Week-By-Week Phonics Packets: Grades K-3

Perfect progression through the reading sounds. Good for supplemental learning for an English speaker but isn’t learning to read in school (in French school). Helps to learn the English sounds to clarify reading learning.

My son is enjoying learning new rhyming words everyday.

Good

From an Australian perspective this is mediocre. Not bad, exactly. But full of American things (and other stuff) that will probably confuse young Australian kids. Many of the "bad" examples (for Australian kids) are related to cold & snowy weather. Mittens, snow hats, snow sleds, scarves.... The "school" has an American flag in front, so my kids had no idea what it was. One of the pictures is of a (I think?) a school crossing guard holding a stop sign ("stop" rhymes with "mop") ... But I've never seen a crossing guard looking like that in Australia so my kids had no idea what it was. Lots of pictures are pretty vague (for a kid). A pack of gum looks like chocolate unless you already know it is supposed to rhyme with "drum". (Does anyone even chew gum anymore?) Kids need to know that one mouse is "mouse" but multiple are "mice" and thus rhyme with "dice", which is the multiple of "die". The "mop" looks very much like a "broom". As a very early exercise kids are supposed to unscramble "onon" based on the hint that it rhymes with moon and is spelled the same forward and back. There's also a picture of a clock, so I guess it assumes they can tell time? (Also "wig" is used constantly as a rhyme for "pig". What kid knows what a wig is??) Overall I don't feel this is really a great book for my kids, aged 4.5. But isn't that about when you want kids to start on phonics? And if they don't know phonics how do they understand the concept of "spelling" to know how moon is spelled? Then you have that this is clearly an American book for American kids. You can work through it with very hands on parental involvement but there is way too much "oh, sorry kiddo that's a sled, that's why you couldn't figure out how to do this exercise".

This is age appropriate for my rising 1st grader and easy for me to use with him (I am not a teacher). I wanted something easy and quick for us to pick up and do a page or two at a time. I appreciate how it gets progressively more difficult. It’s been easy to use and has a lot of educational topics.