Reading Made Easy With Learning Horizons Key Words To Reading
Written: Jun 06 '03 (Updated Nov 20 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fun activities, tons of stickers to use throughout the book.
Cons: Some sections might be too advanced for the kindergarten kids.
The Bottom Line: Key Words To Reading is a great book to get for kids in kindergarten and first grade; teaches the basics of phonetics, has fun activities and even includes stickers!
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| Freak369's Full Review: Key Words to Reading: Basic Skills for Learning Bo... |
Reading is something that you really take for granted after you’ve learned the basics. You can look at a road sign and know what it say, pick up a newspaper and read the headlines or simply pick up a book and make your way through the pages. Learning how to read requires knowing the alphabet, phonetics and a lot of patience. I was extremely lucky that my oldest son learned to read early, he helped his brothers when they had difficulty with certain words and always had little hints and tricks to pass on to them. Every child learns how to read at a different age but there’s no reason why you can’t start them on the road as early as kindergarten. I am an advocate for early learning but I never pushed my children to sit for hours at a time with stacks of worksheets. That would have done nothing but make them view learning as a chore or something that they “have” to do rather than something that they want to do. My neighbors daughter spends most afternoons at my house so I try to have a lot of early learning books for her so she doesn’t feel left out when the boys are doing their school work. I never thought that a three year old would feel “left out” when it comes to school work but she has made it pretty clear that if they have their noses in books, then that’s what she wants to do as well.
Key Words To Reading
The Learning Horizon series of workbooks focus on making learning fun. If something is entertaining as well as educational, chances are a child will be able to retain more of what they are learning. This book combines phonics, learning basics words, opposites and sticker activities to provide the kindergarten and first grade student the basics of reading. I think almost all kids love stickers and there are plenty of them in this book. Kids are encouraged to match stickers up with words, put them in the correct order when following a story and match them up with numbers. The nicest thing about the stickers is that they are easy to remove from the pages and they are all in separate sections and listed with the appropriate page number. This makes it easier for you and your child to make sure the correct stickers are being used for the activity.
Some of the things that your child will do when working though this book include tracing words, learning about signs [stop, walk, go etc], prepositions [on, over, under etc] and pronouns [he, she, they etc] and various animals. Colors are also explored both in writing them as well as matching up the stickers to the correct colors on the page. Some of the fun activities like the crossword puzzles and connect the dots make for a nice break between the portions of the book where a child is doing a lot of writing. The pages are thick enough that markers can be used but I suggest that you test them out on the last few pages of the book to see if they will bleed through to the other side. Crayons seem to be the favorite with my neighbors daughter but feel free to let your child explore and use what they wish.
There is a small mini book that can be pulled out, folded and read by you and your child. The Three Wishes about a fisherman who catches a magic fish that grants him three wishes if he will let him go. He goes home to his wife and tells her of the three wishes and both of them end up wasting the wishes when they start fighting over what to wish for. This is located in the center of the book and if you choose to remove it you won’t have to worry about other pages falling out. These pages are individually numbered [separate from the workbook] to eliminate confusion. It’s a very cute story and something that can be read over and over again.
The book isn’t broken up into sections so you might want to page through it and see if there are any activities or lessons that your child might already be familiar with. Knowing what level they are at will give you an advantage when they come across an area that they are having trouble with. If they come across a section that they are having trouble with, you can skip ahead to the parts they already know so they won’t get discouraged and want to give up. Giving them a little ego boost will help them get over the more difficult parts. Remember to let your child set his or her own pace and ask them how many pages they want to try to get done in a session. Letting them set the pace will give them a little feeling of control and responsibility. And yes, even at an early age kids need to feel like they have a little control over something.
The last few pages of the book have practice test and crossword puzzles, these are by far the most challenging parts of the book and when your child finishes them, he or she will have learned a lot of the basics of reading and be ready to tackle other workbooks in the series. On the back cover you’ll find a checklist so you can keep track of your child progress through the book, what they have learned and what they still need to work on a little more.
Things To Know
This book features color images and color stickers so making photo copies of the pages will require a lot of test runs unless you are using a professional machine that has sharp imaging. Since this book only costs $2.50, it might just be cheaper to purchase another book if your child needs to work on a few areas over and over. Other great books in the series include Beginning To Read, Letters & Sounds and My First Words. Combining these books with this one will let your child explore different areas of reading and phonics at the same time and increase their learning and retention rate.
The Bottom Line
This is a great workbook for kids that are just start the basics of phonetics and have mastered their alphabet. Even of there are a few sections that they find a bit challenging, they will have a lot of fun with the stickers, puzzles and activities. My neighbors daughter is about half way through the book and love it. The illustrations are colorful and detailed, plenty of room for children to copy the words, reward stickers [only five] and back page checklist of accomplishments make this well worth the suggested retail price of $2.50. The only thing that this doesn’t have is a certificate to fill out when they complete the book. You can make one for them or copy one from another book – kids just love to get a small award for a job well done!
Stats
Name Key Words To Reading
Published By: Learning Horizons
Pages: 32 plus sticker sheets
ISBN: 1-56923-964-5
UPC 0020006332
Price: $ 2.50
As always, thanks for the visit…
^V^ Freak ^V^
© 2003 Freak369
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Recommended:
Yes
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