Our 6 year old has been struggling to learn to read for over a year. He went to a Pre-K program but never learned to read during it. Honestly, I wasn't really working with him at home either about reading and had the "he will get it when he's ready" mentality and have never pushed him to learn to read. We've tried several different programs/curriculums to try to teach him and while they all had an influence none of them just "stuck" with him and motivated him to want to continue reading. When I had the opportunity to review All About Reading I was excited (but slightly skeptical) because I wasn't sure if this would be a short-lived time of learning for Wyatt or if this program might work long-term.
I received the All About Reading Level 1 Kit (which includes the Teacher's Manual, Student Pack and all 3 volumes of readers) and the Deluxe Interactive Reading Kit (which includes 3 additional items the basic kit does not contain: a tote bag, Reading Review box and Star Stickers).
This particular material is "open and go" format meaning you can simply open the teacher's manual and "go" teach. The teacher's manual is extremely well laid-out and has step by step instructions (most include picture tutorials). It tells you which numbered cards to pull out of the box, which letter tiles you will use and which pages your child will complete in the Student Manual. I should tell you that when the material arrives it would benefit you greatly to go ahead and punch out the letter tiles and punch out the phonogram and word cards and put them in the Reading Review box. Your child will also need crayons, glue and scissors occasionally to complete the Student Manual worksheets.
The Reading Review Box contains phonogram cards and word cards that your child will use each day. Each day they will learn certain letter sounds and blends along with teaching letters that are "Rule Breakers". As you teach these cards, you will file them under "Review" and continue going over them each day. Once your child has successfully learned a card, you then file it under "Mastered". There is also a tab for "future lessons" to store cards you have not taught yet. This little box is a fantastic way to store these cards in an easy to use format and keeps them easy to locate in one place.
There are also 105 magnetic letter tiles that feature 2 of each letter A to Z, one of the remaining letter combinations and 5 blank tiles. Consonant and consonant blends are blue, vowels and vowel teams are red and combination sounds are various other colors. Ideally, you would use these on a magnet board but since we don't have one in our homeschool, I used the back of my Calphalon jelly roll pan. It works just as well and easily holds all the letter tiles and is a lot cheaper than a magnetic board. These tiles are just 1" in size, laminated so they will hold up to usage and are easy to clean. They slide easily too making it very fast to change out letters to form new words as you are teaching. Wyatt likes to put letters back in the ABC order formation and bring new letters that I call out down to form new words. This also helps him remember the order of the alphabet as well as teaching him new words.
The Blast Off to Reading Activity Book is where your child will do short activities to reinforce what they have learned that day and to review previous lessons. There are word matching activities, fluency practice review pages, Word Flippers, games and more. The book is also geared around an astronomy theme and there is even a Progress Chart in the front of the book. At the successful completion of each lesson, your child can add a Star Sticker to their Progress Chart to watch them work their way to the end of the Level 1 materials.
There is also a 3 volume collection of short stories books. Each hardcover book contains 160 pages and includes stories that use the words the child has learned in their lessons. Your child can read about a sad hog that wears a wig, about funny clouds that make funny shapes, a grumpy duck demands a snack and much more through these books. Our son loves reading the short stories and has read to the neighbors a few times and we've even had to carry Vol. 1 to the grandparents house so he can show off how well is he is learning to read to them. These books also contain very cute illustrations to accompany the words on each page.
This program has finally made reading "click" with Wyatt and he wants to do reading first thing every day in homeschooling. He reads the short stories to me and David, his sisters and pretty much anybody that will listen to him each day as well. He loves earning a star sticker for his Progress Chart and sometimes at night, he begs us to let him go ahead and do the next day's lesson (we don't....but we will let him review from his Reading Box to reinforce what he has learned). I also love that we can take as much time as we need on each lesson. If Wyatt gets it quickly then we can progress forward rapidly but if he needs more work on blending, recognizing words, etc. then we can take as much time as we need on that particular lesson. We will continue to use All About Reading Level 2 as well when Wyatt completes Level 1 because not only does Wyatt enjoy reading but I enjoy teaching him to read using All About Reading as well.
The author of All About Reading, Marie Rippell, is also the author of All About Spelling. I found it very fascinating that she has written the 3 volumes of Short Stories to coordinate with both All About Reading & All About Spelling curriculum. All About Reading Level 1 Kit is $99.95 and the Deluxe Interactive Readng Kit is $48.95. You can also read what other TOS crew members thought about All About Reading.
Disclaimer: I was given the above mentioned materials for review purposes only as part of the TOS Homeschool Crew. No monetary compensation was received.
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