Practical Review: Creative Alphabet For Preschool and Kindergarten

Marie Picard's  Creative Alphabet For Preschool and Kindergarten site description:
A great help for the parent to make a reading and writing readiness program for preschool and kindergarten. Includes a printing page at 1 1/2" size character for each letter of the alphabet, each with a word and a line drawing to color. Next to each printing page is a full list of words to choose from, for vocabulary, for an alphabet scrapbook, and for activities perhaps to do and talk about during the time your child is doing a particular letter. Other little siblings can benefit at the same time as they can see and hear and perhaps do at their level what the older child is drawing or colouring. The results should show that your student knows the sound and shape of each letter of the alphabet. After this book your child might practice in Book B. Check out our sample pages for both Book A and Book B.


My Thoughts:
This book is really intended to be a jumping off point for learning letter sounds.  According to the instructions in the front, it is only secondarily a handwriting book.  It has the parent teach the letters and sounds in alphabetical order.  For each letter, there is instructions on how to form it, several to trace, a couple of words to trace starting with that letter and then an extensive list of art projects, saints, scripture, songs, sports, food, toys and chores that all start with that letter sound.  It is intended that the parent spend several days on each letter and it's sound, using the list to generate activities or scrapbook ideas, and once the child has it mastered, the parent reviews the previous letters and sounds already learned.  I think this text would be especially helpful to a preschooler's mother who wishes to give him a head start without formal lessons with heavily scripted activities.  There are SO many letter sound categories and suggestions that a parent can choose whatever they have on hand that week to reinforce the sounds.  


My one criticism is the arrangement of letters learned.   A child would be most of the way through the year before he could read  Mat sat. Sam sat.  However, since this text doesn't build on itself, you can teach the letters in any arrangement you like.  If someone were using this text for preschool language instruction, I would suggest getting a set of Bob Books and teaching the letter sounds in the order they appear in that series.


MODG Families:
This text is used for MODG Kindergarten handwriting.  It not necessary to teach the letter sounds, as it is only intended for handwriting practice.  One page is taught per week, spending a little time each day forming the letters and tracing the words.  The syllabus follows the text by teaching the letters in alphabetical order.  


My Recommendations:
We found that it works best for us to teach the letters of the child's name first.  Then, the child learns the letters in a similar order as the phonics text.  


This is especially helpful if you were to be requiring actual WRITING for the "sound writing" activity at the tail end of the phonics lesson.  Early in the year, while we're learning to write our name, we often use sandpaper letters for that task in the phonics text (there's no M in Zach, so he wouldn't know that one yet), eliminating the pencil skill.  But once we're ready to move onto other letters, I chose the pages for handwriting that we'd be "sound writing" at the end of the week.  


For the phonics lesson, we are naming the lower case letter only by sound.  For handwriting I call it by name.  The child himself may notice that he knows the sound of that letter from his phonics text, but I don't point it out until the sound writing activity at the end of the week. That way the child can practice all week on the form and then connect it to the sound after the fine motor isn't such a chore.  


Conclusion:
If used as written, I feel this text would be very helpful for a Catholic preschooler's mother who wants to teach letter sounds, forms, and doesn't want to go out buying supplies for scripted activities.  One week she could use saints, another week using food examples.  It's unlikely that, given the extent of the list, she would need to shop at all to provide hands on examples.  Additionally, she won't have to think them up herself.  That alone makes it worth the $8.  Just look down the list and see what you have on hand.  However, I wouldn't recommend following the internal order of the book.  ABC order is not the best way to teach letter sounds as it is such a long time before the child gets to connect his skills to actual words.  M and S are too far down the alphabet!  


As a MODG handwriting book alone, it's sweet, but out of order for the phonics text which means the "sound writing" exercises at the end of the phonics lessons will need to NOT be actual writing.  Additionally, if a family is strapped for cash, as a handwriting text alone, it doesn't add anything that a parent couldn't provide with pencil and paper.  


However, if you are going to follow MODG's "one lesson a week" pace (generally 10 tasks per lesson) for the phonics text, and like me, concentrates that effort in twice a week sessions, the (really adorably Catholic) letter sound list would be sufficient for a parent to come up with a letter sound review activity on the fly for the off days from the phonics text.  I am BANANAS when it comes to manipulatives, but someone else might just want to review the letter sounds using cans from the pantry or the faces of saints in her stack of holy cards.  This text will have that list already ready for you. 

Practical Review: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

Book Description from Publisher:
Is your child halfway through first grade and still unable to read? Is your preschooler bored with coloring and ready for reading? Do you want to help your child read, but are afraid you'll do something wrong?

SRAs DISTAR® is the most successful beginning reading program available to schools across the country. Research has proven that children taught by the DISTAR® method outperform their peers who receive instruction from other programs. Now for the first time, this program has been adapted for parent and child to use at home. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is a complete, step-by-step program that shows patents simply and clearly how to teach their children to read.

Twenty minutes a day is all you need, and within 100 teaching days your child will be reading on a solid second-grade reading level. It's a sensible, easy-to-follow, and enjoyable way to help your child gain the essential skills of reading. Everything you need is here -- no paste, no scissors, no flash cards, no complicated directions -- just you and your child learning together. One hundred lessons, fully illustrated and color-coded for clarity, give your child the basic and more advanced skills needed to become a good reader.

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons will bring you and your child closer together, while giving your child the reading skills needed now, for a better chance at tomorrow.

My Thoughts:

This book is a one-stop shop for learning to read.  There's writing, sounds, rhyming, blending, comprehension.  There's no need for any supplemental material, if you use it as written.

I find that this book works great on the "20 minutes a day" schedule it advertises for Lessons 1-20.  This will cover ALL the reading, writing, grammar and language work a parent could want.  

However, for lessons 20-100, I will repeat what another homeschool mom said about it:  The lessons aren't 20 minutes, they aren't "easy", and there's way more than 100 of them.  

The text doesn't change at that point, rather, the child starts really having to work.  Sentences are longer by that point, there's enough sounds to review that this takes some effort, and generally, my kids start to HATE it.  

That being said...I highly recommend it.   This program is effective, efficient, and cuts out all of the fat.  I would have a terrible time strong arming my kid into doing busywork, but there is NO busywork in this program.  It gets the job done!  Just be forewarned that if your child doesn't like to work hard (like most kids), you will need a backbone after Lesson 20 to make this happen.

MODG FAMILIES: 

MODG's Kindergarten and First Grade lesson plans have you do about one Lesson per week (not per day as the book advertises).  


I have found that we breeze ahead in the syllabus for Lessons 1-20, but slow down to that "one Lesson a week" rate from then on.  Rather than doing 1-2 tasks a day, as it recommends in the syllabus (there are 9-10 tasks per Lesson), we find that we can do half a lesson in a sitting, twice a week.  (There's a tantrum when the book comes out, and I can only work myself up to that a couple of times a week, so I get out of them what I can in each sitting before they go boneless and refuse to work.)  

Now, because of this slower pace (whether that happens at Lesson 1 or Lesson 20 for your family), they aren't getting the level of writing practice (and possibly sound review) that they need to keep from backsliding.  Once a week writing isn't enough. So, MODG uses a separate writing curriculum Writing Can Help Series, Book A: A Creative Alphabet (Marie Picard).


My Recommendations:
The MODG syllabus has you follow the internal order of the writing curriculum.  If you are going to follow that plan, I would not require the child to actually WRITE on the "sound writing" task in the text.  If he hasn't practiced making those letters yet, this will be REALLY frustrating.  So, on those weeks that we didn't practice those letters in writing, I let them finger-trace sandpaper letters instead.


Another alternative is to not follow the internal order of the writing book and instead practice all week on the pages in that book containing the letters from the "sound writing" task in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  For example, if you're working on Lesson 29 this week, practice ALL WEEK writing on the N and U pages in the writing workbook, since that's what they'll be asked to "sound write" at the end of the week. I don't make them say the sound as they write until we reach that task in the reading text, unless they quickly master making the letters. 

You may be a tougher mom than me and get those kids to do that recommended couple of tasks a day, but if you're like me and only force them to do the text twice a week, half a Lesson at a time, then they aren't seeing the sounds DAILY.  I, therefore, supplement with made up sound review activities. On our off days, we read Bob Books, or play "build a nonsense word" game with the known sounds from our Alphabet rocks, or practice sorting objects by letter sound under the correct sandpaper letter.  This is totally unnecessary if you follow the lesson plans, as they will see the sounds daily.  

Conclusion:
This is a great language text.  It's a one-stop shop for all your reading, writing needs.  However if you, like me, find that after Lesson 20 you are going much slower than the text recommends, you will need to make up the writing and possibly sound practice to get enough repetition each week.