Modern Curriculum Press Phonics: Level A

I use  The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home (Third Edition)  as the basis of homeschooling for my children. We started teaching reading with  The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading . It is a great program, but my kids just didn't care for it like I wanted them to. My daughter did very well with that program learning all her letter sounds, but once she moved into the reading section, she stalled. She is very work book oriented, so I bought this workbook as a supplement for her phonics. Once it arrived and she started using it, I quickly realized it was all she really needed. It reminds me of  Explode the Code 1 , but I actually like MCP Phonics better. The worksheets are full color, though the paper is a bit on the thin side. I would recommend buying a new book for each student. The range on the level A is pretty broad. I'd start this book once they had letter recognition and letter sounds learned. Then you'll use this work book for beginning to put words together (well, it actually begins with recognizing beginning and ending letters of words) through contractions. It is a very good first grade phonics program. (Though I do start mine about halfway through Kindergarten and then work it through 1st grade.)I liked the book so much, I bought another for my Kindergarten son to go ahead and start. (Since he had just recently completed learning all his letter sounds.) I tore out all the pages and placed them in a 1" binder, so I could better keep up with their work.The book also comes with cards for letters and sight words along with an envelope for storage. You could very easily use these to teach your child his/her letters and letter sounds before beginning the workbook pages.I highly recommend this phonics program. It is a little more on the "traditional" side of schooling. It has "name" and "date" places on each page and is geared for a classroom setting (with letters to go home with kids to parents). However, I find it works very well in a homeschooling setting.

We've used the K and A (first grade) for homeschooling and have not been disappointed with either. Both volumes seem to go slower than other phonics workbooks we have tried but they are inexpensive enough that I don't mind skipping around and just using the pages I feel will be most beneficial. I ordered this book here after buying it at a homeschooling conference this spring and finding out I had purchased the old edition. This new edition has much more color and a better layout and was only two-thirds the price of the old edition I purchased! Because the books are a bit behind other books at the same grade level I have had success using the K level for a second semester preschooler then beginning this A level volume with a mid-year kindergardener. The spelling pages have proven particularly beneficial. These pages have pictures with incomplete words that the child needs to complete, it's helped my daughter learn lots of words and is something that is not included in other phonics workbooks. Overall I like MCP phonics (and their math as well) as a supplement to a complete phonics program or as an extra workbook for kids who like them or want busywork that isn't just coloring for car rides. When I was learning to read about 20 years ago my school used an older edition of these 'plaid' MCP phonics workbooks in conjunction with lessons the teacher gave. It's a great product by a reliable publisher that has stood the test of time.

I am a retired school teacher, who taught in the elementary grades for over 30 years. I never found any other Phonics book that was better than this one. It uses 5-6 standard formats that students get used to for a single page so they become independent workers once they know them (i.e. Circle all the words that start with the "s" sound, Find all the rhyming words, Spell the word or write the beginning consonant (i.e, Ss)for each picture, etc.). It also has a good sequence of phonetic concepts (covers beginning consonants, short vowels, long vowels, consonant blends, consonant digraphs, etc.), has a good number of practice idems per page, and includes an excellent review of the concepts coverered as you go (i.e. short vowel a for several pages, then s.v. i, and then a review of s.v. a and i, etc.). For either beginning teachers or experienced ones, using this book page by page with your first grade students will ensure that they get a good solid background of phonics for the year. Use the Level B for second grade, or higher achieving students.

This series is excellent for teaching all the elements of reading by phonics. There are colorful pictures, fun stories, and great brain and reading exercises. My children became enthusiastic about learning to read and love to write only after doing the first few chapters. My only discouragement was that the pages are made of newsprint (thin).

I’ve been using Modern Curriculum Press phonics books for over 40 years. You can’t ask for better practice. I’ve used in the classroom and with my grands.

The book had so many pages marked up, it may not be usable. This is quite disappointing. The purpose of the book is for my daughter to use it in school. How can she when over 60 pages of a 240 page book has been marked up and rendered useless? Unacceptable.

I have home-schooled for 12 years and have used almost every phonics program out there. This is by far my favorite beginning phonics book. I teamed it up with MCP Spelling and it was incredible. It gave my children the confidence to excel. It has beautiful colored pages. There are small pullout reading books that they enjoyed reading. This made teaching my children to read simple and fun. They called this book the plaid pig book and loved to use it. We teamed it with the MCP spelling book with the frogs and they worked great together. We are using MCP from now on!

Excellent for new readers!

for english teachers, primary schoolwell protected in the packaging..the children i use it with seem to love it too:-)

Has the right balance of variety and repetition for the kids to learn their phonics. They like the rhymes and pictures, too.

A vero good book

I ordered this for homeschooling my oldest daughter. Considering the publisher is listed as "Pearson Canada", I was expecting the Canadian version of the book. However, upon opening it up this September to start working in it with my daughter, we saw the English/Spanish and realized we were shipped the American version of this book. This isn't too much of a problem at the beginning level of phonics but it has guaranteed for me that I all not be ordering the next levels from Amazon.