.

For how much I paid for this app, I was expecting more in terms of the ability to "write" the letters. There are arrows showing where to draw, but they do not correct the student when they make a mistake and because the letters are so big on the iPad, they could be making the letter completely wrong starting some bad habits...for example, when my daughter was the "k" she drew the long line down, but to draw the next line touching the straight line down is awkward because the letter is so large and looks really funny even if you do it the right way.

My two year old has been using this for months and loves it. He recognized all letters in the alphabet before his friends... Mostly due to this app we think!

What a waste of $5. The design is fine but it's hard for ME to get the app to respond to touch. My son is frustrated and confused that I can draw a line after 3 tries but he can't at all. Nice way to learn. Annoyed. Wish I could get a refund.

As a first grade teacher and former literacy coach, I am horrified as to the pronunciation of many of the letter sounds. Instead of /b/ I hear /ba/. Instead of /k/ I hear /ka/. And the worst of all is the sound for the letter r. Instead of /r/ I hear /er/. These are all the things I have worked so hard for my students to not do. In light of these gross errors, I can not recommend this app to anyone, especially schools. If the developer needs some assistance, please contact me.

Such a cool app, wonderful practice, nice look, clean and isolates the skills involved. Recording capability is great. Big problem: the consonants are not phonetically pronounced. Each consonant sound adds an 'uh' sound to the true consonant sound. If you phonetically spell each one the way the app demonstrates, each consonant would be bu, cu, du, etc. Seem like a minor flaw? Not to a teacher or a child first trying to master phonics! Also, this app needs to continue into early phonetic word building, with photos of 3 letter word phonetic objects (hat, bun, sit, dog, etc) like other apps do. This could be the dominant app for starting to learn to read, doesn't quite get there yet. I hope they fix the issues and expand it.

When a program advertises that it will teach children how to write letters, one assumes that the program designers actually know how to print letters. The y is wrong, the d is wrong and after that, I didn't want to know what other mistakes there were.

Nice app. My only criticism is that it is not easy to practice/trace letters in sequence. I want the kids to trace A and then be able to go to B easily without going to the main menu. I also tried a different app called "Learning ABC" made by Newgenon Solutions which the kids are loving as you can go from one letter to the other in sequence and can also trace upper case and lower case versions of the letter on the same page.

the app is really great . . . my daughters both love it. the design is clean and interesting and beautiful. it's a great learning tool that keeps them coming back. my only complaint is that the tracing can be a bit unresponsive or delayed. this wouldn't be a problem for me, but it's sometimes frustrating for the girls. when they draw outside the line by accident, it takes an extra moment for the app to reset and ready itself. i recommend this app, but be sure to explain that to your child.

Love it's simplicity and design. The kids like it also. Highly recommend!

I was very disappointed with this app as the sounds are not correct. Example: The app says that "b" says /buh/ when it actually only says /b/. Slight but very important difference. This occurs with other letters a well. Hopefully I will be able to receive a refund as I cannot use it with my child.

I found things in this app that need improvement to make for a more comfortable & intuitive user experience. For example, when tracing letters, why can't you flick your finger to move onto the next letter? When I finish A, I want to do B next, but in order to do that I need to go back to the main menu & choose B? That process is so convoluted. Why on the main menu are the options not titled or graphically more descriptive? As I'm learning how to navigate this app (or eventually my child does it solo), you expect me to automatically know what "a, oy, rR, and E" mean in terms of where these buttons are going to take me? For a graphic example, you could include arrows on the letters which denote tracing activities and maybe a speaker icon on activities where you just listen. I also suppose this app isn't marketed toward those unfamiliar with Montessori. It's a little strange in how it connects letter sounds to their letter counterpart in the "rR" section. The lowercase "a" slides across the screen and the voice reads the short "a" sound. Then the uppercase "A" slides across and the voice reads letter name, which is also the long A sound. I understand that for your program the lowercase "a" means we're going to do sounds and the uppercase "A" means we're going to say the letter name. But why not have both the letters slide across together, say the sound then say the letter? I do like the recording feature for sounds and letters. And I like the tracing practice. But it's all fairly boring…nothing interesting, just plain tracing or listening to sounds/letters. *I'm the mom of a preschooler. I'm only mildly familiar with Montessori philosophies. I have experience in teaching middle school language arts & ESL.

As a Montessori teacher, I was ecstatic to find this app. However, I too am very disappointed when the "y" and the "t" come up because they are not correct. Please fix this because I would like to not take the iPad away when these two letters appear on the lesson. Otherwise, love it!

As mentioned in another review, the y is completely wrong. I wish they would fix it. It makes it hard to tell my 3 year old to "just make it this way for this game." Ugh

The formation taught for letter y is completely incorrect. The letter t has a tail on it.

This is a very high quality app, and is the best one I've seen thus far that combines early letter recognition and formation with the Montessori methodology. It avoids cheezy animation that other apps resort to. I'm using this app to reinforce concepts for my kindergardener, and to prepare my 4 year old for a preK Montessori classroom. Both love it! Note that the recording feature is difficult for them to use independently. Would love to see higher level Montessori apps to progress with...maybe some word ladders?

Had high hopes for this beautiful app, but this and Intro to Math are terrible flops. The game is almost completely unresponsive and achingly slow. The only interesting aspects are the visual design and I like the module that allows you to record the sounds, otherwise a complete waste of money. Such promising design with failed execution.

The biggest problem with this app is that I have 3 kids and 1 iPad, and they all fight over the iPad so they can use it! My 4.5 year old already knows his letters but enjoys tracing them anyway, whereas my 19 month old and 3 yr old are actually learning from it. I debated between getting this and alpha writer, but at 99 cents each I decided to get both. They compliment each other; this app is better suited for younger kids, whereas alpha writer is better suited for older kids. That said, this app seems more solid than alpha writer. Update: I was not aware that this app also supports French! Our kids are learning French and Spanish at home so this is incredibly useful for us. Would love to see a spanish version as well!

Ok the concept of this application is perfect for what I wanted to work with my 4 year old pre-schooler. Unfortunately the tracing algorithm is so bad it is hard for me to get it to trace the letter let alone a 4 year old with 4 year old coordination. I'm using this on a 3GS that has no problems with other drawing/painting programs. It often won't follow my finger causing you to wonder why it isn't tracing the letters. On a minor note the volume seems to always be set to max and doesn't turn down even when you turn your iPhone volume down. I haven't tried it on my iPad yet but it proved to be so frustrating for both me and my child that I'm posting this review and regret spending 99¢ on this worthless app. Again, the concept is great. If they fix the tracing I might try it again.

My four-year-old is enthralled with Numbers, but isn't very interested in this app. In particular, the recording game needs a lot of work. All the instructions are written instead of spoken - do you expect the user of "Intro to Letters" to be able to read written instructions for sound recording and playback controls? Even after explaining them to her, they're quite difficult to use correctly. Stick with the number game until this one gets some more polish.

I love intro to numbers, but this one does not compare. Tracing is nice but there could be so much more. Sorting is a strong aspect of the learning method. I would like to see another component at this app price.

For $5 I am disappointed... There are free apps with better quality than this. My daughter is 4 years old and within the first 10 mins of playing with this game said "Why is the tracing sound so loud? I can't hear the sounds of the letters..." when playing the game myself I soon realized the phonetic sounds of the letters are a whisper compared to the overbearing sand paper tracing sound. Perhaps just a glitch with volume levels... With that said don't pay 5 bucks for this app!

We have this app and the math.......my daughter loves them....she goes to a Montessori school and I have struggled to find apps that teach the Montessori Method......Great great great apps...can't wait to see more apps by Montessorium!!!!

I am inspired to write my first review ever. Combines a focused beauty with creative learning. My only complaint is that it is a bit hard for three year old to start the tracing process.