Mentava Reading 🐮
@MentavaInc
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Our software teaches preschoolers to read. Get our best-selling Alphabet Sounds book for free here https://t.co/WjsQP40GwH
Joined November 2021
Kids can learn to read much earlier than most people realize
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21) “My son has a very limited attention span and resists stuff when I try to teach it to him, but will happily do Mentava”
@HannahWardEdu @RachelVT42 @NielsHoven 1. I have no clue how to teach phonics. I would not have taught it at all like the Mentava app (which is working for my son). I don't have time to learn how to become a teacher either. 2. My son has a very limited attention span and resists stuff when I try to teach it to him,
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20) “In about a week and a half he's gone from not recognizing most letters to reading three-letter words pretty reliably.”
@biteydoginsider In about a week and a half he's gone from not recognizing most letters to reading three-letter words pretty reliably.
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19) the girls immediately request it [Mentava] after breakfast, even on the weekends, and have started arguing over who gets to do it first
I know @MentavaInc is doing something right because the girls immediately request it after breakfast, even on the weekends, and have started arguing over who gets to do it first.
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18) “My 1st grader and kindergartner are the best readers in their class”
Mentava was the best money we spent in 2025. My 1st grader and kindergartner are the best readers in their class. The credit goes to @MentavaInc. Thank you @NielsHoven 🙏
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> "When are you gonna put out some actual data to back up your claims?" Our claim is our software teaches kids to read Our data is videos of kids that we taught to read Not sure why this is so confusing
@NielsHoven When are you gonna put out some actual data to back up your claims? You’ve only been posting badly written anecdotal reviews you seem to seek out.
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When a child says “reading is too hard” Often I find that simply validating their feelings is enough to get them moving. Let your child know: “Yes, it IS hard! This is a hard thing that you’re doing.” Let them know that most kids don’t learn to read until they’re 6 or 7! In
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How long does it take to go from zero to an early 2nd grade reading level? For this 2yo, about 6 months:
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When people say that phonics is “too boring” or “doesn’t work”, it’s just an admission that they don’t know how to teach it well. Here’s my son working through one of the most difficult transitions in phonics: the introduction of digraphs like “sh” Until now, the words he read
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Tell me: If 1 in 3 fourth graders in our schools can't read at a basic level But phonics software can teach a preschooler to read in a couple months Why are we still debating whether phonics works?
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How to teach reading, in 2 steps Thousands of untrained parents teach their kids to read every year. It's not as hard as it looks. In fact, it should only take a couple weeks to start reading 3 letter words. Here what the process looks like: 1) Memorize letter-sound pairings
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Our schools think their job is to equalize, not to educate. But some kindergarteners have been reading for years. Some can't read at all. They should not be learning the same material. They should not be finishing the school year at the same place.
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How many more 2-year-olds do we have to teach to read before people just admit that phonics works?
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@NielsHoven @MentavaInc We don’t stop learning even when on vacation now! Bonus that I can get work done while he does Mentava ;-)
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What makes reading instruction good? Why are so many schools bad at it? Why are so many apps bad at it? What are the hard problems? What does Mentava get right? Buckle up and get your bookmarking finger ready, this is going to be a long post. First and most obviously,
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“Whole word” reading teaches kids to read by relying on crutches, like context and pictures By contrast, phonics is is best taught by eliminating all possible shortcuts and isolating the skill of decoding for focused training This 3yo (almost 4) is looking for the word “big”
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Learned about @MentavaInc at lunch today. We decided to give our 3yo an old iPad we had and set it up. In an afternoon he's gone from separate letter sounds to reading two letters as a single sound. Melissa's thread is accurate. It's drills and hard work disguised as a fun
this is a story of a ~month on mentava, the $500/mo toddler reading app fair warning, it's an off-the-wall perspective, as early literacy is lowish in our stack rank i picked mentava for the same reasons we picked climbing: failure is clear, impartial, and exacted in real time
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There is a pervasive view that parents won't pay for educational products. Not true. What is true: Parents won't pay for crappy educational products. Products like Alpha School, @_MathAcademy_, and @MentavaInc demonstrate that parents will pay for awesome products that deliver
The hard truth is that if you want to build a serious educational product, you can't be afraid to charge money for it. You can't back yourself into a corner where you depend on a massive userbase. Why? Because most people are not serious about learning, and if you depend on a
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After seeing our 3 year old learn to read his first word within just a few days using @MentavaInc I am now even more bullish on adaptive learning tech. And they don't even appear to be using AI. The future is bright!
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My 3 year old opened a book and read "American bison" at breakfast today I'm shook Kudos to @MentavaInc
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