Phonetic Readers

This second set was just released and wasn't around when I taught my oldest to read. Although she did fine without it, I thought that the additional practice on this basic level was very helpful for my son (who has just finished this second set). Like the first set, the stories are designed entirely for the purpose of practicing beginning reading skills by introducing sounds in an intelligent order. The stories are very simple and usually quite silly. This set does introduce several two-letter phonograms - "ar" (book 3), "aw" (book 3) "ow" (book 4), "ou" (book 7), "oo" (book 12).

Formerly titled More Bob Books
This series provides practice lots of with two-letter consonant blends (such as "nt", "nd" and "dr"). Book six introduces words with long vowels ending with a silent "e". The books increase in number of pages and number of text lines on each page quite a bit as this particular set progresses. While using this series with my daughter, we started running through the phonogram cards (from The Writing Road to Reading) each day. I introduced (and explained) spelling rules as they came up in the stories from this set.

The Little Angels Series are four soft cover readers that teach all phonics sounds using word drill pages and phonetic stories. It teaches letter-sound relationships systematically, beginning with the easiest letter sounds. The word drill pages provide practice in decoding words containing the letter sounds. The stories with phonetically-controlled vocabulary follow each word drill page. They provide practice in decoding words in context and build comprehension skills. The stories are about Catholic family life, Bible stories, and Saint stories as well as fables and folk tales. The illustrations are well done and many are in color. Review pages are provided at regular intervals.

The workbooks are consumable and accompany the readers. They reinforce the lessons from the readers with exercises in phonics, vocabulary, reading comprehension and handwriting.

The Teacher's manual provides detailed lesson plans and suggestions for related activities. The manual provides daily lesson plans for teaching the entire series. The lessons cover reading readiness, phonics, listening skills, vocabulary, handwriting, comprehension and spelling. There are also multi-sensory activities included to accommodate children who have different learning styles. The pace is very flexible so you progress at *your* child's speed. The manual also contains progress test after each review to assess how well your child is doing.

Sequence of Phonics Reader A - Consonants, short vowels Reader B - final blends, -ed, -ing, long vowels, two-syllable words Reader C - Beginning consonant blends, Y as a vowel, Consonant digraphs, R- controlled vowels Reader D - vowel digraphs and diphthongs, soft c and g, Irregular sounds and spellings

The author holds a MEd in Reading from the University of Missouri-St Louis and is certified in Learning Disabliites. She has six years classroom experience and nine years experience in home education.

I am using the Little Angels in place of the MCP phonics that Seton sends with their First Grade Curriculum. If you need something for Kindergarten, with beginning sounds and letter recognition, I highly recommend Seton's Kindergarten Phonics for Young Catholics. I have had great success with the Little Angels series with my daughter who is now finishing Reader D. She is 8 years old. My son who is 7, could not wait to start the readers and is also on Reader D. The Little Angels Phonics Series is really a wonderful tool for teaching your children to read.

Our third child, now a deep voiced high schooler towering me by several inches, learned to read with me when he was five years old using these little folding readers. This new edition has a new cover and some additional materials, but the readers themselves are the very same I used ten years ago! He looked at these the other day and could remember many of the stories.

The bulk of this program consists of four levels of readers that we tear out and fold in four. I made color coded envelopes out of construction paper ten years ago, the same envelope I am using with our youngest this year. I tucked the envelopes in a pocket folder, and as we folded and read each little book, it was neatly stored.

The little books follow a simple sequence of phonetic sounds, beginning with the "short a" in the first title At Mass. What we like about these is the fact that we begin from day one reading a little story. None of my children enjoyed very much reading pages of words in other readers. These have a few new words displayed on the little book's cover, but each little book is one independent whole story. These mini-stories are delightfully Catholic, and succeed in being at the same time funny and suspenseful enough!

This latest edition has a nice new glossy cover and several cardstock pages with phonics strips and illustrated phonetic sound cards to cut. Silly Willy Sentences strip are also included, introducing basic syntax concepts. A separate Parent's guide booklet is included, with simple guidelines for teaching to read with this program, and booklet-by-booklet directions for introducing the new sounds and words.