Heart of Dakota offers four options for teaching reading as part of their kindergarten program, Little Hearts for His Glory, and the last three of these options can also be used with their first-grade program, Beyond Little Hearts for His Glory. Even if you are not using Heart of Dakota’s grade-level programs, you can purchase just the components for a phonics program.
All the options below are scheduled into the Heart of Dakota programs (albeit without specific pages for each day), although parents can easily substitute a different phonics program. The options differ in style, coverage, and cost, and all are good choices for different situations.
The four options are:
- Learn to Read Activity Book by Hannah Braun
The most inexpensive option, this 222-page consumable book teaches phonics but includes many sight words. In 101 lessons, it covers short-vowels, consonants, and blending using word families (words that share a common element like am or pl). Instructions are included on the activity pages. Parents need to work with children to teach new concepts, help children practice the concepts (including tracing the forms of letters), and help them complete activities such as circling letters or pictures, coloring. It doesn’t teach long vowels or handwriting beyond tracing. Another resource, such as The Reading Lesson, should be used for continuing phonics instruction.
- Learn to Read/Real Phonics Book 1 and Book 2 by Kallie Woods
These two books can be used after children learn to recognize the letters. They take a more comprehensive approach by adding some spelling and handwriting instruction, and they have lots of repetition and review that is usually required for young learners. They include coverage of long vowels, but you will need to continue with additional phonics instruction to cover all important phonetic concepts. See my review for more details.
- The Reading Lesson by Michael Levin and Charan Langton
This 448-page book teaches phonics and sight words using its own system for marking words to signal their sounds. It includes plenty of reading material within the lessons. Supplementary resources are available from the publisher, Mountcastle Company. See my review for more details.
- Reading Made Easy by Valerie Bendt
One book with over 500 pages presents a comprehensive reading program for beginning readers, and that will take them up through the first-grade level. Reading material is contained within the lesson. Supplemental workbooks are available but are not required. Lessons are scripted, making it easy for the inexperienced teacher to know exactly what to say and do. See my review for more details.
Heart of Dakota also offers Miss Rhonda’s Readers and correlates them with Learn to Read/Real Phonics and The Reading Lesson. They supply instructions and schedules for beginning with Learn to Read/Real Phonics and shifting to the middle of The Reading Lesson to continue with the rest of phonics. The Reading Lesson can be used on its own to cover both beginning and continuing phonics, but Learn to Read/Real Phonics is a more colorful and enjoyable approach for beginning phonics.
Children struggling with dyslexia might benefit from Learn to Read for Kids with Dyslexia, Volume 1 and Volume 2, also available from Heart of Dakota. These workbooks are full of activities and games that strengthen auditory processing skills, help overcome dysgraphia, and increase phonemic awareness. Activities include tracing, puzzles, mazes, matching, word association, coloring, and more. These books should be used alongside a phonics program.
Summary
Heart of Dakota recognizes that parents want choices for phonics programs, and they’ve selected a range of options that have something for just about everyone.