Let your children use your computer. Instead of being paranoid about letting them touch it, with WriteTalk loaded you can let them have a turn! They see a blank green screen, and you may just let them play with the keyboard. They see and hear the letter sounds they press. If they press space after a word, it prounounces the word correctly rather than phonetically.
They can use backspace and change letters to get it to sound exactly right, and try to make the computer talk to them.
There are checkbox options to make the computer say the classical letter names instead of the phonetic sounds. If they manage to type a sentence followed by a period, it will read out the sentence in appropriate intonation, and then the sentence will disappear so they can write more.
The 30 day trial version is fully enabled.
Other check-box options include making it say the words but not the letter sounds, or to make it only read the whole sentence and not the individual words. The philosophy of this program is that there is no need of a 'theme' or 'game.' Kids love being able to use the computer, and in a few hours of play they will learn more than many months in school. Further information is at http://www.goldengem.co.uk/WriteTalk.html.
