Since I’m still working with my now 7 year old son on learning to read I was very excited to try a new approach with him that wasn’t all about phonics. Logic of English sent me Foundations A to try with my son – I chose this level based on the fact he is still having trouble putting letter sounds together to form words and recall the words he does know because he doesn’t want to sound them out. I’m not in a hurry for him to learn as I know he’ll eventually learn how to read but Logic of English gives him another way to learn versus focusing solely on letter sounds and makes it more appealing to his hands-on boy nature.
Level A includes 40 lessons plus 8 assessments and reviews, six student readers, 22 phonemic awareness games, 20 phonogram games, 10 reading comprehension games and 2 high frequency word games. I found that I could easily do one lesson a day with my son in about 20 to 30 minutes, depending on what was covered and if we lost any ground over the weekend. The first 20 lessons focus solely on phonemic awareness and handwriting and then lessons 21 through 39 add in those two plus reading, lesson 40 is a celebration day (we haven’t reached lesson 40 yet) and then there is a review.
To use the Foundations A you’ll want to get at the minimum the teacher’s manual and the student workbook. Although if you want to make things easy and follow the teacher’s manual you’ll also want to purchase the basic phonogram flashcards, rhythm of handwriting tactile cards (these can be purchased in either manuscript or cursive), phonogram game cards and the Logic of English whiteboard. You’ll also need white board markers and an eraser, crayons, glue and scissors. There are also optional components such as the app and the rhythm of handwriting quick reference (manuscript or cursive). My son is already writing in manuscript so I chose not to teach him cursive at this time and while I did do the handwriting part of the lesson it was frustrating for him because of learning a different way of writing like the swing stroke, roll or the drop-swoop stoke. Learning this new way to write did prove frustrating for him so as we continue to work through the book I’ll be focusing on just the phonemic awareness and reading parts of the lessons.
The student workbook is colorful and my son really enjoyed using it as part of his daily lessons. The pages contain parts for the phonemic awareness as well as handwriting practice – and my son did both – even practicing the writing with the tactile card in front of him – as long as I didn’t press him or force him he didn’t mind practicing his new handwriting. He does like to use the white board and when I ask him to show me the mid line, base line or top line and he now has memorized which line is which although he still struggles with keeping his lower case letters between the mid and base lines.
The whiteboard, the other side has smaller lines, the game cards, the tactile cards and the basic phonogram flash cards.
Level A is geared towards Kindergarten aged children unless you want them on an advanced schedule which begins in pre-K, and even though my son is doing 2nd grade work in all other areas, reading is still a struggle, as I mentioned above which is what I really focused on more than the handwriting although we also did work on the strokes as well for the purpose of the review so I could get a good feel for the overall program. My son also liked to identify which sounds are voiced and unvoiced and whether a sound is a nasal sound or not – maybe because it involved more movement, but he liked it. I have to say that he seems to have made more progress using this program than we’ve made in awhile.
Viewing the Foundations Overview page will help you, like it did me, in choosing which level to begin with for your child. Viewing the Foundations A page will also allow you to view samples of the books so you can see before you buy what a lesson looks like as well as what the workbooks and readers are like. The teacher’s manual is $38.00 and you can chose a PDF format or a physical book, the student workbook sells for $18.00 the other items, which are a one time purchase for all levels of Foundations begin at $10.00 or you can purchase the whole set for Level A and B here and save money. You can read what other homeschool parents had to say about this and other Logic of English products by visiting the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog.
(c) 2013, Sarah Bailey/Growing for Christ, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized Duplication is a Violation of Applicable Laws
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