Could LLATL blue, be used for a K'er?

[Mommy7]

Do you have to know letter sounds before starting it?

[chiguirre]

You can definitely use it with a ready 5yo (I did :D). I do think that it will go much smoother if they know all their letter sounds and are ready to blend CVC words. It's also a bonus for them to be able to write the letters, it doesn't have to be perfect but at least some experience will make Blue much easier. A great way to prepare for Blue is to work through the Explode the Code Primers.

[Tree House Academy]

I used it with my son who was barely 5 when we started. However, he did know all the letters and their sounds. He was also starting to blend 3 letter CVC words when we started.

[Mommy7]

Thank you for your response! That is exactly what I was thinking this afternoon. If I did the ETC A,B,C between now and the fall, he may be ready for LLATL blue. He is so eager to start. Don't you just love at the beginning of school when they are just so excited about it all?

I thought about using ETC once we start LLATL blue also. What do you think?

[RhondaM.]

Thank you for your response! That is exactly what I was thinking this afternoon. If I did the ETC A,B,C between now and the fall, he may be ready for LLATL blue. He is so eager to start. Don't you just love at the beginning of school when they are just so excited about it all?

I thought about using ETC once we start LLATL blue also. What do you think?

I used LLATL Blue, ETC and Phonic Pathways together when my ds was nearly 5. They worked wonderfully together. But I let PP and ETC lead the way for phonics, for readers i used the LLATL blue. The rest of LLATL was just for 'fun'. Except that we didn't use lots of it because for some reason my *FOUR* year old thought the book was for babies. :tongue_smilie:

When I taught my dd to read a few years back I used the same thing, the LLATL readers, PP and ETC. (I think SHE would have enjoyed the rest of the LLATL program, but by then I didn't have it any longer.)

Rhonda

[chiguirre]

ETC fits LLATL very well. You can use ETC 1 with Section 2 (CVC words), ETC 2 with Section 3 (consonant blends and digraphs) and ETC 3 with Section 4 (long vowels). It works together very well.

[Mommy7]

Rhonda M, Could you elaborate any on how you use these 3 together?

[Mommy7]

;)

[RhondaM.]

Rhonda M, Could you elaborate any on how you use these 3 together?

Errrr...by the seat of my pants? ;)
I think both times we sort of started out with PP, doing the ba, be, bi, bo, bu chants...then as soon as they added on ending letters we'd use ETC, then as soon as the dc was ready we'd pull out a LLATL reader. Then go back to PP & ETC then add in a reader.

Somewhere along the line PP and ETC do not really work as well together anymore so I just found what worked. (WE never spent more than 5-10 minutes on phonics, and usually only 3 days per week.)

Both times the kids took off with their reading before we even finished half of PP and I don't think we ever did past ETC level 3 or 4. We just started reading real books after that and they are both great readers and spellers.
My 2nd grader has not had a phonics lesson since kindergarten and this year she read The Secret Garden without a problem.

Thats how we arranged it. I'm sure there are many ways of doing it though.