Phonics

[4Cygnets]

What do you do for phonics? Do you use a specific curriculum/text?

[cobluegirl]

We used Abekas book...can't rememebr what it is called right now....it is blue...lol

[Beyond Blessed]

I am loving The Writing Road to Reading. We start with phonogram cards and move on from there. It covers literature, grammer, spelling, reading. It took a few weeks of me reading and re-reading to figure it out (how to put it into practice with my family) - but it was soooo worth it. I have the 5th edition (most recent). I bought their whole starter set :O - but to me, it has been worth it.

[This Busy Mom]

We love the Writing Road to Reading, too... my dd had a tough time learning to read... it really helped her along a LOT.

I use it along with Jay Patterson's guide, Reading Works ( www.grammarworks.com )
Or there is Spell to Write and Read which is based off the same program: http://home.mindspring.com/~teachingkids/id23.html

I won't use anything else with my kids. My 4th grader is almost finished with formal spelling lessons after this year (he's a natural speller anyways... this just helped him right along). My 2nd grader's made so much improvement this year that it's astonishing (there was much gnashing of teeth last year, and now she's in chapter books because she wants to read them).

www.spalding.org is WRTR's official site.

I wanted to give up on the program many times when we first started. I'm soooo glad we stuck with it. My kids look forward to it (pretty much ;) ) now.

[Mama Calidad]

We use Christian Liberty Press' Adventures in Phonics with DD. Nothing very adventurous. It's a workbook. It's worked very well for DD. So well that I've already purchased the remaining workbooks to use in future years with her and I'll try it first with DS when he's ready. DD is reading most level 1 readers from the library without any problem and we started the first workbook in August.

It's pretty inexpensive. I think I paid $7-8 for each workbook...and each workbook is around 200 pages (a year's study).

This is NOT the right phonics curr for your child, though, if they hate workbooks. :rolleyes2

[MagnoliaMommy]

Ds is just learning about letter sounds and he has learned about half of them from watching the Leapfrog Letter Factory dvd a few times. It is actually the only Leapfrog product that I have ever bought...ds loves the cartoon and I love that he is learning.

I am not sure what we will use later on. I glanced at the Rainbow Resource catalog and there is sooo many different programs. :shrug

[booboo]

I'm with Mama Calidad. We're using Christian Liberty's as well and it's working out great. Though some words I'm not so sure of and wonder if it has to do with accent or I'm pronouncing it wrong. They're out of Illinois and I'm from NJ, and I ain't got no accent! :P~ Gotta be the Illinois people. :yes :duck My 5 yo is learning to read and my first grader is doing incredible with it. :) They also have some cute reader books that my kids love!

[righteous mama]

I found a dvd from LeapPad (or whatever the company name is) that I keep in the car for long rides. It had really cute songs and images for Mary to learn phonics and how words are put together. It's a neat tool to use...especially for my very visual daughter.

[joandsarah77]

Well at the moment I'm not planning on buying any specific curriculum, just piece meal what I have, and probably buy and make some games.

At the moment I have two books 'Why Jonny Can't Read' by Rudolf Flesch (totaly phonics) and 'Reading and Writing Before School' by Felicity Hughes (both phonics and sight words) both old second hand books i probably paid about 50c for the two together. :grin

I also have a lot of free sites bookmarked. Some have games like http://www.starfall.com/ and http://studydog.com/ Others have printout sheets like http://www.beginningreading.com/Free%20Workshe.htm and http://www.tampareads.com/wrksheet/start.htm Some also have crafts and or games to make like http://www.daniellesplace.com/html/educationalcraftsreading.html#read and http://www.abcteach.com/free/w/wordwheelp.pdf a lot beginner words can be done to word wheels or word houses, given a bit of creativity.

We also have some leap pad things on letter sounds and words.

[righteous mama]

Laura, do you buy the teacher's manuals for the workbooks?

[SueQ]

We use Reading Made Easy (http://www.valeriebendt.com/reading_made_easy.asp) and ds really took to it. We were given Play N Talk (http://www.playntalk.com/) and used that last year but while ds liked it I and I did too, I wanted something that I could just pull out and use and not do any preparation for. (Play N Talk doesn't take a whole lot of prep but I didn't even want to really have to read ahead. :lol)

BTW, if anyone here is looking for Play-N-Talk I am willing to let mine go for just the cost of shipping. It was given to me and is just sitting here cluttering a closet. It is an older version and doesn't have the video with it but I didn't miss the video at all when I used it last year.

[Miss Priss]

We had great reading success with Calvert's 1st grade curriculum. We did it at age 5, and had with the 2nd had to modify it to lessen the busy work (wish we had done so with #1)... I just pick and chose which of the pages I had #2 do, but both of my older dd's were very fluent readers after they were done.

[Leslie]

We used Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons. My first son got through the book in a couple of months and was reading before he was five, my second son struggled with it at age five, so we tried again later and he still struggled, but we did it again when he was seven and it was fine. My third son tried at age five but got stuck when it came to blending sounds, so we put it up for a few months and tried again when he was six and he did fine. I've heard that, once a child is ready, any program will work, but if the child isn't ready, you can go through a lot of programs trying to find something that will work. So far, that's seemed to be the case with us - once the child was ready, what we had worked fine, but if he wasn't ready, he struggled.

[tempus vernum]

I am using Ready Set Read by Barbara Curtis and we really like it. DD is not into workbooks and hated 100 EZ lessons. SHe is very very active with a somewhat short attention span but she loves to read and was very motivated for awhile. We tried about 4 curriculums before finding this. She was able to read the first few bob books within about 3 weeks.

She doesn't like to read books without help - takes too long to sound out the words and she is impatient. So we mostly use homemade flash cards - I write them out and she acts them out like charades or finds the object :shrug We are also using between the lions to spring board our phonics lessons and it's going really well. I need to start getting beginning readers cuz the bob books aren't for her :giggle She thinks they are dull and doesn't like when they don't make sense like "Dog sat in the bag".

[city on a hill]

well, two boys have learned to read just by being read to. They picked up some by jumpstart, but most of it was just through reading. My youngest isnt yet reading, he is 4.

[Mama Calidad]

Laura, do you buy the teacher's manuals for the workbooks?

Nope. :rolleyes2