The Homeschool How To

Curriculum Series: All About Reading Pre-Reading

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Embarking on the homeschooling journey can stir up a whirlwind of questions and quandaries; the foremost being "Which curriculum will unlock my child's potential?" Join me as I weave you through the twists and turns of selecting the perfect educational path for my family, settling on the All About Reading pre-reading curriculum for my eager five-year-old. You'll get a front-row seat to our daily adventures—from melodious alphabet serenades to whimsical crafts—that not only educate but also delight. Along the way, I'll share valuable insights that could shed light on the curriculum conundrum for your little learners too.
 
As we tie up another episode with gratitude, I can't help but encourage you to become the megaphone for our Homeschool How To Curriculum Series. Your support catapults this podcast into the hearts and homes of families everywhere, allowing us to cultivate a community where wisdom on homeschooling flourishes. So, pass along this episode and join us in nurturing a network that thrives on shared experiences and collective growth. This is more than just a podcast; it's a movement towards a personalized and profound educational experience for our children.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Homeschool How-To Find my Curriculum a series where we talk all about curriculum. I've been interviewing homeschooling families for over a year now on my main podcast, the Homeschool How-To, but I really wanted to zero in on curriculum. There's so much out there. How do I know what would work best for me and my child? How do I know what works for one child would work for the other? I might like the curriculum I'm using now, but how do I know there's not a better one out there, especially if I don't know all the curriculums? And what about supplemental curriculum? Should I be using that too? This series is to help you decide just that. I'm going to interview parents who are using all the curriculums so that you can decide the absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey. The absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey. Hi folks, thank you so much for joining me on the Homeschool How-To Find my Curriculum. I have been having so much fun interviewing homeschooling families over the last year. I'm shocked I have any listeners at all and I just thank you guys so much. It lets me know that I'm not in this boat alone. I never envisioned being a homeschool family or homeschool parent. I just always like I talk about it all the time on my podcast like envisioned this Amish family sewing their own clothes, and that was not us. But I think over the last few years, like a lot of you guys started realizing, hey, maybe maybe this isn't the best way, maybe everything that society has set up from health care to education, to, you know, going mom's going to work and sending our kids into daycare at six weeks old Maybe that's just not the best way, and what other options do we have? So for me, I started interviewing homeschooling families, just one-on-one. When I went to play groups or if I found a homeschooling family at a birthday party, I'd interview them, kind of talking their ear off and hearing how their day-to-day was going. So I started the podcast and here we are a year later and you guys are listening. So I thank you so much for that.

Speaker 1:

What I wanted to do was do a subscription that just concentrated on curriculum, because that was a big thing for me and I think it is for other people too. Like, what curriculum do we pick? You know we're taking this huge step in taking our kids out of the education system, but what are we replacing it with? And there are so many options everything from more rigid curriculums to the unschooling, to everything in between and it's so overwhelming. So what I really want to do is narrow in on what each curriculum has to offer so that you can listen and decide does this curriculum work for my family or not? And if it doesn't, you don't have to waste any more than what you've put into this episode on the curriculum. You know you can just move along.

Speaker 1:

So what I'm going to talk to you guys today about is the curriculum that I use. My son is five years old, so this would be his kindergarten year. I'm just going to talk about all about reading the pre-reading curriculum, and I started using a Hagerty's Phonics for the first five months or so, but I'll talk about them in a different episode because I want to keep this short and concise. You guys are busy. You don't have a lot of time to listen to this and that, so I want to get right down to the point. Today is all about reading the pre-reading. We did this for about five months, and how it works is we go through the alphabet, so, so every time you open the curriculum it is sing the alphabet song with your child, point to the letters on the chart and there's a chart for capitals and there's a chart for lowercase. That's really cool because you get to see both and you know we sing together and that's just the routine.

Speaker 1:

So then it gives you today's letter and depending on where you are in the curriculum, it's either a capital letter or a lowercase letter and from there they find the letter on the chart. You talk about it, you read a poem from Zigzag Zebra and these are really cute little poems. They have pictures and once you read the poem it has you know it has something to do with the letter of the day and it'll ask you like a little bit about maybe the poem or the picture, or ask the kid to find something in the picture that has to do with the letter. From there you would move on and do the craft sheet for the day. So now they're actually like getting out crayons or markers or something to work hands on with the letter, but they're getting to be creative as well. It does guide them a little bit on what colors to make this or what colors to make that, which you can listen to but you don't have to, let's see.

Speaker 1:

From there you would move on to one of the activities of the day and you get to pick out of the list of activities in the back of the book. So let me just give you some of those. The activities would be do your favorite handwriting program. So you might have a book that you got from the dollar store or Hobby Lobby, or just a piece of paper and you write down the letter and they copy it a few times. Or you form the letter with pipe cleaners, toothpicks or wiki sticks. The other options would be to stick magnetic letters on the refrigerator and have them find the letter of the day. You could use Play-Doh or modeling clay or shape clay and have them shape the letter. So if it's T, you would have them shape a T with the Play-Doh. You could go on a letter hunt, which you go through old magazines, or you would go through the house, maybe the pantry, and find the letter of the day. You go on a little letter hunt, or you would do alphabet stamps for the letter of the day, or you can point your finger and trace the letter of the day in finger paint, shaving cream, pudding, salt or sand Kinetic sand is great for this so and you could also take that outside and do it right in the dirt. You would pick one or two of those activities and do them. You wouldn't do each of those every day.

Speaker 1:

What my son really loved about the all about reading pre-reading is the Ziggy the zebra. So some of the days not every day, but some of the days you would do a little game. For instance, ziggy takes a trip. Take out the backpack sheet and the picture cards which they provide you when you purchase the curriculum and make sure your child understands what each picture represents. So like this, for instance, would be a picture of a sock, a snail, a stamp, a nest, a sled, a violin, a sun, a goose, six just the number six or a worm, and then you put the puppet Ziggy on you and you know you play the game as Ziggy with your child. My son had a lot of fun with this and so did the baby. Sometimes a little too much fun, it was a little bit distracting, but that's okay because you know he was really enjoying it. So that is the gist of the all about reading pre-reading.

Speaker 1:

There were a couple of worksheets, sometimes just to change things up. They would have like, for instance, find the letter G, but they'd mix it in with a bunch of different letters. So you know he he enjoyed it. We got through almost all of the All About Reading pre-reading but I did switch it up for Christmas time and did a connected Christmas from Treehouse Schoolhouse which I can get into at a later date, and then right now I'm doing a different program which is like Learn to Read in 100 Days, which I can go into that on a later date as well. But that is what the All About Reading pre-reading is. I would say. Overall my five-year-old did enjoy it. It did take a little bit of time. I would say it took about 40 minutes on average to get through everything. And then it does give you little tips and pointers about reading with your child every day for 20 minutes and how to put that right into your routine. Generally this is going to be at bedtime, maybe it's first thing in the morning, so it gives you little tips about why reading with your child is important.

Speaker 1:

I really liked some of these. I bookmarked a couple of them. I feel like this curriculum really focused on the letters and the sounds. It focused on rhyming. I don't think it was a very in-depth phonics, but then again the only other phonics I have to compare it to is the Hagerty kindergarten phonics that is used in schools. That was super intense. My son fought me on that a little bit. Where this was more fun Now, is the super intense one needed? Probably not, but does it make it easier when they start to read? Probably, so I like this, though. It had a funness to it. It went through all the capital letters, then all the lowercase letters and then the sounds. So I did like All About Reading and I would use it again as maybe on my daughter or as the kids get older, unless I find something that I like better.

Speaker 1:

The All About Reading. Pre-reading costs $119.95, so $120, and for that you're getting two small books. One is Zig Zag Zebra, a Rhyming Alphabet, and one is Lizard Lou, a Collection of Rhymes, old and New, and then the Pre-Reading Teacher's Manual and then the Book of Letters, and that's where you do your crafts from. You also get the Ziggy the Zebra Puppet and the little box that has the items for the games in it. This curriculum is 78 lessons. So when you think about how that would play out in the course of a year if you did, say, four lessons a week, this would take you about five months to complete. Now we did sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes four, sometimes five, so we almost got done with the entire thing within five months before we switched over to a couple other things. But 78 lessons is what you're getting, with the all about reading, pre-reading curriculum. So I think that's a pretty fair price to pay for that.

Speaker 1:

They make it so that you can just order the book of letters. You could use it on multiple children. I'm looking on the website right now to see if there's a way to just order the book of letters and yes, it does look like you can order uppercase letter crafts book for 1995 and lowercase letter crafts book for 1995. Yeah, I did like this. I would recommend it. I would say you could do it with multiple children. If you have children around the same age, they would enjoy doing this stuff together. They just you would need extra craft books or you could draw you know what the craft was so that they have multiple. But yeah, that's my take.

Speaker 1:

I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope it was beneficial to you. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Please consider sharing this podcast or my main podcast, the Homeschool how To with friends, family on Instagram or in your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. The more this podcast is shared, the longer we can keep it going and the more hope we have for the future. Thank you for your love of the next generation.