I am on my last child who needs to learn how to read. I have already learned that there are many ways to teach this, but this time I am trying All About Reading Level 1 with Baby Girl.
~ I received a copy of this from Timberdoodle in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review and I was not compensated in any other way. ~
What Is It
All About Reading Level 1 is part of the Kindergarten Curriculum Kit from Timberdoodle. I received a Teacher’s Manual, Student Pack with Activity Book, three readers, Reader Divider Cards and Reading Review Box, Letter Tiles, Magnets, and Tote Bag.
With a little bit of prep work at the beginning, there is little need to prep at the beginning of each lesson. Each lesson in the teacher’s manual starts with a section just for you. This will tell you the objective of the lesson, what you need, and what you need to know before you begin.
At the start of each lesson, you will start with a review of the previous lessons. This review allows your child to keep on track and allows you to see where they need to keep practicing.
After that, you move on to the new teaching. The teacher’s manual takes you step-by-step on how to do the new teaching. You are not alone on this. Not only that, but you will use multiple ways to teach, as this is a multi-sensory curriculum.
How We Used It
I spent my first day reading the beginning of the teacher’s manual and applying the letter tiles to the magnets. I also took the letter cards and word cards and separated them by lesson. This had me ready to open and go for each lesson.
I would sit down with Baby Girl and we would start going through the lesson. While the lessons are short, we would take our time with them, sometimes taking 2 or 3 days to complete the lesson. Even with spreading the lesson out, we would still do the review for that lesson each time.
Baby Girl has a short attention span, so even though the lessons are already short, sometimes it just needed to be shortened even more. Since we didn’t have a magnetic board to use our tiles on, we took those tiles to the fridge. I think this was the best part for Baby Girl!
This was our “reading class” for at least 3 days out of the week. That was the least amount of time we would spend on it, with 4 or 5 being the normal. But, as I mentioned, sometimes we would spread the lesson out. It was fun to have a lot of ways to practice the reading, from word cards, worksheets with different activities and books that the children will be reading within the first three lessons! When teaching to read, reading a book is a huge incentive!
What We Thought Of It
We love this program. I wish I would have tried this with Ray Ray and Little Miss! One thing I did learn was that each child will learn to read at their own pace. So, while going into this with the intention of teaching Baby Girl to read, I also knew that I had to go at her pace.
With this in mind, this is why we split our lessons. When Baby Girl was not feeling it, we would take a break. This is also why would re-do the reviews at the beginning of the lessons. While I wanted to follow her lead, I didn’t want her to forget what we were learning.
Baby Girl was excited to get started. This was just what I wanted. She loved the letter tiles on the fridge and would do the sounding out of those letters for hours. In fact, I found this to be a great way to do our reviews. The other thing she really liked was the splat pencil. Sometimes instead of having her read the words, I would say them and have her “splat” them.
Overall, we are impressed with this curriculum. While we are taking longer to use it, we are still getting the full benefit of it. We are not skipping a step and redoing some as we go. Baby Girl loves doing this and knows that when it is too much, we stop. I feel this is why she still loves it.
If you have a child who is ready to start learning to read this is the curriculum you will want to have.
