Phonics Lessons and Reading Curriculum

With the right phonics lessons and reading curriculum, you can easily teach your child to read.

I know...the thought of being responsible for teaching your child to read is pretty scary. It's probably one of the most dreaded subjects when it comes to homeschooling.

As parents, we don't mind teaching penmanship, history, science, or even math, but just mention reading and we all start shaking!!

Don't worry. Millions of homeschool parents have successfully taught their children to read - and you can too!

As your child begins to learn to read, don't forget to surround them with opportunities to read. Give them plenty of books. If you can't afford to stock your home with books, become very friendly with your local library :)

For suggestions about books that kids love to read for reading practice, check the reading section.

As usual, I believe that teaching your children should be fun. The program that I used with my children was

Sing, Spell, Read & Write--Preschool Home Study Kit

This was a happy blend that taught the kids how to read while letting them have fun. It also includes some workbook work, but the workbooks are colorful and appeal to the kids.

If you want to sing and play your way to teaching your kids how to sing, spell, read and write, this is the way to do it.

The program has a race car theme with 36 "steps" to the program. As your child masters each step, they get to move their race car one more space around the race track - which they love.

Everything is included so there is no work for you putting together a reading program.

It includes:

• songs
• games
• 2 student workbooks
• 6 phonetic storybooks
• Complete instructions written by a kindergarten teacher

My kids loved this. They thought it was fun to do and didn't look at it like they were being forced to learn something or do schoolwork. It was very thorough.

You can get these complete kits that have everything you need starting at the preschool level and going through second grade. When you finish the program, your kids will be able to spell, read, and write.

Once your children have started reading some on their own, give them books to read.

I loved

The Pathway Readers are good, wholesome storybooks like they used to print back in the old days. Most stories are about families that live on a farm and the stories are simple but weave in good character traits at the same time. These books also have workbooks that go with them if you want to work on reading comprehension too.

I recently found a great site for preschool and early elementary age kids on the internet that is free. Go to www.Nursery-Rhymes-Fun.com for Nursery Rhymes, Poems, Stories, and coloring pages.

Nursery-Rhymes-Fun has lots of poems and stories to read to your little bitties - they're fun, it's a great introduction to poetry and they'll love the coloring pages too!

Phonics Lessons for Older Students with Reading Problems

Sometimes you have a child who either wasn't taught how to read properly with phonics lessons the first time around or simply had trouble learning.

That's okay!

That's one of the great things about homeschooling your children - if they have a problem in a subject, you just keep working at it until your child gets it. You don't have to worry about them getting left behind.

An excellent phonics lessons program for the older child that has reading difficulties is Phonics Tutor. This is a really good program that teaches older children effectively without making them feel dumb. There are no bunnies hopping around on the screen and they don't have to play preschool games to improve their reading.

Phonics Tutor is a step-by-step, computerized teaching curriculum. It has 128 lessons and seven activities within each lesson to instruct and reinforce the main topic.

It will give your child 270 twenty-minute sessions to relearn phonics. All 3,500 words are presented orally along with associated spelling rules. This program teaches by using all of the learning styles. It uses phonetic analysis, reading, word spelling, and diction activities.

Look around and see which is the best curriculum for YOUR child.

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