What do you think about phonics for K? My son has used the starfall website a lot, and knows the letter names and sounds very well. I have decided to do "A Reason for Handwriting" to work on letter formation. (we did the preschool HWOT this year). We read together a lot too. Would you bother with phonics? What would you try? (BTW we didn't really like the Get Set for the Code books). Thx
I'm using the k-4 program from confessions of a homeschooler with my k'er. I also got the first set of bob books out and we've been slowly reading through them. My kids so far have learned reading best by simply doing. For a more tactile/kinistetic learner I've heard rave reviews for Happy Phonics - its much more hands on, lots of fun little games etc. The curric I'm using has hands on games and activities mixed with worksheets.
I probably would bother with phonics - if he knows his letter sounds then you should move on to blending them and reading cvc words and then on from there to more advanced phonics (long vowels etc). I used The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading with my DD. Progressive phonics is free. Starfall itself has some more phonics activities if you look further on in it. And then there are a huge variety of other resources too.
You could print up a few free phonics activity sheets to make sure he does know how to blend sounds together and not just the sound of each individual letter. If he knows them well, I wouldn't buy a phonics book. There is no need. Even then, you can teach him phonics without a book if you do a little research before hand.
We did Horizons Phonics and loved it! We worked on a page or so a day and it worked out really well. In k we started dd with book 3 because she was already familary with the material in book 1 & 2. The program does more than just phonics but also starts teaching about capitalization, quotes.... We also did not use the readers just the workbooks.
I would keep digging further into Starfall, because there are a lot of phonics activities there. I'd also find a copy of ETC 1 to flip through, because I love ETC, but I didn't really like the pre-ETC series. You're probably ready to move on to CVC words, for sure. What about BOB Books or other early readers at the library? Progressive Phonics is good, as someone already mentioned. I like R&S for reading, too.
