Is the AAR activity essential?

[Raeof5]

I'm finishing up level 2 with my 7 year old and the activity sheets make both of us want to poke ourselves in the eye. Do I need them? I like what the program teaches so I suppose we will stick with it but has anyone kind of just taught the lesson from the teachers guide and left off the activities or did a variation on some activities on a whiteboard or something? Thanks! 😊

[MerryAtHope]

The activities are optional and are there for reinforcement if you want. The fluency pages are important if you have a student who needs more practice. You could do more tile work and/or write things on the board and let your son erase after he reads them (for some reason, kids seem to enjoy getting to erase things, LOL!) 

[Moncha]

My son actually likes the activity sheets but the fluency sheets can be overwhelming. I suppose it depends on how quickly your son is catching on. For a long time I would transcribe the fluency sheets to a white board and that went over much better. Also cutting up the sheets and feeding them to the monster helped. You can certainly change things up! And if he's catching on much more quickly you probably don't need as much review. 

[Melissa in Australia]

we have ditched the cards. We are already doing each day flash cards for math, cards for spelling and alphabet cards for speech therapy-

  the twins like the activities but really struggle with the fluency sheets. We break them up over a few days. doing rereads of the last 2 read stories  every day until we complete the fluency sheet. then move on to the next lesson

[Jess4879]

Middle kiddo didn't enjoy the activities and didn't need them, so we skipped them.  Youngest does some activities and skips others.  If he's not enjoying them, we skip them. Middle kiddo never touched the letter tiles either.  Definitely tweak it for what works for you.  🙂  

[MerryAtHope]

Here are 16 ways to make practice pages fun for those whose kids find the fluency pages tedious.

[PeachyDoodle]

We don't do the activities, usually. Sometimes if we can make them work with a white board, or there's something to act out or something, we'll do them. We do use the fluency and warm-up pages, but I always have a fully intact activity book when we are finished. I'm just not interested in cutting a pasting a bunch of stuff (and then keeping up with it) and neither is ds.