I think we often have fond feelings for the books we learned on as children! My mom used Sing, Spell, Read, and Write when I was a kid, and those hold a special place in my heart!
Excellent examples! I believe that books like these were the reason behind my love for reading! Spanish was my first language and my mom and I would watch Family Feud and read short books like these to build our English vocabulary. I’m definitely on the lookout for these gems now that I have my daughter.
You're smart, already building a book collection are your little girl grows! Books are my favorite thing to buy for my little boys--the two year old is already in love with books, and the 11 month old is slowly warming up to them, haha!
This was great, there’s so much more out there than I realized. However I still have no idea which direction to go in! 😂 I do really like the Usborne readers. Which do you think you’ll start with?
Sing, Spell, Read, and Write is a really thorough phonics/LA program, and I expect I will most likely use that curriculum for the really solid initial "learn to read" progression, which means working through those readers when the time comes for my boys. I think I would use both the Usborne readers and the Life of Fred readers for the fun/building interest in reading element--those are the two I would go for for actual interesting and fun books to read. First the Usborne early readers and Life of Fred a bit later.
Thank you so much for the comparisons! I’m an Usborne Books & More consultant, and Im trying to help people find the right books for them, whether it’s usborne or not. So, this was very helpful! Thank you my friend!
Oh, that's really cool! Here, Usborne books are sold in a couple of bookstores...not all, just a few, so you have to know where to go. I sometimes forget that they have a different model in the USA or other countries, but that sounds like a lot of fun. Books are probably one of the most fun things to buy or sell...
I've never seen the Usborne books before, I need to look into those! We've collected a lot of the Abeka readers over the years, they're really great books!
This has been my biggest area to work on with my younger twins. Kindergarten public school didn’t give them the greatest foundation. So I feel like this year I’m starting fresh with homeschool for them. I’ll be looking into the Usborne books. I’ve heard great things about Bob Books not sure if I’ll go that route though. This was super helpful. Thanks so much💕
I am actually looking for more early readers to add to our collection. We love bob books now though. You definitely gave me some ideas to add to our collection
Thanks! I think having a couple different options can be a really good thing because the last thing you want, when learning to read, is boredom. Sometimes something "new" is enough to help motivate a reluctant reader.
The sing spell read books looks so good, I wonder if I can find them here will be so helpful for my 4 year old, he starts kindergarten next year (prep year before grade 1/year one not sure what you call it there)
Sing, Spell, Read, and Write is an older program (I read these books when I was a kid!) but it's still out there. Yes, we do the preschool, kindergarten, first grade progression. I feel like each country has a slightly different name.
This video is such a great resource! There's a very overwhelming amount of options when it comes to teaching your kids to read. I'm currently using the Teach Your Child to read in 100 Easy Lessons with my 4 year old. He's doing rather well and we're on lesson 8 right now. My mother in law got me a Bob's books collection but it just looks... Ok.
Yes, I agree that there are! I know many moms swear by the Bob books but...I will admit that I'm not personally the biggest fan. haha! I sometimes struggle with patience for early readers.
I really appreciate this video. I am homeschooling a nonspeaking (airway problems, has a tracheostomy) 11 year old who has other multiple disabilities. He is has a global delay so he is not at grade level, but I do see progress in learning to read despite not being able to audibly sound out words. We do a lot of work on developing his inner reading voice. What seems to be working well for him is to decode by finding word family association to key words he has learned. So for example - he can decode "bring" because it is associated by word family similarity to a word he knows "sing." Can you recommend beginner reader series that might fit with his strengths? So many decodable beginner readers really rely heavily the CVC sounding out and that skill is still developing for him. He would see the association of FAN to CAN before he would go letter by letter to decode F...A...N. Thanks in advance for any suggestions you have!
It's fantastic that you've been able to identify what's working and that you've identified word families as a key. I can't think of any beginning reader series that focus on word families specifically...I'd suggest searching on Teachers Pay Teachers to see if anyone has created printable word-family based readers?
There are a ton of options, and it can definitely be overwhelming to new homeschoolers. I hope that by showing the differences, people will be able to figure out which fits their style and needs the best.
They are definitely completely different from the phonics system that is typically used nowadays, but the sight word reading approach does work well for kids who just aren't understanding phonics.
I know you mentioned curriculum with some of these sets. Did you just use the books to teach reading without the curriculum? My older kids learned to read with Abeka curriculum. I've used so many curriculums depending on the child. My current child I'm using Bob Books for. She is 5 books in on set 1. Today I pulled out a Dick & Jane Book and she really struggled with lots of guessing. So I'm curious if you just used reading or anything else that maybe you even suggest with the Bob Books or of what you did. I really want to avoid buying curriculums. I also want to make the best choice on helping my daughter to read as well. Thank-you for this video.
There are definitely those kids who can pick up reading solely from practicing reading with leveled readers (I was one of those kids, ha!) but in general...I think most kids benefit a great deal from some kind of guided phonics "Learn to read" curriculum of some sort, to thoroughly cover all the quirks of English phonics and all the tricky words. I personally am not a big fan of Bob Books, we were handed-down the set and have used them a little bit, but I feel like they're tough to use for complete reading instruction. Our family has long used a very thorough phonics curriculum that is quite old and maybe out-of-print, which is Sing, Spell, Read, and Write, so I feel like that's not very helpful. Because it's hard to get the student books for that curriculum, I may end up trying something new when my boys are old enough to learn reading.
If a child has completed the entire BOB book series, would you recommend the Life of Fred set? or would it not be enough of a challenge? Also, is a child considered a first-grade reader once they have completed the entire BOB books series?
I believe that the entire BOB book series is intended to cover all major phonics "rules" and that you can consider that the child is reading by the time they have mastered the series. Some kids may still need to grow in confidence with reading other texts (The Life of Fred readers are quite interesting and entertaining, but there are very few words on the page). You can also just look for all of the leveled "beginner reader" series out there that are intended for kids who get the idea of reading and phonics but who don't have the reading stamina for chapter books yet. i.e. "I Can Read" series, National Geographic readers, etc.
@@SevenInAll Thank you so much for responding. Ok, that sounds good! We are currently almost done with the "complex words" set and will only have one set left after this. I'm also having a hard time figuring out what grade level of reading he would be considered once the set is complete (kindergarten, first, or second). I a leaning waaaay towards continuing to homeschool because I feel we have made so much progress with reading and math and fear that it won't be the same if he attends kindergarten at a public school. Thank you again.
My six year old would love those books from Sing Spell Read Write. This video was a bit long for me. The intro was four minutes long, and it showed a lot of readers.
I agree, it's a really, really long video. Sing, Spell, Read, and Write is an older curriculum, probably the one my family has used most consistently for 20+ years. The main benefit of it to me is that I've had all the song memorized since childhood, which makes it all too easy to teach.
Unfortunately, I think the first set of readers from Sing, Spell, Read, and Write may be out of print, I think it can only be found on the re-sale market. I have seen the second level set of readers (that's for around 2nd grade-ish) from Rainbow Resource for about $130-something, but the set that I show in this video...I didn't realize that it doesn't seem like they can be found anywhere as a complete, new set. Sorry!
For me, the biggest benefit of having multiple series is to keep it from getting too boring for "mom." I have a strong tendency to get bored of early readers. And if I'm bored, I'm not as patient and not as motivated to sit and listen as they learn to read. Having some variety helps ME. haha!
