All About Reading update

Oh friends, I still can’t say enough GOOD about All About Reading!  We’ve been working on this for a few months now, and the excitement is still there! 

We took a little over a week off for a spring break, and Alex got a big grin on his face when I pulled out our All About Reading bag on Monday.  He smiled and said, “Oh, I *LOVE* this part of the day!”

Seriously, both he and I just love this program!  I can say with confidence that we will stick with All About Reading from here on out, for all three kids.  I have no desire to try any other phonics program!

We’re up to lesson 19 now, and Alex can read ‘th’ and ‘sh’ words.  He also mastered ‘qu’ words.  He’s so proud of himself, as knowing these letter combinations really opens up a lot of new words.

Alex was so confused when I set the frying pan and spatula on the kitchen table when we started our lesson one day.  He sure got excited when he realized what our activity would be!

Reading the word cards isn’t always a joy, but he is getting so much quicker at reading the words as we go through the program.   Many times, he is reading the word without consciously sounding it out.  He just KNOWS how to read it.  Hooray!

His favorite story is still the first one: Jam.  I don’t know if that’s because it is the first story he ever read independently or if he just really likes the story, but we read it often.  He finds the stories fun and entertaining.

In my last update, I said I’d share what a fluency practice page looks like.  There is a section for new words containing the letter/sound learned in the current lesson.  Below that is a list of words using previously learned sounds.

There are also pages with sentences to practice.  The sentences “grow” like this:

The sad cat
The sad cat was
The sad cat was sick.

We often split a lesson into two days, doing the letter tiles, word cards, activity, and fluency page word practice on day one.  On day two, we quickly flip through the word cards, we *might* do the activity again if Alex wants to, and then we do the fluency page sentences.  It’s less overwhelming to Alex that way.

Here are a few more pictures of our recent lessons:

Alex’s only struggle is recognizing b and d while sounding out words.  We’ve used the “bed” idea.  The ‘b’ is the front of the bed (headboard) and the ‘d’ is the back of the bed (footboard).  This really helps him to remember!

I’ll be sure to get another video of Alex reading from his reader for my next update.  He doesn’t read with perfect fluency, but he is getting so much better.  He recognizes this, and he is quite proud of himself!