Homeschooling in California

I have really been trying to wait until we completely finished the Alpha-Phonics reading program before writing my review of it, but I just don’t want to wait anymore.  Even if we stopped the program right now, I’d be thrilled with it.  I may not be too sure of my choices when it comes to a lot of areas of homeschooling, but I’m very proud of the decision to buy the Alpha-Phonics book.

 When we started using the Alpha-Phonics reading program, my daughter knew all her letters, but still got a few letter sounds confused.  She hated practicing learning her letter sounds though, so I gave up working on that with her.  Glad I did too.  I’ve since learned that she has to have a sense of purpose in what she learns or she won’t get it.  Memorising a bunch of letter sounds felt pointless to her, but learning to read was worthwhile.

I spent a lot of time researching different programs before deciding on Alpha-Phonics.  The reasons I picked it over other books, or more elaborate programs was that it fit my budget (about $25 compared to about $160 or so for Hooked on Phonics), and that it was so simple.  As I mentioned in another post once, I tried reading the “Bob” books with my daughter to see if she was ready or interested in learning to read.  She tricked me for 3 books into thinking she could read because she knew her letters well enough to get an idea of how each word started, then faked the rest from the pictures.  Alpha-Phonics doesn’t have any pictures, so I know when she reads a word, she is really reading it.

It isn’t a super quick program.  We started last summer, and read about a lesson a day or so, taking off some days to do other reading, and we’ll be finishing at the end of this month.  Early on in the book there are some lessons that are several pages long.  We usually cut these into smaller chunks because they were too boring for Hannah all in one big chunk, but other than that, she was reading from the first lesson.

I think you can probably find copies of Alpha-Phonics for sale at several online bookshops, but if you go to the official site: http://www.alpha-phonics.com/ you can download the first 5 lessons for free to give them a try.  That’s what helped me decide to use this program.  I didn’t have to do any preparation besides getting the book out and turning to the next lesson.  Hannah just read it, usually without any instruction, but sometimes I have to explain a new phonics rule to her.  That’s it.

Now everywhere we go, she’s reading signs, and reading on her own at home, only coming to me if she runs into words she has trouble with.  I can tell she’s going to love reading.  It’s so wonderful to see.

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