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What DIDN'T you like about Delightful Reading???
- This topic has 17 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 6 months ago by
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I just want to ask before I order. I made a really bad curriculum choice earlier this year and it not only cost me over $300 since I can’t resell it but it come me a lot of time… and frustration. I want to know all the pros and cons going in 🙂
For us, personally, there wasn’t enough practice reading material. I didn’t want, or have time to come up with my own sentences. I wanted a story line so the child could be brought into the story instead of reading sentences that had nothing to do with each other. My son needs lots of reading time each day, and I didn’t feel it met this need of ours.
Hope this helps!
I agree. I did take the time on a weekend to come up with various sentances. We are also using Alpha Phonics to get the “rules”, so I made sentances with both word groups. I also had problems with all the word and letter tiles. I still use the letter tiles when learning new sounds, but then I just switch to a white board and dry erase marker. Trying to make sentances with all the word tiles and letters was getting tedious.
That said I still will be using this program with the next two because I really like the way it teaches reading with word grouping. I like that how to teach it is laid out for you. The minor tweaks I made were not enough to give me feelings of regret or wish I had made a different choice. I love this program.
I second Ruth. I’m very happy with DR, although I’ve started it with a slightly older student (she was 8 when we started, and has recently turned 9) who is a little impatient with going through each and every step. If I feel that the lesson is becoming monotonous, or that we don’t need a particular step, we move on (just like any other curriculum in any other subject we’ve ever used
) I do like that there’s a pattern and a purpose to the lessons. I’ll have to agree with the “other sentences you can read” bit, as sometimes they don’t flow or make a lot of sense to my daughter, however, she enjoys coming up with her own sentences, so we haven’t had to deal too much with that issue. I also just make up sentences on the fly for her if the ones printed are awkward for us. I will say, however, that for us, this is the program we will stick with for our children. We’ve already started it with our 4 yo (because she begged) slowly and I feel confident in the method. I also feel that there is enough variety in the lessons to allow different children who learn differently to learn the material. (did that make any sense?) I like that they’re reading real poems, stories, sayings, etc. Our last program, which I didn’t care for at all (won’t mention names, but it rhymes with Fun Height) was so incredibly awkward and tedious, that I felt the whole time we spent with it was wasted (and, indeed, we really didn’t make much progress at all that year…) We enjoy this much more.
OH! And I think the price is very good-especially considering that excluding the “My Word Book”, it’s all non-consumable and can be used for several children-love that. You even get a cd from which you can print replacement tiles should you lose some or…well, if your toddler eats them…not that anything of that sort would happen to me…
So there it is, the good, the bad, and the better. Hope it helps!
LillyLou
Overall, I liked the approach that DR takes, dd liked the approach, and I liked that it was all laid out for me ready to use. The thing that I didn’t like so much about it was that the ‘phonics’ part was all based on word-families rather than on phonograms. Let me see if I can explain what I mean by this. After learning the word rain, we would extend out and learn other words with the -ain ending. But, that didn’t extend into the generalization that ai says “ay” and use the knowledge of that sound to figure out other words like “wait”, “hair”, etc. Does that kind of make sense? While we have found a combination sight words + phonics approach useful, I guess I still lean a little further towards the phonics side than what DR does. We also started after my daughter was well on her way to reading fluency and found we were spending too much time on sounds/word families she could already read easily and not enough time in areas that were still troublesome to her. But, that probably wouldn’t be an issue for a child who is starting from scratch. That’s not to say that it is a bad program, this was more just a matter of preference in teaching/learning style in our house, and what we needed at the time with a semi-fluent reader. I am still grateful we tried it out for awhile as it gave me some good ideas to incorporate into my own instruction. I may still use it when my son is ready, but starting from scratch with him. We’ll see.
HTH
Jen
I just want to ask before I order. I made a really bad curriculum choice earlier this year and it not only cost me over $300 since I can’t resell it but it come me a lot of time… and frustration. I want to know all the pros and cons going in 🙂
If you do decide to order Delightful Reading, know that we have a 30-day return policy on everything we sell. You would only be out the return shipping if you didn’t like it. If you haven’t already, I would encourage you to look over the free sample download and our videos about how Delightful Reading works and the comparison of phonics approaches. Those are all available on the Delightful Reading page.
@ruth, What did you find tedious about working with the tiles? Was it the actual practice of using them or was it more of the keeping them organized? Just wondering if there is something we could do better there.
I also want to mention that Delightful Reading is designed to build the basic reading skills. If you get into an area that your child already knows well then don’t feel like you have to still do that part to complete the lessons. It’s okay to move on so that reading is still a pleasure. When some reading fluency is achieved then you will naturally begin moving into reading more real books. At that point, Delightful Reading can be used for practice and reinforcement if your child has difficulties with particular words.
It’s designed to be flexible. As Sonya is so fond of saying “teach the child, not the curriculum.”
Doug, organizing them was a bit of a pain at first, but there was a post a while back about that and I got a bead organizer for the letter tiles. The words I just keep in the little baggies provided. What I was finding tedious was creating new sentances with the word and letter tiles. It may be because I was taking making new sentances to another level though. I would incorporate words from previous lessons to keep up the practice. Example: Cain found Dan and Max at the mall. Some of these words are from Alpha Phonics and having to spell out every word that didn’t have a word tile with letter tiles, locating them and lining them up, became tedious, so I switched to the white board to form sentances. I do still use the tiles when we get a new word to work on, but once we move to making new sentances I just use the white board. I’m not really sure there is much you could do to make it better since I am deviating a little from the program. I really like the program and the techniques used to teach reading, I just wanted a little more reading practice in our lessons. Making more sentances filled that need. I just had to tweak how I did that part of it.
I like it but the tiles are a bit small when just working with 3 letter words. It would be nice to have them a bit bigger and to have a magnetic option. I ended up getting foam magnetic letters to use on the fridge for my 5 yr old. We are still walking through 3 letter words and small sight words so I haven’t done much else with the program. i do have a bunch of Bob books that he likes to work on too.
Doug: I just want to interject here and thank you for your attention to the boards. Your team truly does show sincere care for the people you serve, and we appreciate it! Obviously, we love DR, but it’s nice to know that ya’ll are listening to those who are struggling with it, and asking questions about making it better-you are truly ministering to your “customers” (although I think most of us feel more like groupies LOL)
Delaney: The magnetic option sounds appealing to me too! Have you seen those magnetic sheets you can get to make your own magnets? Do you think it would work to secure the sheets of letters/words to a sheet of magnetic backing before cutting them out? I may try that with a print out from the cd. I’ll report back if I have success with that…
Blessings All,
LillyLou
Awe, thanks @LillyLou. We really want to help everyone find what fits their familiy best and we’re always eager to learn along the way.
When we first started planning Delightful Reading we looked at all sorts of options like wooden, plastic, and magnetic tiles but we just couldn’t do it affordably. We thought the sturdy, coated cardstock tiles were a good balance of durability and price. But we enjoying seeing some of you try other creative options.
Speaking of which, I would be interested in getting some feedback on this Delightful Reading tiles test. It’s a very limited test and only works with certain web browsers like Google Chrome or Safari, and on the iPad. I guarantee that it will not work in Internet Explorer or Firefox. But if you’re able to try it I’d love to hear if you think the concept is helpful and something you might use.
Hey Doug, I had a look at the little test – I’m not sure if I’m missing something… I was able to see the tiles, and move them into order – but not sure what was supposed to happen…?
It looks like it has potential
I tried the tile test and my 5 yr old would like it-especially on something like an ipad that he could use his fingers!
I could see the tiles but not move them around. I’m on an ipad. It definitely looks like it has potential and something my son would love.
Dana
I take it back, it won’t work on the iPad yet. As I said, it’s just a really early test of a concept. The idea is simply to provide the tiles for a sentence and let you drag them around on the screen instead of keeping track of the paper tiles. Obviously, it would need a lot more work to be useable so no guarantees if this will ever see the light of day.
) I do like that there’s a pattern and a purpose to the lessons. I’ll have to agree with the “other sentences you can read” bit, as sometimes they don’t flow or make a lot of sense to my daughter, however, she enjoys coming up with her own sentences, so we haven’t had to deal too much with that issue. I also just make up sentences on the fly for her if the ones printed are awkward for us. 
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