Fonty Reviewer's Comments

Students don’t realize they’re learning to read with Fonty—Easy Reader Education’s interactive Learn to Read program. For $79.95, Fonty has 150 lessons and learning activities. A fun animated character guides students through each lesson. The program also includes a microphone to supplement Fonty’s phonics–based approach to learning.

Features Set:  

Fonty includes 150 reading lessons as well as learning games for kindergarten to first grade students. Each lesson builds on the previous lesson. For example, the program introduces students to letters and their sounds, then simple words and finally, sentences.

Fonty uses phonics–based instruction and includes a microphone to test students’ pronunciation of letters and words. The program also covers vowels, prefixes, suffixes and general reading rules.

The animation quality is low compared to the top three products and some of the exercises like assembling letters by clicking and dragging lines and curves to assemble the letters are not as useful as other lessons.

Ease of Use:  

You can navigate the Fonty program with back and forward arrows and a pause button. The Fonty character also guides students through each lesson with positive feedback and encouragement.

Ease of Installation/Setup:  

Fonty comes with two CDs and an intstallation/user guide. You can receive Fonty through the mail—the manufacturer does not offer a direct download. Fonty works with Windows 95, 98, ME and XP, but doesn’t work with Windows 2000 or Mac.

Help/Support:  

The Fonty website has a large FAQs list and the program comes with a user guide. You can contact them by telephone or email. After five days, they responded to our emails.

Summary:  

Fonty is a good Learn to Read program. The animated Fonty character guides students through phonics–based progressive lessons that include instruction of letters, vowels, prefixes, suffixes, words and sentences. Compared with the top three products, the animation quality is poor and the program does not work with Windows 2000.

For a comprehensive Learn to Read program with high quality animation see ClickN’Read.