Emerging Readers question...

[Allison TX]

My daughter is finishing up the Reading Lesson, and is doing well, but I still don't think she is reading fluently. Is that okay? I had her try the Beginners Bible today and she could not read the word separated, and struggled with the word empty. Should I try the Early Readers Bible instead? The samples from Amazon look a lot easier to read than the Beginners Bible. Or do we need to work on phonics more? She is reading the stories from the Reading Lesson pretty fluently, although she does have to work harder at sounding out the lists of words. I am thinking of using MFW 1st grade for a year to cement the phonics a bit more, but I really like HOD and want to keep going with it. I'm just not sure what I need to do about phonics. Help please!

Allison

[pjdobro]

We have both the Beginner's Bible and The Early Reader's Bible and the Early Reader's Bible does seem easier to me. I've had my daughter read the Beginner's and my son the Early Reader's since she is a more advanced reader. One of the things that I especially like about the Early Reader's Bible is that it has a list in the back of all of the basic words that it uses, 250 of them. It also has a list of all of the new words that it uses in the back. The new words are also listed at the beginning of each story, so it makes it easy to go over these new words before encountering them in the story. No more than 5 new words are used in each story. So from a reading perspective, the Early Reader's Bible is a great place to start. I like the questions that Carrie has written and the stories a bit better in the Beginner's Bible, but it is slightly more difficult reading.

Sorry, I'm no help with the phonics question. We didn't use the Reading Lesson for phonics. Last year, we did use Phonics Pathways some to help solidify our phonics a bit more while we read some beginning readers. We started the emerging readers over the summer and are continuing to talk about phonics as it comes up in relation to our spelling. Hopefully someone can give you some ideas of what to do next in phonics. I think the Early Reader Bible is not much more difficult than most beginning readers and might be a good way to go, but someone who has used the Reading Lesson can give you a better idea of the jump in difficulty there.

[shaybird]

Allison, if you and your child like games you could add Happy Phonics to HOD for the phonics just to solidify the phonics and use whatever readers you choose. Explode the code goes along with Happy Phonics- just jump the easier beginning games and find where to start. Just a thought.
Sharyn

[Allison TX]

Thanks Patti and Sharyn. I appreciate the suggestions.

After thinking about it and discussing with my husband, I really don't think she needs to start over with another phonics program. She may just need some more practice. I'm going to start her with the emerging readers, with the easier of the two Bible story books, and add either ETC or MCP Plaid Phonics. I'm leaning towards MCP, because it has color . Does anyone prefer one over the other?

Does this plan sound okay?

Also, should I start her on the spelling lists, or wait till next year?

Thanks!

Allison

[sarathan]

Hi,

I have no advice but I'm really hoping that Carrie will reply. My son is also doing The Reading Lesson and I just have this *feeling* that we're going to be in the same boat as you when he finishes.

[Tree House Academy]

The Beginners Bible was too hard for my ds6. We used the Early Reader's Bible and he has built tons of confidence in his reading. We are almost finished and he is definitely ready to tackle Owl at Home next.

[tiffanieh]

When I brought my son home to homeschool for the first grade I decided that I wanted him to have a REALLY good foundation of phonics before I started him on any reading comprehension books. While he was probably where your daughter is now, we decided to do Reading Made Easy for the first half of the year. Somedays he would fly thru 2-3 lessons b/c they came super easy for him. As a result, he finished by Christmas time and was then reading on a 3rd grade level. Also, his confidence was thru the roof. He now LOVES to read and I really think it's because I have him additional time to work on his phonics until that light bulb truly came on and he was a fluent reader before he started with the emerging reader set.

So, my advise, would be to go thru another phonics program, one that will take your daughter a bit further in her ORAL phonics than the Reading Lesson did. Give her this time. It will only benefit her in the long run and hopefully not leave either of you feeling frustrated!!!

Happy reading!
Tiffanie

[pjdobro]

I think the spelling lists in Beyond review phonics nicely. Each week highlights a particular phonics rule. For instance, the first week are words with short a, the second week, short e, etc. It's a great way to review phonics along the way. Is your daughter in the Beyond manual? We did the language arts from Beyond last year and did spelling list 1. This year, we are doing the history part of Beyond and using spelling list 2 from Beyond. I wasn't for sure how that would work out since we would be reviewing the same rules, but the second list has some twists to it and I figure it never hurts to continue to review the basics. So far it's working well. I don't have any experience with either of the phonics program that you mentioned. I love color though so that's probably what I would choose

[funkmomma71]

After thinking about it and discussing with my husband, I really don't think she needs to start over with another phonics program. She may just need some more practice. I'm going to start her with the emerging readers, with the easier of the two Bible story books, and add either ETC or MCP Plaid Phonics. I'm leaning towards MCP, because it has color . Does anyone prefer one over the other?

Does this plan sound okay?

Also, should I start her on the spelling lists, or wait till next year?

Thanks!

Allison

My dd struggled at first with the Beginner's Bible, so I just slowed down the pace and added in MCP Plaid Phonics Level 2. By the time we finished the Beginner's Bible she was flying through it, and reading everything she could get her hands on. She loves doing the Phonics workbook, BUT, she loves doing worksheets, not matter what they are. I like Phonics workbook because it is helping to solidify what she learned last year with RME, and it will introduce the rest of the rules not covered by that program. I agree with pjdobro, the spellings list are a review of phonics AND are not that difficult, you may want to give them a go.

I have also used the "Before the Code" books, but my dd found them to be boring.

[my3sons]

We decided to do The Early Readers Bible first, using the Emerging Reader's Schedule and questions. Then, we did The Beginner's Bible too, and are now finishing out the rest of the set. I thought he needed some extra time to ease into it, and doing both of them really gave him that time. By the time he started the Beginner's Bible, he was ready for it. We also did Explode the Code Books 1-3, and he loved those. They are short, funny, and review phonics nicely. The Beyond spelling lists also helped so much. We've done MCP Plaid before too and liked those, but we prefer ETC because it seemed to have more retention and was repetitive enough that he could do it independently for the most part. So, I guess if I were you, I'd start with the Early Reader's Bible and add an ETC book. See how that goes, and if it's going well, keep on with that and move on to The Beginner's Bible when you get to it. If it is not going well, I'd follow Rebecca's advice and go through The Reading Lesson, quickly moving from lesson to lesson. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie

[Allison TX]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Does this sound like a good plan?

I bought the Early Readers Bible and will have her start that first. I like the idea of going through both Bibles before starting the rest of the books.

I'm also going go ahead and use a phonics workbook, either MCP or ETC. I may try both and she which she prefers. And if that doesn't work I'll try going through another phonics book. But I have a feeling she will do fine with the readers and workbook.

We are using Little Hearts but I'm going to go ahead and order the Beyond guide for the spelling lists and the Singapore lessons. We are using 1A now, and I miss the fun hands on lessons that we used for the Early Bird books. I have the Bigger guide so I already have the Emerging Readers schedule, but I think I need the Beyond guide at this point for the Math and LA.

Thanks for helping me work through this, I appreciate it! All of you are such helpful ladies.

Allison

[pjdobro]

It sounds like you might end up doing pretty much what we having been doing. Last year we did LHFHG except did the LA and math from Beyond. This year we are doing Beyond with the second spelling list and copywork from Beyond and the grammar and the math from Bigger. It sounds complicated when written out, but really it is simple and is working well. I think next year, we'll be doing all of Bigger except moving on to the next R&S book for grammar and the next level of Singapore math. I don't think the math explorations continue at that level of Singapore so at that point, I think we'll pretty much be in one manual. It's been working really well for us.

I wish I had thought about using both Bibles before starting the other books with my son. I think that would have been beneficial for him. We're several books beyond the Bible reading now though so I'm not for sure if we'll go back or not. He's doing well with the Frog and Toad books. I'm not for sure how he'll do when we get to the more difficult books. Hopefully he'll be ready when we get there.

Your plan sounds really great

[my3sons]

I think your plan sounds wonderful! It is such a blessing to watch our dc's reading grow, and now that we are nearing the end of the Emerging Reader's Set, I'm getting excited for the next stage in DITHOR. Great fun is ahead for you and dd!

In Christ,
Julie