Alicia Van Hecke

Formerly titled Even More Bob Books

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.

Formerly titled Bob Books Plus!
I did not have this set when teaching my daughter to read, but have just started using it with my son (we picked it up at Sam's Club at a discount and thought it would be helpful for additional reading practice and confidence-building). The stories include practice of words ending in "y" and "ed" and the introduction of more two and three letter phonograms.

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).

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.

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.

System Requirements: 16 MB Ram, 20 MB Hard Disk

This is an elegantly simple computer program that resides on your hard drive just like an ordinary word processor. It allows parents and teachers to print out handwriting pages in a variety of handwriting styles, sizes and fonts. Some of your options include:

This booklet provides thirty-three pages of lined paper with beautiful Catholic pen and ink illustrations. The pages are intended for handwriting practice and may be photocopied for use within your own family. Following the lined pages are approximately forty pages of beautiful religious quotes - printed in both script and cursive - for practicing handwriting. Quotes are organized according to themes such as Adoration, Conscience, Eucharist and Obedience.

Cursive Connections is a very simple and straightforward program for beginning cursive writing. The author considers the text appropriate for a mature 2nd grader or a 3rd grader. Permission is given for photocopying the materials for use within your own family.

Memoria Press' new copybooks provide a brilliantly simple combination of handwriting practice and memory work (simple Bible verses and classic poems from authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson). The child first practices simple letters before getting into Bible passages and poetry. These lessons also include space for illustrating the verse (great for reading comprehension!). Bible passages are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.