*This post contains affiliate links. I receive a small portion when you purchase from my link. Despite being an affiliate of AALP, I have not been paid for my opinion or for writing this blog post.
When we started homeschooling, I was unsure of my ability to teach my child how to read. I was "trained/educated" to help students interpret and analyze what they read, but not how to read. So I searched the internet, found homeschool blogs, and trolled Facebook groups. All About Reading kept coming up. So I dove in and made our first homeschooling purchase, and we haven't turned back.
It has remained a favorite for five reasons, and I have used it with our oldest two girls (both have completed from Pre-Level to Level 4). I will use it now with our younger kiddos when it is time.
One: Mastery Learning Approach
I have fallen in love with the mastery approach to learning. The beauty of homeschooling is meeting each child where they are, nurturing their strengths, and helping them battle their weaknesses. When or if we get stuck on a concept, we can continue to use the fluency sheets, stories, and even the word cards over and over to build fluidity. Mastery learning allows a student to move as fast or slow as they need to to understand the concepts. Plenty of tools and lessons allow a student to do what they need to learn the material at their pace.
Two: Scripted Lessons
I enjoy the guidance of All About Reading and Spelling's scripted lessons. It helped eliminate the guesswork of teaching a subject that I was not comfortable with. I can open the teacher's book daily and go along with the lesson. Along with the scripted lesson, it is repetitive enough that my kiddos and I know what to expect from each lesson. We learn a new concept, work with the tiles, and then apply the lesson.
Three: Student Isn't Just Memorizing
While I worked in the school system and had the opportunity to see how Reading was being taught, I, unfortunately, saw many things I disagreed with. A lot of what I saw being taught was sight word recognition versus the actual phonics of letters and putting words together. For the first year, I taught our oldest how to read; I felt I also needed to do this. So our poor Mouse was my guinea pig and was trying to learn sight words and the AAR lessons. I abandoned this about halfway through, as it was too much to keep up with. Once we stopped, Mouse's Reading took off, which may have correlated to stopping sight words or not, but it was less of a headache to teach.
Four: The Why and the Rules Behind the Lessons
Correlating with not memorizing sight words, I enjoy that AAR and AAS help teach the why and rules behind the English language. Let's face it the English language is complex, but being able to put some why behind it all makes it so much easier as a mother/teacher to explain why something is the way it is. The order things are taught is logical and builds off of each other, and it helps to refer back to when kiddos sometimes forget why something is the way it is.
Five: The Support
Between online Facebook groups and the actual customer support from All About Learning Press, I have felt confident teaching Reading and Spelling. I have had numerous questions answered in Facebook groups and found simple tricks to help our girls out in lessons where they have struggled. I like the guarantee that AALP uses to back their product, and that they put a special touch on each product they send out (be sure to request box art when you order directly from the company). AALP also offers a lot of freebies and activity suggestions to use with their products, making them much more amazing to use.
We also use All About Spelling, and I chose it because of its familiarity and similarities to All About Reading. We know what to expect, and it is easy to use and fit into our school day. Mouse, our oldest, is currently using level 7 AAS, and Thumper, our next oldest, is currently in level 3. It is easy to help them when they make mistakes by reminding them of the rules or the way behind the mistakes they are making. The cool thing to see is when they can make the corrections themselves.
See how we have made All About Reading and All About Spelling work for us in the previous BLOG POST.
As always, keep following our journey on our Facebook Page or Instagram. If you want more in-depth conversations, check out our Facebook Parent Group.
