TOS Review - Crossbow Education

I will admit, when I read the company name, Crossbow Education, I thought about all the years I had to endure deer hunting season growing up. *sigh* Can't take the West Virginia out of the girl after all.  :-/ (A crossbow is a type of hunting bow which is why I made the correlation. I always said I would never marry a hunter or fisherman.  I am happy to report that I did not. No offense to the hunter/fisher wives out there. ;-) )   Alas, I'm happy to report that all the deer population in my neck of the woods is still safe from me.  This company has nothing to do with hunting at all, they have instead created an awesome little product called the Reading Ruler.

Crossbow Education is a Christian company (corporate offices are based in the UK with a smaller division in the US) specializing in products geared towards assisting students with Dyslexia.  (I am starting to wonder if Julianna is dyslexic.  Still trying to figure things out about that.)  

We were able to try out the Eye Level Reading Ruler.  The ruler (which comes in 10 colors) can be flipped and used to highlight a single sentence on one side or multiple sentences on the other side.  

Here is a description of the Reading Ruler from the Crossbow website:

The Eye Level Reading Ruler is a colored overlay text highlighter about the size of a six-inch ruler. Discreet and portable, the reading ruler is made of a combination of opaque and transparent plastic that both underlines the text and highlights it in a coloured tint. Simply read the text through either of the tinted plastic strips of your selected color, and track down the page: broad strip for paragraphs; narrow strip for single lines.

My Musings:

At the beginning of our new school year I got Julianna a similar product to help her focus on the text she was reading.  It was about the same size, but it only highlighted one single sentence at a time.  While I thought it was definitely beneficial and we used it frequently, it didn't help with her reading fluency because she could only see the single line.  Being able to read several sentences without sliding the ruler down each line is probably the thing that has helped us the most.  We have tried a variety of the colors, but I haven't noticed any advantages of one over another.  I wish I could say it has solved all of our struggles, but it has helped her to focus more on the words.  If your kiddo needs help staying focused on text, I would definitely recommend trying the Reading Ruler, available at the Crossbow Education website in packs of 5 for $9.45 or 10 for $16.95. 

* Disclaimer:  As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I was given a set of the Eye Level Reading Rulers in exchange for my honest review.  No other compensation was received. *