Crossbow Education

Crossbow Education is a company that is passionate about helping children and adults who suffer with Dyslexia and other reading difficulties. 

One way they help them is with their most popular product – Eye Level Reading Ruler- on sale at the time of this posting for $16.95 for the variety pack of 10, which I received.  The colors included are: yellow, celery, grass, jade, aqua, sky, purple, magenta, pink, and orange.  One side of each is gloss and the other side is matte.

These rulers:

• reduce glare
• improve focus
• assist in tracking
• a narrow window isolates a single line of text
• a wider window for reading paragraphs
• can be used in a paper book or with an e-reader

Let me share with you why I wanted to try these for my family.

My father actually wears rose colored glasses while he is working on the computer.  No, not “rose colored glasses”, but actual glasses that have rose colored lenses.  He has always claimed that the glasses help him to read better on the computer screen.   These rulers are the same concept, only much more affordable and they come with the variety of colors to use and choose from.  Plus, I just can’t see my kids being willing to wear colored glasses.  (They do make prescription colored lenses for people to see better with, we are not judging.)

I had each person in my family use these as a trial.  Each of us has a different reading ability. 

 

The Bookworms

Emily and I are both great, avid readers.  We both found that these helped us keep our place.  We liked the wider side as it allowed us to read ahead as we moved it down our page.  Many of the books we read are not the full length of the ruler.  This made it a challenge to hold along with the book.  This is easily solved by cutting the rulers down to fit the size of your book, however we both chose to both just deal with it.   Emily’s favorite color choice is the celery and she doesn’t care which side.  My favorite color choice is pink matte. 

 The Struggling Readers

Katey and Tommy are not bookworms.  While Katey has been showing a greater interest in reading lately, in fact, I just realized that it has been since she started using these that her reading has taken off.  Coincidence?  Maybe, but these have definitely helped her make less mistakes while reading.  She also doesn’t have to think as hard to sound out each word.  Katey’s color preference is the magenta gloss.  

 

Tommy is the type of reader that is easily distracted.  He loses his place easily.  These rulers really helped him to be able to keep his place.  Tommy found it a struggle and hassle to hold these while reading a book smaller than the ruler. He has not yet decided on a color preference.  As soon as he does, I will cut one down for him. 

 

The Dyslexic

My husband has dyslexia.  Often times he struggles to read. While is not a big reader, I had him try these out to share his opinion.  According to him, they did help.  His color preferences are the Yellow, Orange or Aqua matte.

 

Overall, I would recommend getting this variety pack of the Eye Level Reading Rulers and trying them out in your home, once you have decided on your families color preferences you can order a package of just that specific color.

 

Crossbow Education offers many other products such as:

• full page color overlays- great for music sheets and full page reading.
• other visual stress items
• phonics games
• sand timers

as well as they are adding new items to their catalog often.

To see what others think of Crossbow Education’s Reading Rulers check out this post. To see a wide variety of reviews check out our crew blog.

Disclosure: As a member of The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew I review products, like this, which I receive for free in order to be able to share my honest opinion.  No other compensation is provided.