You may remember our review of All About Spelling, a spelling curriculum we are currently using and highly recommend. The Beehive Reader 1 is All About Spelling‘s (AAS) beginning reader that correlates 100% with their Level 1 spelling curriculum, but the Beehive Reader 1 may be used separately from the spelling program. The reader is a durable, hard cover book that is beautifully illustrated (black and white) and contains 10 unique short sentence stories. The stories are cute and entertaining – A‘s favorite is Cobweb the Cat (and he’s a busy/mischievous kitty).
A is learning her alphabet sounds and blends but is not yet at a beginning reading level. This book is one that she has claimed as her own. She is determined to read this by herself and even pretends to read it. C is more than happy to read this book to A. “Sure – I’ll read it to her. It’s an easy one!”
Even J finds the stories interesting:
I’ve never seen the kids so engaged in a simple reader. This makes AAS’ Beehive Reader 1 a real success in our family.
The Beehive Reader 1 is available for $19.95 from AAS’ website.
You can read more reviews of Beehive Reader 1 by my fellow TOS Crew members at the Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew blog.
Disclosure: This product was provided to our family for free as members of the 2009-2010 Old Schoolhouse Magazine Homeschool Crew. Reviews and opinions expressed in this blog are our own.
Spelling has been a huge struggle for our boys. We’ve tried all sorts of spelling programs, but none have helped. For some reason, they’ll remember how to spell certain words for a short time, then forget. Recently we were given Levels 1 and 2 of All About Spelling to review for the TOS Homeschool Crew. I think we’ve found the spelling program that will work for our boys!
All About Spelling is a spelling curriculum that uses a multi-sensory learning approach (visual, auditory and kinesthetic). There’s a lot of material that came in our curriculum package:
- Starter Kit: letter tiles, magnets, Phonogram CD-ROM (click here for a demo of the Phonogram CD-ROM)
- Teacher’s Manual for Levels 1 and 2
- Student Material Kit for Levels 1 and 2: Level 1 comes with Flashcards (phonogram, sound, key and word cards), index card dividers, tokens, progress chart, certificate of completion. Level 2 comes with flashcards, card dividers, syllable tags, syllable division rules chart, word banks and jail for rule breakers.
Each level gives step-by-step lesson plans. Level 1 has 24 lesson plans and starts with introduction of letter sounds and progresses into blends, one-syllable words and compound words. Level 2 has 25 lesson plans, and introduces special sounds (e.g., ‘y’, ‘ar’, ‘ou’, soft ‘c’) and syllable division rules. For our boys, these lessons are supplementary to their current language arts curriculum. They’ve learned the rules of spelling before, but I think the multi-sensory method in All About Spelling will help them retain those rules and help them to remember how to spell words. Here’s an example of how a lesson plan works:
- Review
- Segment Words: Using tokens, segment 3-letter words aloud, while “pulling down” a token for each sound
- Teach short vowel sounds: pull down letter tiles a, e, i, o, and u. Use phonogram cards.
- With the tiles, fill in missing letter (e.g., ‘m_t’ – say, “I want to spell the word mat. What sound will go here?”)
- Using tiles, exchange vowels to make new words (e.g., build the word ‘hit’, but exchange the i with other vowel tiles, like a, o, u to make a new word)
The letter tiles (in photo above) are very popular with our children (including A, who’s very eager to learn and catching on quickly). They like to be able to manipulate the letters/special sounds and also visually see how to put words together. So far, All About Spelling has been working well and boys aren’t whining and complaining about learning spelling. It’s still a little early to see if they’ll retain what they’ve worked on, but we will stick with this curriculum and make a determination at the end of the school year. I honestly believe this curriculum will work!
All About Spelling comes in Levels 1-5, with Level 6 coming soon. The starter kit is available for $26.95, the Level 1 Teacher’s Manual and Student Material Packet is $29.95 (for one student – each student needs a Material Packet). Levels 2-4 Teacher’s Manual/Student Packet is $39.95. You can order these directly from All About Spelling’s website.
You can read more reviews of All About Spelling by my fellow TOS Crew members at the Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew blog.
Disclosure: This product was provided to our family for free as members of the 2009-2010 Old Schoolhouse Magazine Homeschool Crew. Reviews and opinions expressed in this blog are our own.
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