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Christian Character Matters (our review site of home school, Bible, and fun products for the whole family) |
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| Handwriting | Spelling | Reading |
Handwriting Without Tears
Memoria Press
COPY BOOKS
Are you looking for a simple, yet effective way to teach your children penmanship,
grammar, spelling, and scripture verses? If so, Memoria Press Copybooks will
be a welcome addition to your home school. These three, consumable books are
recommended for students in grades K-2nd. The beginning lessons progressively
teach your child proper letter formation. After ample practice exercises,
your child will begin copying several, edifying Scripture passages and poetry
selections. There is also a space to draw an illustration of each copied verse
or poem. Memoria Press copybooks are an excellent English foundation for early-elementary
students. They are affordable, simple, and a delight to use! What better way
is there to learn proper writing, than by copying masterpieces of English
literature? ($14.95 each or$39.95 for the set)
Review by Christine J.
AVKO Sequential Spelling
Click here to read more from their website and view a sample of the product.
There are seven books in this series. Also, a student response book is available, or you can have your student write on lined paper. The student response book is nice for keeping everything in one place. This program works by teaching children patterns in English spelling and then building from those patterns. The books are not based on grade level. It is recommended that all children start at Level 1. There is a spelling list that the parent will call out to the child. The child will write the words, then check their answers.
Phonetic Zoo
http://writing-edu.com/spelling/
Please click the above link to listen to a sample lesson.
The things that make this program so wonderful are the fact that it can be used independently by the students and that it uses the topic of animals (which appeals to children) to teach spelling (which often on it's own does not appeal to children).
How does Excellence in Spelling work?
Introductory videotape
Parents will first watch a 28 minute videotape that describes how the mind
works to develop spelling skills and shows parents the "how to"
of the Phonetic Zoo.
Present the rule
Using the Phonetic Zoo flashcards, present the first rule to your student.
Read the rule out loud from the back of the card and have the child read and
spell out loud the three words. Discuss how the animal name illustrates the
rule of the lesson.
Present a rule card
Give your child the small zoo card. This card provides both a reminder of
the rule and a motivational tool as children collect cards when they progress
through the lessons.
Have your student listen to the first lesson
The child can listen to the introductory comments and the first lesson. Each
lesson is less than 10 minutes long. The CD will present each spelling word
for the child to spell on paper and will repeat the rule jingle after every
third spelling word to secure the rule in the child’s memory. Be sure
your child knows how to operate the CD player to pause the lesson if necessary
and advance to the appropriate lesson each day.
Have your child correct his work
The CD will spell the words for your child at the end of the lesson. Your
child may also check them against the rule card if that is helpful to him.
You may wish to check it as well. Your child should repeat the lesson each
day until he achieves 100% correct twice in a row. This could take anywhere
from three to twenty days depending on the child and the lesson, but the average
should be around five or six.
Personal Spelling List
Every fifth lesson is a Personal Spelling lesson. The flash cards for these
lessons have 15 blank spaces. The words for these spaces should be gathered
from errors in written compositions as well as vocabulary or other language
arts curriculum. Commonly misspelled words can also be presented here. You
can either read these words to your student or record them on a cassette tape
for the child to listen to independently.
This is the program that we are currently using for spelling in our household. It seems to work the best for us at the moment as it appeals to our girls. This is the first spelling program that has been well excepted and enjoyed in our home.
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
We have used this book to teach all of our girls to read by age 5. We generally start around 4 and a half. We do the lesson and offer a sticker or small prize when the lesson is joyfully completed. Once the child is reading the stories, we cover the picture that goes along with each story and then reveal it after the story is read. This is enough of an incentive for our girls to read the story. The book needs to be followed from beginning to end, one lesson each day or so. Not only will children be reading, they will have wonderful comprehension. The same book can be used by multiple children as it is not consumable. We did not do the handwriting portion, but there are handwriting suggestions for each lesson. Lower case letters are used throughout the beginning of the book.
Happy Phonics
This is a wonderful program created by a homeschooling mom. We have used bits and pieces with each of our girls. There is a Muffin Match for beginners to learn which capital letter goes with which lower case letter. There are many fun games that you cut apart and also readers. Well worth the money. Children who learn their phonics well early on, will not guess at reading, and will be able to read above grade level earlier than most.
Explode the Code primers
We used these primer workbooks (3 in the series) with our first two girls. They were enjoyable for them and helped reinforce phonetic rules learned in 100 easy lessons and Happy Phonics. We started these at age 4. Lower case letters are used, as they are most frequently used in books.
AOP Horizons Phonics
Once completing Explode the Code, we followed with Horizons Phonics. There are 4 workbooks for each grade (kindergarten, first and second grades). There are also readers to go along with each series. We did not do every item in the workbooks, as it was a lot of writing for young ages, but enjoyed the match the word/sentence to the picture, rhyming matches, and introduction to seek and finds and crossword puzzles.
Pearson Learning
Sing Spell Read Write
If you are looking for a program that includes it all - phonics games, music cds and tapes to help children learn, workbooks, readers, even prizes and charts - this is it! When teaching my children to read, I bought one product that was made up of phonics games, a set of workbooks form another company, and readers from yet another company. This all created too much work on my part (coordinating all three items). Sing, Spell, Read, and Write has all of these items put into one product that will guide your child through the wonderful journey of learning how to read. Everything is included! There are both music CDs and cassettes containing songs with lyrics and without. There is an instructional video, two fun charts to track your child's progress, and a delightful prize box with prizes included. There are plenty of readers at varying levels of difficulty. The box of wonderful materials will provide up to two years of instruction for your child.
Comprehension Plus
9.50
Educational Insights
Heximania $24.99
A frenzy of word-building fun!
2 to 4 players
Introducing the wild and wacky word search game that'll leave you spellbound! Spinning the board as you go, you take turns placing letter tiles and earning points for each word you build. As long as letters are adjacent and in the proper sequence, words may be read in any direction - up, down, backwards, forwards, or in a sweeping swirl! Once the board is full, the player with the highest score wins! Fast-paced and easy to learn, Heximania can be played at all skill levels-perfect for the entire family! Includes 50 hexagonal letter tiles in a cloth bag, 4 word trays, sturdy plastic turntable game board, and step-by-step directions.
A wonderful cross between Scrabble and Boggle. The game is very well made, the pieces are solid on the back, and the board and letter holders are sturdy also. This might taking a little thinking for younger students, but really helps them think "outside the box". Score sheets are also included.
Grades 1+ Ages 6+
Barker Creek
Magnetic Kidread Activity Set
Our children were instantly drawn to this. This is the best product I have found for teaching children proper sentence structure in a fun way. Included are words, pictures, punctuation marks, special magnets to allow your child to make a word possessive and more. The magnets are also color coded for parts of speech. So many learning activities and it is fun!!!
Vocabulary Cartoons
These cute books are available for grades 3-6 and grades 7-12. The book contains a cute cartoon drawing (can be colored) on each page. The vocabulary word is in bold, a definition is given and a "sounds like" word is also in bold. Then a cute phrase using the vocabulary word and the sounds like word is under the picture. At the bottom of the page, three sentences using the vocabulary word appear. Very cute and funny. There are a couple of pages with things that conservative families might find objectionable - but you can easily tear these out. Such items include a vampire (made to look funny) and a ghost. While most parents who's children are in public school would not blink an eye at such things - I think that the book should be preread by conservative families.