Get You Littles Back Into Reading with Enthusiasm {Review}
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Summer has a way of killing your good intentions, it was time to get back to work. We found a way to creep up our summer reading with the R.E.A.D Review Pack from The Crafty Classroom and we all are loving it.
Jumping Back into the School Year
All three of my little ones were reading at the end of the last school year, but with the business of the summer baseball schedule, all of my plans for educating the kids sizzled out like garden lettuce. Summer is for taking a break so I was not all that worried. I did however, want to start getting back in the swing of things before school was officially upon us. When I was offered the chance to review the R.E.A.D. Review Pack, I knew that this was exactly the tool we needed to get back into the swing of school without feeling like we were jumping ALL in just yet. Let’s face it NONE of us are ready for that yet.
Keep It Fun
These books are irresistibly cute. Each story has friendly illustrations and are appealing for both girls and boys. I introduced the books to the kids on a day that we were planing on playing outside with chalk and bubbles. We made letters with chalk and wrote our names. Making letter play is a part of what we try to do to keep school fun for the little ones. Writing in the sand outside of a pan of salt is a great way to practice letter skills and still play. Not to mention I hate to waste paper. I avoid using paper as much as possible because with 10 kids you can imagine what a mess of trees we could take out every year.
Keep It Simple
You could make these your beginning reader curriculum if you wanted to add the teaching notebook but we are seeing it simple. Reading each new book as we see fit. I print a few off each week and give them to the kids. You can use the schedule provided and your weeks would look like this.
Getting Ready…
Set up is easy. The Crafty Classroom also hates wasting paper so they created their books to be waste free. Each book Prints on three pages of paper. The pages stack together and you simply cut in the dotted lines. Three cuts and two staples later, you and your kiddo are snuggled on the couch ready to read.
Get Set…
We use the book three ways because we have three kinds of readers in our house. With my older daughter, I just print and turn the books over to her. These are simple review, enough to keep it light and be read anywhere unassisted.
For my seven year-old, beginning reader, we look over the new words in the story and practice them with each new story. She can then read all of the new words and review the new word family that this book focuses on. She then is excited to read them over and over on her own. Even if she forgets a few of the words, the majority of the words are sight words that she is learning to recognize. That means she will be ready for those tricky words when we go back to her reading lessons.
With my youngest, who is five, we share the words in the word box and sound them out together, then we read the whole story to him a few times pointing out the words from the Word Family and Sight Word box.
GO…
We pack a few of these books for the car and take them wherever we go. They are inexpensive enough that we can afford for them to get worn out or forgotten because we can just print a new one.
We printed a batch of new books for our recent trip to Texas. Next time I will throw a few markers in the box as well and encourage the kids to trace the words and to color the pictures. This would really help them with sight word recognition as well as make their engaged time a little longer for the LONG car ride.
