Homeschool World Forum

[channell07]

I am trying to decide on a kindergarten curriculum for my son next year and have narrowed it down to these two. Any input?? some info We are a secular home, my son is beginning to read CVC words with short vowel sounds. I am having a difficult time deciding!! I know I have a bit of time but I am moving on to researching and choosing a math curriculum if I can ever make a decision about this.. LOL.. Oh! Also if I use Alpha Phonics I intend to use Explode the Code along with it...

[abecedarian]

After years of struggling with my youngest two boys, and trying several different reading programs unsuccessfully, I enlisted the help of another home schooling mom, who used Alphaphonics. Here's what we did: I dismantled my copy of the textbook. That's right. I ripped(carefully) each page apart and placed them in sheet protectors, which I then put in a thick 3-ring binder. Then we made the boys master/OWN each page. Some weeks we worked on several pages, sometimes just one or two. I made cards for each word in the lessons, and we drilled several times daily. Missed cards became copy work, with each word being written ten times. That was homework. With my older son, who was ten, we started having him make his own cards after a few weeks. He whizzed through the book and was reading very well on his own after about 6 months. The younger son took longer, but I think he has some ADD/maturity issues. He's now 11 and is reading reasonably well.

The nice thing about dismantling the book is that it allows the creation of worksheets. Leaving the sheet in the protector, one can use dry erase markers to mark vowels, for instance. It also makes flipping back and forth much easier.