Ten Saint stories are told in an engaging manner for children (recommended for mid-grade schoolers): St. Maria Goretti, St. Maximillian Kolbe, St. Catherine Laboure, St. Bernadette Soubirous, Blessed Miguel Pro, St. Martin De Porres, St. John Bosco, St. Francesca Cabrini, St. Philomena, and Blessed Herman of Reichenau. Each story is approximately 6 - 8 pages long and is illustrated with pen and ink drawings.
Unit one has twenty five lessons. The first eleven are Listening skills (stories and poems), Visual Discrimination (broad similarities, detailed similarities and detailed differences), and Motor Skills (straight and curved lines, detailed dashed, detailed straight, and slanted lines and geometric shapes).
The next nine lessons are on auditory/visual discrimination. There are then three lessons on visual discrimination involving capital and lower case letters, letter identification and tracing. Then there is a another motor skills lesson and one on nursery Rhymes.
This volume begins with Unit three. It reviews the Alphabet sound list. Then it covers the following letters: N (including a N/M discrimination), W, C, R, P, Q, V, X, Y, Z. The lessons are the same setup as in Volume 1 (as explained above for the letter "S").
Sound Beginnings is a reading, spelling, handwriting, phonics and listening program. We have been using it for many months and it's amazing how much our Kyle has learned. It is an intensive program and it works. No color pictures or flashy pages. The program includes step-by-step dialogue and well organized daily lesson plans. There is a 2000 word spelling list with spelling markings and Catholic vocabulary.
The 100 EL is a direct instruction program. This means that the teacher's dialogue is scripted. The sessions are designed to take 20 minutes per day. We found them to take 15 to 30 minutes a day. If it takes any longer, I recommend to stop using the program for a few weeks to let things "jell" then go back to it. I did this periodically with both children and they did not forget any of the previous material when we went back to it.
Just as this book is much more difficult to use thanTeach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons, it is also more difficult to review. A companion book by Wanda Sanseri, Teaching Reading At Home, organizes the information into a one page flow chart, then expands each item in the flow chart systematically so you feel comfortable with what to teach when.
The Bob Books and subsequent titles (five sets of small reading booklets in all) are sets of very small, stapled booklets with black and white line drawings and colorful covers, which contain very simple stories. They are approximately $15 per set (although I've seen them at Sam's Club and Half-Price books for less). Each set comes in a colorful box with two little cardboard finger puppets and a cardboard puppet theatre.
In this first set (originally titled simply "Bob Books"), the stories start out very easy (words like Bob, Sam, sat, etc.) and very gradually increase in difficulty. All letters are introduced except "Q" and the stories are made up almost entirely of three-letter-words. We found the pace and order in which new words were introduced to be very helpful. We have used the Bob Books to teach two of our children to read. They were both interested in learning to read when they were four years old.
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).
Callirobics will significantly and quickly improve your child's penmanship, even though he'll never form a single letter while using it. If your child has difficulty with consistency in formation, slant, and spacing, thinks he "just can't do it", has a bad attitude toward penmanship, or simply benefits from auditory and kinesthetic modes of learning, this may help.