I need your help with my first homeschool curriculum purchase!

[ekarl2]

Hello, all!

As a vendor I attend 12-15 conventions a year. I'm a former 7th grade English teacher and hold a secondary credential. All this to say, "I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO TEACH A KID TO READ!" :tongue_smilie:

My daughter turned three last month. She knows her letters and knows most of the basic sounds they make. We were in the post office the other day and she walked up to the trash can and said, "Wha, ahh, ssss, tuh, eee" (WASTE). So, you can see that she enjoys "reading" on her own! LOL

Anyway, This summer I'm attending 12 conventions as a vendor, but I plan to make my first purchase as a homeschool mom and I'm VERY excited.

My mom and I both started reading before we turned four and I think Toot is well on her way. I want to get a phonics-based program to begin to use with her so she won't develop any bad habits or get frustrated if I make her back-up to phonics after she learns to read on her own.

Can you tell me what you like, how it works, etc? What curriculum, additional topics, etc., should I be planning to cover with her next year.

Thank you all!

[OhElizabeth]

Hi, and welcome to the boards! Now you've got to the spill the beans: what curriculum do you rep for at conventions? I've done some, and while it's hard work, it's fun! Are you going to be at the Cincinnati convention in April? It's just going to be AMAZING, so if you're anywhere near there, you could try to attend. Otherwise, just go to the hall an hour early to look at things and have a tight list so you can move fast!

I taught my dd to read with WRTR/SWR, because I wanted continuity from phonics to spelling. Other people like OPGTR, Phonics Pathways, or ETC.

[ekarl2]

Hi, and welcome to the boards! Now you've got to the spill the beans: what curriculum do you rep for at conventions? I've done some, and while it's hard work, it's fun! Are you going to be at the Cincinnati convention in April? It's just going to be AMAZING, so if you're anywhere near there, you could try to attend. Otherwise, just go to the hall an hour early to look at things and have a tight list so you can move fast!

I taught my dd to read with WRTR/SWR, because I wanted continuity from phonics to spelling. Other people like OPGTR, Phonics Pathways, or ETC.


My mother wrote Analytical Grammar and its companion products. I'm helping her write our high school reinforcement books. The last of those will go to press in about a month.

We will be in Cincinnati! We're looking forward to it!

[ruth]

my 2-cents worth is...

wait , wait , wait. There are so many years to "teach". The best thing you could do now is read ,read, read aloud to your kids. This is something that I did without realizing how great it was for my kids, (they still love read aloud time at 12 and 13yrs).

happy journey

[Jumping In Puddles]

My daughter turned three last month. She knows her letters and knows most of the basic sounds they make. We were in the post office the other day and she walked up to the trash can and said, "Wha, ahh, ssss, tuh, eee" (WASTE). So, you can see that she enjoys "reading" on her own! LOL



That reminds me when my son was just that age, we were in the post office and he said, "wha, ahh, ssst, tuh, eh" then looked really proud and said loudly: "TRASH!!!!" everyone in the p.o. started laughing and as we were leaving, I could still hear people chuckling over it! :lol:

I like ABeCeDarian (http://www.abcdrp.com). It is just right for my kids. We tried Ordinary Parents Guide but my son didn't like it. My son, despite wanting to learn to read at a young age was NOT ready until he was 5 1/2, then it clicked! So we did handwriting instead and he loved it, then we started phonics.

Good Luck!

[Aurelia]

You might take a look at Reading Eggs online - since it's on the computer you don't have to worry about writing (3 is really young for workbooks, IMO). It's colorful and my daughter really enjoyed it.

We use ABeCeDarian, but if she's not ready for writing yet, I would hesitate to recommend it. It's very good at teaching segementing and blending as well as the letters - level A is designed for kids who are ready to read, it covers all the short vowel sounds and some blends, and teaches handwriting, too.

I really like the theory behind Teach a Child to Read with Children's Books. (I think that's the title.) Mostly we used decodable (like BOB Books) readers, not the leveled ones, to start with and within 4 months Ariel was reading Dr. Seuss.


Dancing Bears from Promethean trust looks good, too.

[Stacia]

Phonics Pathways (http://www.amazon.com/Phonics-Pathways-Reading-Perfect-Spelling/dp/0787979104/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234901384&sr=1-1) worked wonderfully for us. And, I printed out the lovely (free) dolch/sight word sheets (http://www.janbrett.com/games/jan_brett_dolch_word_list_main.htm) from Jan Brett's website.

The dc also loved www.starfall.com (http://www.starfall.com).

[chiguirre]

The first thing I'd buy to cement all the basic letter sounds is the Letter Factory dvd. Once your dd knows all the letter sounds I'd look into a reading program that is only reading, not language arts because she may not be able to write well enough to do pencil work.

[coralloyd]

Welcome to the adventure! It sounds like you were hsed, were you? I was. It's exciting to be a second gen. hser.
Well onto your question.
I jumped around a lot with oldest dd. It's a miracle she reads so well now:blush:.
With middle dd (4 yr. old)we found and use Phonics Pathways. I LOVE it! It is very simple, without a lot of bells and whistles. We just read a page or two a day, some days we slow it down even more. We skipped the letters and their sounds part, since she already knew these; so I can't comment on this part. However, the rest is great. This program is completely based on phonics. I don't have to assign readers to her. She picks out books on her own to read. I make sure, we have books lying around that she can read. She also likes to do the Explode the Code books (Phonics workbooks), so I let her :). she can read VERY well for a 4yr. old.

[TaraTheLiberator]

My daughter was sounding out three-letter words at age three, and I was certain she was on the verge of reading. However, she didn't move beyond the CVC words until this year, her first-grade year. She's newly seven and has been reading "independently" for a few months, and just tested at a 4th grade reading level.

All this to say, your little girl may not be an early reader; don't be disappointed if she's not. Each child learns at her own pace.

We are loving Explode the Code here. I never did their Before the Code stuff, so I know little about it, but you might want to check it out.

Tara

[ekarl2]

Welcome to the adventure! It sounds like you were hsed, were you? I was. It's exciting to be a second gen. hser.


Actually, I'm not. My mom taught public school for 34 years (that's where she wrote her curriculum. She did it for her own classroom and never in a MILLION YEARS did she think she'd be selling it one day). I did, though, have her for 8th grade English. That's where I learned all my grammar! LOL

It is through her business that I've been well acquainted with homeschooling and I'M SOLD! Besides running AG, I stay home with my two little ones; our situation is perfect for homeschooling.

[squirtymomma]

My 3 yr old is similar. I wanted to wait to teach her to read, but she was just ready. One thing I used to stall a bit was to work on her phonemic awareness (mostly as a game in the car). I used this article (http://all-about-spelling.com/phonemic-awareness.html) as a guide. Once she was doing those things comfortably (picking out first sound, last sound, and able to segment two-sound words), I got Phonics Pathways. It's nice for a young one because it doesn't require any writing (my 3 year old is learning to write capital letters, but she's not ready for workbook type programs). We only do about 5 minutes a day. She's steadily improving and still asks to do a reading lesson every day (after 2-3 months). I don't push, and I try to make it fun and playful.

Another alternative I'm considering when it comes out is All About Spelling (http://www.all-about-spelling.com/)'s guide to use their spelling curriculum for teaching reading. My mom was a lower school director of a Classical private school, and she is sold on the Orton-Gillingham method of teaching reading. The problem is, most of the O-G methods are expensive (or require a lot of writing, which, again, we're not ready for). I think AAS might be a good alternative. I hear that the reading guide (plus readers?) is due out in April.

Generally, I think young readers need to be taught phonics, so they don't learn to rely on guessing strategies. But, they need to have fairly immediate rewards (like fun games and readers to use their phonics skills, not just pages and pages of drills). Phonics Pathways has games for practice, and we will be adding BOB readers and others soon, when she's ready for them.

[OhElizabeth]

Well how cool Erin! I'm planning to go to Cincy, so we'll see you there! So will you get some breaks from the booth? We (people from the board) usually have a get-together, so that's fun. In the past SWB or JW have come. We had such a wonderful time last year talking with JW.

Phonics is something you want to take your time with and form your opinions about. I suggest you read through all the approaches, borrow some of them from the library (WRTR and Phonics Pathways were in ours), and just see what you think best.

If you want something to do, we did Alphabet Art and others of the Judy Press books at that age and they were SO much fun. WP schedules a variety of delightful books, including Alphabet Art, in their Animal Worlds core. SL has fun read alouds, and she's a great age for Before Five in a Row. Like the others, I HIGHLY recommend extensive read alouds. I didn't have the best health then, so I bought my dd books on tape. She listened to Charlotte's Web, the Chronicles of Narnia (Harper Audio, unabridged, not the Focus on the Family ones), Uncle Remus (Julius Lester reading, fabulous), etc. by the HOUR. I read to her from the Lang fairy tale books and the Little House series. Little House is easier, so she just sat and listened, while the Lang fairy tales were better when she was doing something like playing outside. It lengthened her attention span, improved her sentence structure, and built her vocabulary, so she recognized words as she was learning to read. WTM has a section on preschoolers where they espouse this very approach, and it worked very well for us.

At that age we also took nature walks using field guides specific to our state. We have guides for butterflies, trees, wildflowers, birds, you name it, and those observations built a curiosity and go-getter spirit for information. We sang songs together and did a program (classes) called Kindermusic. The Let's Read and Find Out books would be fine for that age and might spark some fun for you. (read about worms, dig for worms, etc.) But mainly we just had a lot of FUN! The Judy Press books will take you a long way if you like to do that sort of thing. I always wrangled my dh into it, as I'm not much of an artist, hehe. Have fun, and we'll see you in Cincy! :)

[ElizabethB]

As a remedial reading tutor for 16 years and now a homeschool mom, I would recommend you stay away from sight words. I've tutored a lot of students who got too many sight words, and it's a lot easier to teach them to sound out words the right way the first time than to remediate them.

In my 16 years of tutoring, I've given out hundreds of reading grade level tests, and I have not yet found a child reading below grade level that was taught with a good phonics program with few sight words. And, I've found that the more sight words taught in the school and the more they focus on them, the higher the percentage of children in that school that have problems.

Here's more about why and how not to use sight words:

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/sightwords.html

I've used 20+ different phonics programs, my favorites are here (OPG and a few other homeschool-specific programs are also good but are not on the list since my list is not geared towards homeschoolers.) http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/phonicsandspelli.html

Don Potter's website has a lot of good free programs. Blend Phonics and Word Mastery are both good beginning programs (but need to be followed up with a more complete program like PP or OPG or Webster's Speller) that have very good explanations about how to teach a beginning student to read. They are free online: http://www.donpotter.net/education_pages/

I also have some instructions about how to teach reading to a beginning student: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/newstudents.html and a fun free game: http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/concentrationgam.html

I started my daughter at 3 1/2 with letter sounds and simple blending. At 4, we worked out of some of my phonics books (when she wanted to, it was usually 2 or 3 times a week for 5 to 10 minutes at a time.)

In K, we worked through Webster's Speller. Having taught 20+ different phonics methods, I think Webster's Speller is the best. It's also a good start for a young learner because it first teaches 2 letter syllable blends. We worked from a white board, that really held my daughter's interest. After completing the speller 5 months later, my daughter was decoding at the 12th grade level (although her understanding varies, but she is learning a lot of vocabulary early because of her reading skills.) A link to how to use the Speller is below in my signature. That link also includes a link to a movie that people have found helpful to understand how it works. There is also a thread explaining in more detail how to use Webster's Speller:

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70153

The phonics in Webster's Speller leads directly into the skills needed to read 2, 3, 4, and 5 syllable words. It first teaches syllables (ab, eb, ib, ob, ub; ba, be, bi, bo, bu, by), then short words, then 2+ syllable words divided to show if the vowels are long or short. (Ba-by, ba-ker, ab-stract, ad-mit) The words are also arranged by accent pattern, with unaccented syllables more likely to schwa. This makes learning how to pronounce 2+ syllable words easy for even a young student. The arrangement by accent pattern is also especially helpful for my remedial ESL students.

Good Luck--and enjoy your first convention as a consumer! As someone who enjoys books and learning, I find them very invigorating. It's nice to be around a bunch of people who are excited about educating themselves and their children.

[klmama]

The first thing I'd buy to cement all the basic letter sounds is the Letter Factory dvd. Once your dd knows all the letter sounds I'd look into a reading program that is only reading, not language arts because she may not be able to write well enough to do pencil work.

:iagree: All of the Leap Frog phonics things are great. I wish I'd bought stock in the company!!!

The Fridge Phonics toy corresponds well with the Letter Factory video. There are extra lower case letters, too, if you want to purchase them later.

Once the letters and sounds are solid, the Talking Word Factory video is the next step. It corresponds to the Word Whammer toy. (Same letters work for both toys.)

When she gets a little older, if video games aren't against your views, the Word Launch toy is fun. Still uses manipulatives - same type of letter pieces - but with a video game format. Who knows? Maybe there is a video that goes with it, too! :)

Then, if they still make it, there's the Phonics Pond toy. My oldest learned all letters and sounds with it and started sounding out CVC words before it ever occurred to me to do any instruction. If your dd decides it isn't her cup of tea, I believe there's a music setting to enjoy.

[lmrich]

Something I did when my kids were that age was to write down journal entries for them. We would go on a walk and come back and they would dictate a sentence for me. I would slowly sound out each word and for sight words I would tell them, this is a word I read and write a lot, so I just know it. We would talk about letter sounds, remember yesterday when we saw a chick, that started the same way as church, what letters did I use, and we would turn back and look it up. Sometimes we would make a list of words we could think of that had that same sound.

This was very casual and involved no planning on my part. I had taught elementary school for several years, so it was somewhat easy for me. I would not use workbooks, unless you child loves doing that kind of thing (two of my kids love completing pages). In fact, I would get a good phonics workbook and cut out the pictures for the kids to do sorts with - put all the "w" sounding words in that bucket, etc... And last of all, read all the time to your kids and then you can point out, hey look at this word - children it has the same sound as chick and church.

Good Luck!

[ekarl2]

These are SO HELPFUL, Ladies ... thank you!

OhElizabeth, please stop by the booth and introduce yourself; I'd love to meet you! I'll have some time to wander and maybe attend a workshop or two. I'll be there with my mom. She's undergoing cancer treatment so she sometimes gets tired. I may be stuck at the booth if she needs to go rest, so I really won't be able to plan any vendor-hall wanderings in advance.

ElizabethB, I totally agree about sight words. Toot already recognizes a couple of words. I remember speaking to JW last year at a convention about her and she also warned that having to back-track to phonics after a child has already started reading might lead to problems and frustration. I really appreciate all the time you took to post your information.

Please keep the comments coming!

[littlebug42]

My oldest used to beg me to teach her to read starting at 3.5. I used the Hooked on Phonics program and it worked extremely well for her and she is now 7 and is a very advanced, excellent reader. My younger daughter, age 5, much to our surprise, has taught herself to read by taking the little phonics I have taught her to date (two levels of HOP) and she does memorize every word she comes into contact with. She recently picked up the first Chronicles of Narnia book and began reading it to herself (not sure of the actual comprehension but she can make out the words). She is not intimidated by anything but I am concerned with what it is going to be like to teach her the rest of the phonics that she needs for spelling etc. It should be interesting.