Need Language Arts curriculum suggestions for young reader

[SewingMom2many]

My son just turned 5 and we are almost done with Hooked on Phonics 2nd grade level. I'm not sure if this equals grade 3 in other curricula, I'm just going by what the HOP box says :)

 

This is my first time teaching a child to read so I'm not sure what's next after he learns the basics of how to read. He is young so I don't want to give him anything too advanced and overwhelm him, but I do want to keep going with something since he loves reading, begs to do school and I'd like to expand on what he has learned. I'd appreciate any curriculum suggestions you have and any advice for what the next step would be.

Thanks!

[Critterfixer]

This is my first time teaching a child to read so I'm not sure what's next after he learns the basics of how to read. He is young so I don't want to give him anything too advanced and overwhelm him, but I do want to keep going with something since he loves reading, begs to do school and I'd like to expand on what he has learned. I'd appreciate any curriculum suggestions you have and any advice for what the next step would be.

 

Congratulations on having an early reader! Since he is happy reading right now, I don't think now would be the time to throw him into a lot of "language arts" curriculum. Rather, let him fill his mind with books that he loves on anything he wants to learn. If he wants to learn about frogs, have him read books on frogs, frog habitats, and literature about frogs. Then, to complete the process make sure that he narrates to you about what he has read to be sure he is grasping the key ideas. Then you will be keeping him from being overwhelmed and teaching him how to narrate and organize what he reads at the same time.

Pick readers at his level and slightly above his level and have him read out-loud to you once a week or more, so that you can monitor his progress in phonetic decoding and model fluency for him by reading books to him that are out of his skill level, but still wonderfully engaging for him to listen to.

I would wait to introduce grammar for a while, but First Language Lessons is a gentle introduction you could consider. If he can write you might add Writing with Ease, but if he isn't writing well yet, I would probably add a little bit of penmanship practice for him daily. My children loved the first Zaner-Bloser books, because they loved to have their own "books" for school.

Hope this is useful to you.:001_smile:

[SnMomof7]

I would look into using some readers to build fluency. We really like Sonlight's progression of grade 1 - grade 4/5 readers :).

[The Governess]

My dd also finished HOP K-2 very early. I didn't use a formal reading program with her afterward, just continued to practice with her daily, having her read to me from books at or slightly above her grade level. We would read for about 20 minutes a day (she was very young so I kept it short), alternating pages (she read one page, I read the next, etc.). I also started scheduling a 30 minute quiet time each day where she could choose any books she wanted to read independently.

 

The other thing I did was start All About Spelling. We did the first level and part of the second during her K year. I'm so glad I did this. When she learned how to read, she blew through the HOP curriculum very quickly, and you know that it doesn't require writing or a lot of memorization of rules, phonograms, etc. It was really beneficial for her to go back and start learning the rules of phonics and spelling through AAS. I also saw what she was learning with AAS translate into her writing. And once we learned about how to break apart and pronounce multi-syllable words, she started to put that to use in her reading and that helped with more difficult decoding.

 

She is finishing up her 1st grade year now and reading at a 5th grade level. Now I'm getting ready to start my 4 year old on HOP K. I really love the program and we will see how it works this time around. :D