5 Things I Love About All About Reading

When I pulled my son out of public school he was very behind in reading. He had just completed 1st grade, but he was barely reading on a Kindergarten level. It was clear that reading needed to be a top priority on our homeschool agenda from day 1. I researched several different programs and talked with lots of homeschool families about what they think the best reading curriculum on the market is. I was met with an overwhelming response from my research and conversations that All About Reading was the way to go. After completing AAR Level 2 last year he jumped from kindergarten level to second grade reading level! We are now working on our second year with this program and he gains more skill & confidence with each lesson. Here are my 5 Favorite things about the All About Reading program…

5 Things I Love About All About Reading

               1. Multisensory

AAR combines sight, touch, and sound for a multisensory learning experience. The magnet tiles include all of the letters plus vowel & consonant teams, syllable types, and other common letter combinations. I put all of the magnets on a cookie sheet from Dollar General. Half are on the front of the sheet and the other half is on the back. The program also includes phonogram and sight word flash cards and an audio app to listen to the phonograms.

2. Lessons are clearly defined, but not scripted

Each lesson comes with a guided plan for the teacher. This plan includes phonetics and sight words to review, practice words & games, directions for using the letter tiles, and how to use the activity sheets. The lesson plans do not give you specific sentences to read to your child; they guide you without contraining you to a script.

3. Phonetics explained well

English is a difficult language to master. There are so many exceptions to the rule that students can become easily confused. This is one reason that I chose to use All About Reading with my kids. The program is very thorough in phonogram explanation. There are phonogram flashcards that have each sound listed on the back, there is an app to listen to each of the phonograms, and the sounds are also enforced with letter tile games & activity sheets.

4. Application

All About Reading doesn’t simply teach sounds & sight words then leave your child to figure out the application on his/her own. Two books filled with short stories are provided for your child. Each story is filled with words that contain the sounds studied in the previous lesson. This reinforces what has been taught and helps the child to retain the sounds and rules better.

5. Balanced

As you can gather from the previous 4 items listed, AAR is a very well-balanced program. It combines phonetic mastery, word recognition, vocabulary growth, story comprehension, and fluency. This, to me, is the key to the success of this program. Only focusing on one or two of these aspects would leave holes in the student’s ability to decode words and read effectively, but All About Reading leaves no room for holes.

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Browse the AAR website and purchase the level appropriate for your little reader here!

Have you used All About Reading with your child(ren)? What was your favorite aspect of the program?

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