dakarimom5 Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 So I'm looking at using PR for my dd but I'm unsure when to start. The website says start between 5-7 but what skills does she need to have to start it? Right now we are doing R&S preschool. If I can't start it in kindergarten then what should I use to give my dd a solid foundation for PR? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelBee Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 Not a lot of help now as we are just starting, but ds6 is in K. :) Will update once we get going. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sbgrace Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 (edited) Here is a thread from the Phonics Road Social Group with ideas/thoughts on what to do prior. I think most who start in K just intend to go slowly and mainly do the phonograms (on average) but I'm not certain. We concentrated on learning the phonograms and reading well before we started partly because I didn't feel my sons were ready for all the writing and sit down stuff. Edited February 7, 2011 by sbgrace Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snowfall Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 We concentrated on learning the phonograms and reading well before we started partly because I didn't feel my sons were ready for all the writing and sit down stuff. I also feel there is a LOT of writing some weeks, if we're talking about a 5 or 6yo. That's not the case every week, or even most weeks, but some weeks there is really a lot. For instance, the days when they are supposed to fill out an entire building code. Sometimes that's a full page of writing, and it's in addition to the spelling words they're already writing and marking. We have to break that stuff up over a few days, as my dd is very writing averse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
myfatherslily Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 We are just halfway through level 1 here, but I agree that it's a LOT of writing for kindergarten. A lot for many 1st graders, too! My son will be in Kindergarten in the fall and my tentative plan is to simply work toward Phonics Road. Not really use it. Start learning the phonograms, start putting them together to make some words, go through some easy first readers (1st Bob books, etc) by the end of the year. I was thinking about getting the All About Spelling tiles for my hands-on fella. Off to read that social group thread... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelBee Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 My goal is to do PR1 for K and first, splitting it into 2 years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lexi Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 We are doing the Phonics Road and my daughter is in Kindergarten. We started a little before her K year just learning the phonograms and playing games with them (probably halfway through her PreK year). Once she was very solid on her letters and phonograms we slowly added some handwriting when she was ready. We focused on lots of handwriting and made up games for the phonograms to make sure we didn't forget them. We probably spent one semester on those things alone. We didn't start the spelling until later-about the beginning of our K year. We usually take about 2-3 weeks to cover one week of material. We take our time with the spelling words and continue practicing handwriting with copywork. It will take us 2 1/2 years to get through the first year of the curriculum from start to finish. We will have completed about half of it by the end of our K year and will finish the other half during our 1st grade year. I really wanted to make sure her foundation was solid but I felt she was ready to begin with the program in her PreK year. So far we have enjoyed the program and haven't experienced any frustration-probably due to our slow pace. My daughter has become a great speller and is starting to read on her own and is picking out words from books and reading short phonics-based readers on her own. I've been very pleased with how the program is set up. Don't be afraid to tweak the schedule and go more slowly with all the writing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sassenach Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 So I'm looking at using PR for my dd but I'm unsure when to start. The website says start between 5-7 but what skills does she need to have to start it? Right now we are doing R&S preschool. If I can't start it in kindergarten then what should I use to give my dd a solid foundation for PR? The skills needed would be a solid enough desire and attention span to start learning the phonograms, and pencil readiness. If you were starting with a child that wasn't ready for a lot of writing, you could still begin learning the phonograms and letter formation using salt trays or play-doh. I find pr extremely easy to speed up or slow down. I don't think it would be any problem at all to move along slowly until the student is ready for full speed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnandtinagilbert Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 My blog has a Letter of the Week thread that shows how to use PR at a slower pace and with very little writing. It's all in the hands on! You can slowly get through phonograms w/o writing much, or at all. The white board and finger materials will do the trick. Pencil readiness is necessary at some point, but since we're not entirely there either, we are using magnetic letters for our dictation and spelling of words. Just start slowly and be creative. My blog should really help. Here's that thread. Scroll down and start reading from the bottom up. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. We've done a ton more, I just don't blog everything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyinMD Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 I haven't really gotten into PR1 with my 6 year old twins yet. We have been working on the phonograms but my twins are just getting the hang of blending and doing CVC words. I'm planning to finish MFW K and also HOP K before we do much more with PR besides the phonograms. My plan is to spread PR1 out so we don't finish it until the end of next school year. This year is K for them and I'd like to finish PR1 by the end of 1st grade. I've already purchased PR2 and it looks quite challenging with the Little House lit study and I don't think I want to get to that until 2nd grade. We'll see how it goes though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest aquiverfull Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 I'm using Phonics Road at an accelerated pace with my 12 year old. I had also intended to do level 1 with my K'er this year. She is able to write and I really felt like she could have handled it, but I thought...."What's the rush?" Really, I didn't see any point in rushing, so I decided to work with her on the phonograms. We do it very casually. She can read short sentences that I write for her already, just by learning the phonograms. I intend to do PR 1 with her in the fall. The first 4 weeks of PR 1 are learning most of the phonograms and learning to write each letter and phonogram team. Ideally, I'd like to have each of my children capable of writing their letters before PR. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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