The Future of Literacy

You should be able to tell by the end of the 7-day free trial if Mentava will be a good fit for your child. Some families finish our reading curriculum in as little as 4 months, but we believe 12 months is a more reasonable expectation for most families.

Our rule-of-thumb is your kid should be speaking in full English sentences and able to understand left-to-right reading order (distinguish dogfish  from fishdog )Every child develops at their own pace. Most of our students are around age 3.5-5. The earliest we've had kids be successful is around age 2.5, and some might not be ready until they're 7 or later. If your child is already reading sentences and sounding out words with long vowels (like “home”), they are further along than Mentava can support. Instead, we recommend lots of shared reading time, with books like the “You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You” series.

Most mainstream “educational” software would be better classified as “edutainment”. It optimizes for holding children’s attention as they passively consume content for as long as possible. Mentava is designed to be an active learning experience that delivers rigorous learning outcomes. Practice sessions typically last about 15-30 minutes before students are too mentally tired to continue.

We have a phonics-based, direct instruction approach to teaching. Engelmann and Orton-Gillingham have been strong influences on our curriculum. We have unique challenges (the young age of our students means we need to consider the order in which kids acquire different speech sounds) and unique advantages (access to audio, video, and animations creates opportunities for more effective teaching tactics) that have guided the development of our own curriculum.

You can complete the curriculum at each child’s own pace. We typically see committed families complete the program in about 6 months.