When to start ETC primers?

[arliemaria]

When is it best to start these workbooks? Should you do this and OPGTR or just one or the other?

 

I've been very curious to read The Blended Sound-Sight Program of Learning that The Institute for Excellence in Writing sells. Also I have a copy of Word Mastery I downloaded. My little boy isn't anywhere needed this, but I just want to write out a sequence for when he is ready. We all need to know our options.

 

Thanks.

[Dustybug]

My 4 year old DS is currently almost finished with the first ETC primer. I did not use the teacher's guide for it and he already knew most of his letter sounds from using HOD's LHTH last year, but he enjoys it and I thought it would be good review. We use it alongside Abeka's A Handbook for Reading.

[cagirlintexas]

We did books A,B, and C instead of doing in the first part of OPG where it teaches letter sounds. Then we started the part of OPG where it teaches blends. We then went back and forth between OPG and ETC book 1. We skipped parts of ETC if they were to hard and then went back to them later. I think the combination really worked well for my son.

[LEK]

We are just finishing up the ETC primers and will be starting OPGTR in about a week along with ETC1, my DD turned 5 last week. Looking back I would have started the primers earlier (4.5ish, maybe just 4) rather than nearly 5. I will definitely be starting them next year with DD2, she will be 4 and 3 months at the start of our school year.

[kalanamak]

I think you mean what is often called Pre-ETC. We did The Letter Factory a few times around age 4, and started Pre-ETC at 4.5. I didn't push it, but did it verbally if kiddo didn't want to sit still. Once he was gripping a pencil he was happy to move from verbal to writing. It was a "proud moment" for him. The only book we did before it was Plaid Phonics K, which is more babyish. Then we alternated Pre-ETC and Plaid Phonics A and B. But we took a year. After that we marched into SWR as a reading program.

 

To encourage pencil skills, my boy like Kumon's maze books.

 

HTH

[Aspasia]

I skipped the primers and did some letter of the week type stuff, which was fun but not incredibly usefl. Then i bought Letter Factory and dd knew all her letter sounds within a week or two. After that, we skipped to the part of OPGTR where blending begins. She was about 3.5 when I popped in that magic DVD.

[ALB]

My dc both did the ETC primers starting around 3.5. I didn't have them do the handwriting exercises (but my ds insisted on doing them anyway :tongue_smilie:), but they really enjoyed doing all the other pages. I think those workbooks are a really great intro to phonics! We also did lots of "letter of the week" activities, and I didn't try to line that up with ETC at all. That just seemed too complicated, and in the end it didn't matter at all.