Don Johnson's WordMaker
This program has 140 sequential lessons that bring a child through the process of learning phonetic skills, reviewing and applying them. The interface is pleasant, but not overly busy. I can see this as being a very valuable tool for those students of mine (in Gr. 5) who are lacking decoding skills, but don't want to be associated with anything too childish!
Alien Scavenger Hunt
There are two Alien Scavenger Hunts at GameGoo on the Earobics website. They are goofy, noisy and definitely childish. Some of my students would really go for that! In fact, some of them who would be willing to do WordMaker in the morning would need Alien Scavenger Hunt in the afternoon. In Letter Bugs, they need to click on bugs flying by. Each bug is wearing a phoneme from a word that is read aloud to them. If they click on the wrong bug, it quietly disappears, and if they miss a bug it floats back eventually. There is a time limit. Some kids might find it a little too quick, but I think that mine would be able to work within the given time frame. Space Trash is similar, except they need to click on phonemes that are missing from a partly-spelled word. WORD OF WARNING: Musically-literate adults will hate this one.
Into the Book
Into the Book is an (apparently) free resource that provides read-aloud books that give children practice in higher level thinking skills. That sounds highfaluting, but it's quite accessible!
