ABeCeDarian or Bear Necessities

[Terabith]

I'm looking to start a beginning reading program with my 4.5 year old (sensory issues, some speech issues). She has a pretty good understanding of basic prereading skills and knows her sounds. I'm trying to decide between starting with ABeCeDarian and Bear Necessities. I may eventually go through both, using the Dancing Bears program for fluency, unless that is overkill. But I am looking for opinions on where to begin formal reading.

I'll probably use the I See Sam readers for practice with connected text. Thanks!

[Ottakee]

Honestly, I would use the I See Sam readers AS her program. Esp. for this age, they are all you need. Once you are through set 1 of the I See Sam books you could add Bear Necessities for reading fluency/drill.

Besides being inexpensive and very easy to use, the I See Sam readers would really appeal to a 4.5 year old. I bet she will LOVE the stories and love having the little books to read, carry around, read to others, etc.

In my "ideal" world I would:

Do I See Sam level 1
Start set 2 and add Bear Necessities/Dancing Bears
Continue with these until after set 4
Then start Apples and Pears Spelling while continuing with the Dancing Bears and I see Sam books.

[Pensguys]

I'm agreeing with Ottakee here.

We are using ABCeDarian this year (Level B) and I will continue on with Level C next year (probably), but my ds is doing so well with the I See Sam books and we just started with Apples/Pears for spelling. I'm staying with ABCD because, frankly, I'm afraid to give it up. My ds has progressed so much this year with ABCD and I See Sam (as well as vision therapy), that I'm afraid to take a piece of the puzzle away.

We never used Bear Necessities, so I'm not sure how that would play in.

[Claire]

The I See Sam readers are wonderful, but for most children I think reading is helped with some explicit instruction.

Rather than going with ABeCeDarian for a 4.5yo, I would suggest getting the book Reading Reflex by McGuinness and using the games and activities in there to work explicitly on developing sound/symbol correlation along with segmenting, blending and phoneme manipulation skills. Children tend to really enjoy the "sound bingo" game, for example. Instead of cutting up manipulatives, purchase an inexpensive set of plastic letters from Walmart. Using manipulatives with reading at this age can be very helpful. Once your dd can form letters, purchase a small whiteboard/marker/eraser to start her on the "mapping" exercise. All of these prep activities will help later when the I See Sam books start getting more difficult.

There are two versions of the I See Sam books. The more expensive sets have the new sounds and new words in a book pulled out to the front so they can be pre-taught. One tutor I know thinks it is worth the extra money to have those ready for pre-teaching.