Teaching Reading/Phonics

I would suggest reading Ruth Beechick’s book the 3R’s.  It has sections on teaching reading, as well as math and language arts, in a very gentle natural way without having to invest in an expensive phonics program.  I wish I had discovered this first when I was at the point where you are!  We started out with a phonics book (Phonics Pathways), but ended up ditching it after awhile.  My daughter was easily overwhelmed by all the lists and lists of words in the book and I ended up having to do a lot of tweaking to make it work for her (like making little word cards out of the word lists and such, because it was too much clutter on the page to just read from the book).  She was also getting bored by doing all these “reading lessons” and still not yet really able to read any stories.  Finding  this little book was just what I needed – it gave me the confidence I needed to let go of the formal phonics program and to follow her lead rather than trying to stick to the sequence laid out in the book.  

Hope that Helps!

I would definitely second the recommendation to read Ruth Beechick’s books.  I wish that I had read them at the start of our homeschooling journey.

We have also used Alpha-Phonics and I have found it somewhat helpful with some children.  However, most of my children have done better with actual stories.  Alpha-Phonics has lists of words to practice and then sentences using those words, however the sentences do not make up a story.  A simple story with a predictable story line seems to help with fluency and they enjoy it more than unrelated sentences.

We have a reprint of the original McGuffy readers that I have pulled out recently for my 9, 6 and 5 year olds.  I really like it! 

Hi!

I stumbled upon this blog and it may be of interest.  I really like it, though navigation can be a bit tricky.  http://teachingwithbob.blogspot.com/  It really appeals to me because it is guiding without being strict.  We just started following the ideas in the blog, so I can’t speak too much about it.  It does contradict a lot of other phonics/reading programs by assuming the student starts out knowing the alphabet/letters.  This wasn’t an issue for us because my son learned his letters after he fell in love with Dr. Seuss’s ABC book when he was two.   

Progressive Phonics   http://www.progressivephonics.com/  also looks awesome, and is FREE (whoo-hoo!), but we had issues with my son wanting to read everything on the pages, when the student and parent/teacher are supposed to alternate reading.  It bogged us down a bit, but may be great for someone else.  They had had some technical issues with registration so it took us a while to be able to try it, but it seems to be working now.

Okay, I am new to this forum, and not that much of a social networker, but I can’t get my links to work right now.  It may because I am on Firefox as that has caused issued before.  I will attempt to fix them tomorrow with Explorer, but until then or if I can’t figure it out, if you search the websites you should be able to find it.  So sorry!