Alicia Van Hecke

"This book is actually a description of how and why I taught my three children to write. I read a few 'teaching chldren how to write' books and had no desire to use the suggested exercises. They seemed meaningless and out of touch with our daily lives. I wanted my children to use writing, drawing, and speaking to handle specific situations successfully. I wanted them to be able to write conversational letters, to take phone messages, and to learn to ask thoughtful questions.

This set of 100 cards covers the Greek and Latin root words found in the companion book. 37 words are Greek Roots (cards are outlined in green - don't worry - they are written in our standard alphabet!) and the res are Latin (cards are outlined in red). The back of each card gives the definition and derivatives in an identical manner to the book (includes definitions, et al.), but does not contain the teaching notes and extra words found in the book.

This is a really neat and fairly simple program designed to introduce children to 100 Greek and Latin words that are common roots of English words. Along with background information, Greek and Latin pronunciation guides, and other teaching tips are 100 pages containing one Greek or Latin Root word, a list of English derivatives (with definitions and other root words), teaching notes and extra derivative words.

First Lesson Word List: a, big, dog, is, my
Final Lesson Word List: way, glad, happy, how, ten, stand, very, name, walked, train

Mrs. Woodfield has brought to life yet another collection of wonderful, but somewhat lesser-known, saints through beautiful stories, study questions and other projects that help older children grow to love and better understand these beautiful saints. This collection covers the lives of three canonized Saints and one very holy man who has been declared Venerable: Saint Katherine Drexel, Venerable Matt Talbot, St. Josephine Bakhita and Pope St. Pius X.

This book provides twelve engaging saint stories (four to nine pages each) with a page or so of vocabulary words, comprehension questions, quotes from the saint and project ideas. Saints covered in this volume are: Saint Faustina Kowalska, Saint Juan Diego, St. Rose of Lima, St. Francis of Assisi (in two parts), Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Venerable Fr. Solanus Casey, St. Helena, Blessed Fr. Damien of Molokai, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Ambrose and Mother Seton.

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.

In a similar fashion to the first set, these books offer additional, more advanced, reader/activity books that combine practice of lots of phonics based words with a number of sight words (some of the sight words could be learned phonetically later on). By the time the child is finished with this second series, he will have practiced 62 phonics-based words (such as Dad, jet, him, stop and bug) and 25 sight words (such as love, you, the, Mommy and room).

This beginning reader set provides young students with small activity booklet/readers that can be read at a very primary level. The author combines simple words that can be read phonetically with one or two sight words in each booklet that the child will learn to recognize (words like: "look", "go" and "the"). I thought the illustrations were more appealing than those found in the Bob Books.

Little Stories for Little Folks is a Catholic phonics readers set that offers an inexpensive alternative to the Bob Books. The entire Bob Books set (5 sets of booklets retailing for approximately $15 each) costs about $75 retail. In contrast, Little Stories for Little Folks costs about $25 for the whole program. While the Bob Books and other readers might turn out to be helpful for some families (and are available at some libraries), many families have been very grateful for this charming Catholic set at such a good price.