I absolutely LOVE the Delightful Reading program. Like you, I started my first pre-reader with Level 2, but my younger child loved those lessons so much that I got him Level 1, and the games are so engaging that they BOTH choose to participate. I'm planning to move my older son right along to Level 3, just to reinforce those skills. I think it's a great program.
Thank you for doing this review! I have been curious about this program for my up coming Kindergartner. I have been going back and forth between Delightful Reading Level 2 and All About Reading Level 1. All About Reading seems pretty popular among the homeschool community but it is so expensive and seems very intense for a little 5 year old. But at the same time Delightful Reading has me a little nervous that it may not be “enough”. Do you have any experience or thoughts on AAR? Thank you so much!
I don’t have experience with AAR. I believe Delightful Reading was plenty. For one child it was just enough. With my 2nd child, we sometimes did 2 lessons in one day. I was glad to have a program that wasn’t too intense. Both of my children enjoyed the lessons and now they both love to read. I’ll be starting my 3rd child on it in the fall! I wish you all the best in making your decision! ❤️
Thank you! I was looking at a different reading program for my son. I used 100 lessons to read with my older 2 girls but I think I'm going to go with this for boy, more hands on!
So glad to see your review. SCM's kit seems like a wonderful program. Did you feel like it was a lot of prep work? Also did you know prior to that you only wanted a basic phonic approach? What did you not like about level 3?
It was not a lot of prep work at all! You could prep ahead if you wanted to, but I always just set up the game when we got to it. It never took long. Sometimes I would just repeat a game we enjoyed. Yes, I wanted a basic phonics approach. All my daughters knew when they started this program was their letters and letter sounds. They could write a little. So I think it’s perfect for that level. What we didn’t like about level 3 was how repetitive it was. It was slower moving and it started out with some harder words. My daughter would get discouraged often, so we stopped and just did the pathway readers to help her gain confidence with her reading. That really helped her a lot and now she can read anything!
I mostly used the Pathway Readers from Simply Charlotte Mason. I prefer those. During this curriculum at the time I sometimes had her read the Bob Books, which are very easy, but they lack any real story or message. My daughter who is currently going through Delightful Reading Level 2 likes to pick books off of her bookshelf to try to read to me and reinforce her skills. I tell her the words she hasn’t learned about yet and have her sound out the ones that I know she can handle. This helps her practice but keeps it encouraging for her and not overwhelming. Hope that helps!
