More good ideas, thank you! We also own Happy Phonics but haven't used much of it beyond the abc flashcards and lowercase- caps match games. I'm just psyched for the day DS reads out his 1st cvc word, however it comes about!

Thanks for all of your input ladies! It seems like he probably will be ready for it, I'll just have to take the $7 jump to get the 1st workbook and see if he likes it. He really enjoys all the X-ing out, and drawing lines to matching letters, etc, hopefully they'll be enough of that element in the regular series as well. B&W's no problem for him, I've been letting him to the primers in colored marker but I think I make make him switch to pencil after the primers, if we do end up buying all EIGHT of the regular books I'd like to be able to erase and re-use the series instead of re buying. And if It doesn't work out then we'll look into something else. Thanks again, you're all awesome :laugh:

Oh and about our schoolig in general, during baby's nap we do the 26 abc flash cards(goes by quick!), 4 ETC pages and 4 Kumon maze or tracing pages, then sometimes a random math or pinterest activity :) Takes about 20 minutes. We're also just now jumping into FIAR/BFIAR but I don'e tell him that's "school" we just do it whenever.

I'm wondering if my son will be ready for Explode the Code 1 right after finishing the primer series. He's almost 4 and we're midway through book B. I was truly surprised at how quickly we flew through the 1st book A (at a rate of 4 pages per day). Has anyone gone from the primer on that could tell me of your experience? I've heard that they're copy/trace work intensive, but I don't mind doing that for him, I'm trying to teach him to read right now, not write. Oh and as a note he knows ALL the consonant and short vowel sounds very well, so right now he's getting all the ETC exercises correct no problem, but I appreciate the deep reinforcement. 1st post,long time lurker! <3