Homeschooling Trevy: All About Reading Short A

Once upon a time I was more of a blogger mom than I am now. During that season of life I had the privilege of partnering with This Old Schoolhouse and reviewing curriculum for their team. 

Now you the know story of  was I came to love All About Learning Press.

I was given the Pre-Reading level to use with Trevy nearly four years ago. And use it with him, I did. I loved it, in fact. But between his developmental delays and our limited time due to school and therapies, it was placed on the back burner once my required review time was completed.

We have continued to work through it during summer breaks...and Trevor has always loved his "Ziggy Time", as he likes to call it.

But now that he's home full time, he's really REALLY loving and connecting with the program.

The pre-reading level is broken into three focus areas. Capital letters, lower case letters, and letter sounds.

Trevor has what is considered acquired dyslexia due to his left hemispherectomy. I am not convinced that he'll ever fully grasp phonics. To give him a rich literacy program, I'm using a whole word (meaning sight or memorized reading) approach alongside this program. All About Reading is based on the Orton Gillingham Method which has had success in the dyslexia community. My philosophy is, he loves it and this is the best phonetic approach choice for his unique learning make-up, so we'll keep plowing on and see what happens!

I need a word stronger than excited to describe how happy Trevy was to "level up" (as he calls it) to sounds today!

One of the best things about All About Reading is how simple it is to use. It follows the same format each day, though it changes from each focus section to the next. Each lesson includes singing, poetry, a game, a craft, and now that we're in sounds he has riddles to solve (speech therapy!) and a sound based snack to make (occupational therapy and life skills!).



I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Tuneville which is an amazing YouTube channel I stumbled on recently. It's dedicated focus is creating educational videos for children who learn best through music! I'm using their letter sounds video at the start of our lessons now. I adore everything about the video, but especially how it incorporates sign language (more OT!) into the lessons!


 

Today our sound was short a and our snack was "fire ants on apple slices". We modified the ants on a log suggestion because I'm allergic to running to the market! ;)

Trevy was so proud of his snack creation that he insisted we serve some to his big brother, who agreed they were deeeee-lish!