Favorite curriculum to teach reading?

[sarahsheart]

My oldest son learned to read at the private school he attended during K & 1st. My middle son is 5 & on the cusp of reading (nows his lettet "sounds" & just blended pig sat on his own yesterday). I also have an early 3 yr old who is picking up sounds & knows alot of his letters now. I have some of the A Bekah K books, there handbook for reading & a few 2nd grad readers. Most where given to me about 4 yrs back. I feel like I should use what is on hand but wondering if there might be something that flows better for us. From what I've looked at the A Bekah books we have on hand it's more designed for a classroom of kids.

 

Any thoughts, suggestions or just plain encouragememt would be appreciated.

[Finlandia]

I used the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. It can be used with a 3yo (the lessons start out with letter sounds) but also your 5yo. I'll admit, I didn't love it but it served its purpose. it's easy to implement. The lessons are scripted, so if you need help knowing what to say that is provided. I preferred to put things in my own words. The practice sentences seemed a bit bizarre to me at times and were a distraction for my DD. I ended up using the lessons to introduce concepts and then using a combination of Bob Books, Abeka readers, and the Sonlight readers for reading practice

[MerryAtHope]

How cute, what a fun stage for your son! All About Reading is a fun program--see if that's a fit for you. Enjoy this stage of exploring and learning how to sound out words!

[ReadingMama1214]

I also use Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading and used it with my daughter starting at 3.75. We didn't do the first 27 lessons because it covered letter sounds and she knew those through play. For letter sounds I'd highly recommend Leap Frog Letter Factory.

 

At the beginning I wrote out the lessons on a white board or notebook because my dd got overwhelmed by the font and words on the page. I also made my own sentences using DDs name because she preferred that.

 

But I LOVE OPGTR. It got my daughter reading well and able to use phonics skills to break down unknown words. She's now reading on about a 3rd grade level and can decode higher than that. I love how straight forward it is. It covers a lot and prepares kids to read well.

 

You also can't beat the price.

 

We did supplement with Bob books, Nora Gaydos readers, other beginning readers, games, and Teach Your Monster to Read app.

[MotherGoose]

OPGTR. For the youngest ones I would recreate the lessons not have them read from the actual book. The bob books flow nicely with it, and my library carries them.

[ExcitedMama]

Another vote for All About Reading (AAR). It's super easy to use, fun and very thorough. My DS is an amazing reader now thanks to AAR.

[Syllieann]

I really love AAR. It is easy to implement and can be adjusted to a pace that suits the child. My older two did great with it. My youngest is just starting, but so far, so good. It is the type of program that is likely to work for most students and most teachers.

[UnlikelyHomeschoolingMama]

You will not find a lot of ABEKA supporters here, but I honestly like it for phonics.  It just makes sense.  Word families "cat, hat, bat" don't help my kids at all, because rarely do words actually rhyme.  Beyond CVC words, I just don't see how it sets a good foundation. Teaching blend ladders from the beginning "ca, ha, ba" and jumping off from THERE just makes more sense and has really helped my kids decode effectively...even in 4th and 2nd grade.  ABEKA doesn't need to be so hard to teach, but I'm also familiar with it at this point and know what I can do and not do. I don't use it for anything else but phonics, because I've found it just makes sense.  AAR was something I bought for my third child (found it really cheap) but then sold because it just didn't make as much sense to me to teach reading.  Now...I LOVE All About Spelling once a child has started to read, but for me ABEKA is just a fantastic foundation.

 

So here is one recommendation to go with what you have.  ;-) 

[JudoMom]

Phonics Pathways. It was recommended in the first edition of TWTM (might still be).

 

It's simple and straightforward. No games, no scripting. Because of that, it's easy to do as little as five minutes a day, or you can do quite a bit longer, depending on your child's attention span at day.

Edited June 21, 2017 by JudoMom

[sarahsheart]

I'm going to take sometime tomorrow to sit down & look through the A Bekah books we have at home & look at the other suggestions online. I did see a recommendation for "The Reading Lesson" curriculum in another post on this board. I was actually looking over the sample of the first lessons from that curriculum the other morning when 5 yr old DS#2 crawled up & starting blending & reading "cat sat" from their lesson 1 page without my prompting. My oldest is a very quick learner & loves "rules" so he did well with A Bekah & learning the blend ladders and all the rules. (He knows them better than me) This son is more impatient & gives up if he feels like he isn't doing well. I'm wondering if he can hold out through all the blends & rules to really get into the "reading" part.

[ExcitedMama]

Memoria Press has a series of workbooks called First Start Reading that might appeal to him if he's impatient to get started. They do a great job of tracing letters and introducing blends. It builds up to reading passages. You don't need the teacher's guide so the workbooks are cheap.

[fralala]

I'm always in favor of using what you have and then tailoring lessons to the kid (if you have the time/inclination). You don't have to do the lessons in the book, you just have to cover the material so nicely laid out in a logical sequence for you. For us, that has meant many, many games of word/sound Bingo and other games and a minimum of workbook pages. Since you have plenty of time with your 3 year old and it sounds like your 5 year old is right on track, it does sound like you might be able to make the Abeka work. If you wanted! I like the looks of the Reading Lesson, too.

[sarahsheart]

I would like add that the 5 yr old has always been highly verbal & loves words. For example at 23 months old he said a clear, distinct 6 worded sentence. All adults have been able to understand him from age 1 because he enunciates very well. The summer after turning 2 in April he stood on a tree stump and announced that "this is spectacular". He is always wanting to know what a word means (last night he wanted to know the meaning of "neccesary").

 

Now that we have started phonic sounds his is constantly breaking down the sounds in a word & figuring out the first letter & alot of times the ending letter/sound.

[Cake and Pi]

My older two learned from Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons.  One started a little before his 5th birthday, and the other started a few months after turning 3.  I really liked it, it worked, and it was only like 15 bucks from Amazon.  

[scoutingmom]

For my youngest I have been using (from recommendations here) the "I See Sam" books that were developed in the 70's. They have been the easiest reading method I have ever used, and the kids are reading little books almost immediately. You can get them free from www.3rsplus.com or print the original from another site (I don't have the link handy).

 

The 1st book is the hardest as they need to know 5 sound-letter corelations and how to blend. You work on that, then they read the first book. There are instructions on the link above. Each book is fully decodable from the phonics taught to that part. There are similar looking names and words so they need to decode and not guess.

 

One of the first words has a sound spelled with 2 letters so that isn't a surprise for the student. A few books later they learn that a letter could have more than one sound, so that isn't a surprise later either.

 

The first sounds are

I - long i

s -/s/

S - /S/

ee - long e

a - short a

m -/m/

 

 

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[Tumbatoo]

I liked All About Reading a lot. But, for a young child who is wanting a little bit more but not quite a full curriculum, I like Reading the Alphabet. It's online and free by thisreadingmama.com. She uses a mix of sight words, picture clues and early phonics with lots of games and hands on activities.

[blendergal]

Another vote for Reading the Alphabet. It can feel repetitive after a while. We were about halfway through when DS was ready for my REAL favorite reading curriculum -- Primary Phonics. I thought the print awareness activities were especially great. We're making slow but steady progress through level 1 of Primary Phonics now (he isn't even 5 yet so I'm not in a rush). We're using the Hooked on Phonics app alongside.

[Mommyof1]

I am currently using a lot of different things.

 

YouTube has been very helpful with the alphabet and the different sounds the letters make, using music. Which my daughter loves. They also have a program from the UK called Alphablocks that teach the kids phonics. I highly recommend that program. The episode are short but fun.

 

I've had my daughter go through Blend Phonics PrePrimer and Alphabet Fluency by Donald Potter. I had to write the words on cards or white board. She doesn't like all those pages of words.

 

I am currently trying to get her to do Phonics Pathways but she tells me she doesn't want too.

 

She is young so she just might need more time or she might need a different approach.

 

The summer reading program at our library got her really going on those Bob Books. They would give her a prize for every 6 books she read. She has read more then 30 so far.

 

I also have her going through the McGuffey Revised Primer.

[desertstrawberry5]

Progressive Phonics

[ReadingMama1214]

DS (3.5yo) just started blending sounds together and OPGTR will definitely not work for him right now. I plan to do our own thing for a while. Using a movable alphabet of sorts to Teach reading. We'll use the OPG as a guide but have a more hands on approach.

[happynurse]

My 5 year old is reading extremely well and we've done LoE Foundations A, and half of Foundations B. Somehow, however, he has just taken off and is reading way beyond what we've learned in LoE. It has done a great job of giving him a jumpstart, though. Bonus of LoE for me was that it is scripted, and I needed that being that I'm new at this. :)

[ElizabethB]

Word Mastery is free to print from Don Potter. You could also do a bit of syllables with Webster and then do some 2 syllable words to get that feeling of progress.

[Vida Winter]

Reading Made Easy by Valerie Bendt

[Rachel]

OPGTR and Bob books are why I used with my first two kids. It's pretty simple and worked well for us.

[meganrussell]

My Father's World!

[Ellie]

Spalding. It teaches children to read by teaching them to spell--a two-fer!--while simultaneously teaching penmanship, capitalization and punctuation, and simple writing. It's everything you need for literacy for children up to, oh, 8yo (older children who need help with either spelling or reading can still do Spalding).

[abibechard]

We are about to finish up the Reading Lesson with my 5 year old. He knew his letters and most of their sounds but wasn't putting them together. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons was what I was planning on teaching him with but it would have moved way to slow. With Reading Lesson I moved faster (one lesson is supposed to last a week but we skipped a lot of repeats and did a lesson in two days).

 

It's simple and quick. I loved that I didn't have to do a bunch of extra things. It covers lots of phonetic rules without feeling super intense. I really loved it. I think it's perfect if your child is already starting to read because you can skim through it without missing important steps or you can go slow and read every page. It's on Amazon for pretty cheap. I think it's used by Timberdoodle.

[sweetstitches]

I almost never see it mentioned anymore, but we’ve had great success using Headsprout.

[SamanthaCarter]

I like The Reading Lesson.

 

 

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[4KookieKids]

I second Spalding. Not great for a normal 3-4 year old, because of the fine motor skills needed for writing, but great for a 5+ kiddo. My oldest needed very explicit instruction and doesn't intuit rules well, so he struggled through stuff like 100 EZ lessons, HOP, Bob books, Alphaphonics, etc. Three months of Spalding had him reading chapter books. 

[Clemsondana]

We used Hooked on Phonics.