Comments on: A Comparison of Beginning Phonics Readers

By: Lori Bourne

Lori Bourne — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 14:03:19 +0000

Thanks for the recommendation – it’s great to hear from someone who has used the books in real life!

By: Heike

Heike — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 06:29:59 +0000

I second the recommendation for Flyleaf Publishing’s Books to Remember series. I love that these books tell real stories, with progressively longer sentences and multi-syllable words, yet provide dozens of books focused on just the short vowel sounds, and slowly introduce one additional phoneme per book. The illustrations are fantastic, and the stories the nicest of any of the readers I tried with my 4-year-old daughter. These books were recommended to me by the Montessori curriculum coordinator at LePort Schools in Orange County, where they are using these book in the Montessori primary classroom.

By: Lori Bourne

Lori Bourne — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:45:21 +0000

Great, I hope you find some! Miss Rhonda's Readers (I discovered them after I wrote this post) have probably been my daughter's favorites so far.

By: Kathy

Kathy — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:07:40 +0000

Thanks for the reviews!
We are using Phonics Pathways for teaching but I’ve had a hard time finding readers for my daughter. She’s not that fond of the BOB books, the stories just aren’t that interesting to her. I’ll have to look into some of the others mentioned here.

By: Candace

Candace — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:05:48 +0000

Lori,

I have looked at many different phonics systems – some of the more expensive, and some not so expensive. In a new endever to find a suitable reading system for my youngest of seven children, tonight I stumbled across a free one. Progressive phonics, http://www.progressivephonics.com, has simplistic readers that start with the alphabet and go up. Each of the readers has activity pages for coloring, cuting, pasteing and matching. I think this is the best of all of them I have seen yet. The files are all downloaded in PDF format by book and then by accompanying activity sheets.

Take a look … I think that

By: Lori Bourne

Lori Bourne — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:17:37 +0000

Hi, Adam! Your wife's books look amazing. Here is the link in case people want to check them out: Miss Rhonda's Readers. Thanks for stopping by!

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:43:30 +0000

My wife illustrated and designed two sets of early readers with two friends of hers – one that is a Montessori teacher. I know I am terribly biased, but I think that the books are pretty incredible, and I’m not the only one that thinks that.

By: Jennie

Jennie — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 10:41:35 +0000

My hands-down favorites are the “I See Sam” books. Originally created (based on a huge amount of research) by the SouthWest Regional Lab, they are now published by two companies:
http://www.3Rsplus.com and http://www.iseesam.com.

There are 8 levels, from absolute beginner to about late-2nd grade. The alphabetic code is taught, piece-by-piece, from simple code to advanced code (such as “ch” being code for /sh/ in Michele and Chicago). Kids love the stories. The pictures don’t provide “clues” for word identification. Children are taught to “say the sounds, read the word”. These books are inexpensive….but priceless.

By: Terry

Terry — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:48:16 +0000

These are wonderful resources – thanks Lori and others for posting them!

I found this site: http://www.progressivephonics.com/ and it looks really good – but I haven’t started using it, and was wondering if anyone was familiar with it?

By: Lori Bourne

Lori Bourne — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:14:46 +0000

Such great resources! Thank you guys! Jenny, the ones from Flyleaf Publishing look amazing. I’m going to check those out.

I like what you said on Facebook, Andrea, about how having more than one set on hand is helpful. There are times when a child finishes set 1 of one reader, but they’re not quite ready for set 2 and it’s great to pull out another set 1 from another series for more practice.