Delightful Reading for a child who has mostly been doing phonics

I have not used DR but, I can share a bit about what has worked for us because my daughter started with a phonics program too (due to the very brief time at a Univetsity Model school she was in.) We used Phonics Museum which I liked because it tied in artists/paintings and history and the readers were lovely and not at all twaddle. When I started exclusivly homeschooling and more fully understanding and embracing CM methods, I realized phonetically learning to read is not truly the CM way yet, I had this huge Kit that covered K & 1st and my daughter loved the worksheets and I loved the readers, the exposure to historical topics and artists/paintings etc. So, I continued to use it but, I started skipping many things in the lessons that I felt were getting way too heavy into phonetic and grammatical rules for a 7 yr. old. And when they introduced spelling lists with a weekly test… I skipped those too. Instead, I had her do daily Copywork selections. Bible verse of the week, character quality of the week, character quality verse of the week, a poem or verse from a poem, a stanza of the hymn we are focusing on, a passage from a book we are reading etc. I’m truly amazed at how much she naturally knows how to spell correctly and it’s just from reading and copywork.

We have never done site words really. Just reading and more reading. The PM kit would have worksheets with lists of words and she enjoyed reading the words off to me. If she did get a word wrong I would simply tell her the right way but, never made an issue of drilling words over and over because that word eventually comes up enough through reading and copywork.

While she was still doing the PM program, I started having her read from the Reading Literature books by Free & Treadwell. (Primer (K) – 3rd) Even though she could have started with the 1st I started her in the Primer and she really enjoyed reading the stories. She is now 3/4 through the 2nd Reader and she definitely has to “work” a bit more (the stories are longer and the print a bit smaller) but, not so much that it’s hard or discouraging. I also work in Christian Liberty Nature Readers (K-5) and when she reads from that, I check her off for Science & Reading.

All of that said, if your son is reading already, I would just skip sitewords, and spelling lists and have him read living books or non-twaddle readers (which I like because of the progression of passage selection and font size). And also have him do Copywork. Either get a primary ruled composition book and choose your own copywork passages or SCM has some nice ones. If you are already doing Print to Cursive Proverbs, that has copywork already. I plan to move my daughter to Hymns in Prose after that and then, into Spelling Wisdom, which I believe teaches spelling through prepared dictation of meaningful verses and passages from literature rather than memorizing boring lists of words.

Sorry, that was crazy long. Lol. Hope it’s somewhat helpful. ☺️