The following is a post by Angie, founder and editor of The Homeschool Classroom. Angie also writes at Many Little Blessings. (This post is a sponsored review post.)
Teaching children to read is one of those huge, daunting tasks that makes many a homeschooling parent nervous. Reading is so integral to a whole lifetime of learning that there is a definite pressure for many parents. Making it even worse is that once you’ve learned to read, it can come so naturally that it’s hard to remember how you even learned to read in the first place. That leaves many homeschooling parents saying, “How am I supposed to teach my kids to read?”
Luckily, there are many programs and books out there to assist you in your efforts to teach reading. I was pleased to recently get to review one such program that left me over and over saying, “Wow!” This program is the site Mrs. Karle’s Sight and Sound Reading. While I have a lot to share about Mrs. Karle’s Sight and Sound Reading Program, I feel like I have to state one amazing thing about it first: it’s free!
Yes, you read that correctly. It is a full program for teaching reading and it’s free.
I will add, however, that if you want to save yourself a lot of clicking around on the site, many of the resources can be purchased through Sight and Sound Reading’s store that will allow you to download materials in order to just have them in one spot. I know this may sound like this is where they get you in, but with one example being a 600+ page teacher manual with the complete 120 lessons in it for just $10.00, this program is extremely affordable if you decide to purchase items to have them in one spot. (Oh, but don’t worry about such a long manual! It’s laid out wonderfully, and would be perfect to just load onto something like an iPad or use on the computer screen.)
About Mrs. Karle’s Sight and Sound Reading
First, a little introduction directly from Mrs. Karle’s Sight and Sound Reading:
Mrs. Karle’s Sight and Sound Reading Program creatively teaches the 250 basic sight words in 120 teaching days –15 minutes a day. These are the most frequently read words used in 80% of what children read. Every word is taught, reinforced, reviewed and builds one day at a time. This can be done in as little as 15 minutes per day.
While our days can be hectic as homeschooling parents, isn’t it exciting to think of only having to commit to 15 minutes a day for this program? That’s also a perfect amount of time for young children’s attention span.
The Sight and Sound Reading program reinforces phonics, spelling, punctuation and comprehension. There is frequent reviewing and repetition of concepts that have already been taught.
Resources Available on Mrs. Karle’s Sight and Sound Reading
Sight and Sound Reading has such a huge offering of resources on the sight (all free!) that it’s too difficult to name them all. However, here are some of the things that you will find on the site when you go visit:
- A reading readiness test
- A sight word test
- Alphabet learning resources (including when certain letters sometimes look considerable different in various fonts)
- 120 days worth of lessons in 250 sight words (as well as information about how to start struggling readers start where they are best suited)
- Videos of lessons that your children can watch from Mrs. Karle – these remind me of sitting down with a very kind kindergarten teacher who is the type that is old school and also loves her students and is interested in each one of them
- A store full of inexpensive options for a reading program
As a homeschooling parent who has taught one child to read, as well as helped two struggling readers who began homeschooling in the early elementary years, and also as a former kindergarten teacher and librarian, I am really just very genuinely impressed with this program. Mrs. Karle’s Sight and Sound Reading uses solid principles for teaching reading and materials are well laid out for ease of use.
With the program being free on the site, you can’t lose by going to check it out right now! I hope that you love it as much as I did. I will definitely be recommending Sights and Sounds Reading to other homeschoolers, as well as parents with children who are struggling to learn to read who are currently going to school away from home.
Angie can be found writing about her nerdy, domestically challenged life, including all of the things that happen between all those of loads of laundry, at Many Little Blessings. Angie is the founder and managing editor of The Homeschool Classroom.
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This looks like an awesome resource. I’m going to get my five-year-old on it. We just got her to start reading, not fluently yet, but she is coming along quickly, and she is forever looking for things she can do “herself,” be they books she knows all the words in or games on the computer. If you would like to take a look at some of the things we tried before we finally stumbled upon what worked, here is a post about it.
http://www.typativemamacat.com/2013/07/what-we-tried-for-reading.html