Hi! My youngest daughter will be in 1st next year. For K, we are doing MFW. She pretty much knows the letter sounds, but is struggling with blending--she would rather memorize stories than try to sound out words. I do not want to continue with MFW. Does anyone have a recommendation for a great 1st curriculum?
I really like CLE's learning to read program. It worked well for my oldest. My second taught herself to read, so I didn't use a program with her. This coming year we are going to use McGuffey Readers.
We used Sonlight for 1st grade and loved it. The only thing was instead of Explode the Code we used Horizons Phonics but not their readers, we used Sonlight's books.
Myk/1st grader is about where yours is. She CAN read but has no patience for it. She's rather memorize a favorite story or have me read to her. I'm not pushing too much- I figure she'll just explode when she's ready. I have her read little bits here and there as it comes up in life but that's it. We are doing a lot of mommy reading, math pages (she loves math) and just life learning. No curriculum for her yet. We tried MFW-K but it wasn't a fit for us.
LeapFrog has some great DVDs for phonics sounds and some reading rules. There's one that is called Word Caper (I think) that teaches silent E, SH-CH-TH, and vowel teams! My son mostly learned just by reading books and following along with his finger as we read or asking us what a word was. Memorizing stories can be helpful if she's also recognizing the words she is memorizing. That's where we started. I ended up using All About Reading to fill in any gaps, and we're loving it! Very fun and hands-on.
I honestly just read to my kid a lot, and went to the library and got all sorts of beginning reader books and used the ones she was most interested in. Worked great. Sometimes we'd go, and I'd pick out five books that I thought reflected her reading level and I'd say...You can pick one of these to take home, but you have to promise to read it. With little people...offering them a little input into their fate really seems to up motivation. Open choice...not so good. Pick from assorted items (one for each year of your age)...seems to be an awesome strategy.
Also...put all your sight words on 3x5 cards, and use them to play dodge ball. I'd put ten words up all over the living room... here, the, was, when, what, want, good, have, into (any 10 Dolch words works) Then I'd call out word and she'd have to run to it. If she got the right one, I cheered. If she got the wrong one, I'd try to hit her in the head with a nerf ball. She loved it.
We use Heart of Dakota with our kids and I enjoyed some of their selections for 1st grade for reading a lot. The Reading Lesson taught both my boys to read well and quickly. We did use Reading Eggs on the computer for fun and reinforcement. Reading Eggs has free phonics sheets that included D'Naelian handwriting. I also love A Reason for handwriting K and it could easily be used for 1st to shore up print skills. If you get the teacher's guide to go with it...each page has an animal coloring side and the teacher's guide has mini-lessons on the animal. I love Singapore Start up Science and Christian Liberty Press' History for Little Pilgrims. We like to use MCP Phonics also. When we used Reading Eggs, I didn't do MCP Phonics but both are great. Miquon Math is really good as well.
Gotta love dodge ball Works great for any memorization stuff...we did a LOT of basic math facts dodge ball, too
I did a combination of "unschooling" in 1st Grade. I did very child-led learning, except for Reading & Math. For Reading I used www.starfall.com. For Math, I got a D-K workbook and worked through it with her (my oldest). Used a very similar approach with my middle and younger, too. Gradually, each grade, I'd add in more "formal" work. But let learning be a natural part of life. Did lots of field trips, read lots of books, etc. Man I miss that age.