Reading Readiness, Grade Pk

My 4yr old son expressed a desire to learn to read by himself, so this has really helped him expand his reading vocabulary. The book combines writing the word with picture recognition, which helps reinforce memorization. The first section is Basic Reading Concepts. There are pages with exercises with describing picture scenes, and plenty of sequencing activities. There are also a few pages to help the child get comfortable drawing straight, slanted and curved lines with some tracing exercises. The next section is Sounds, Letters, and Words. This is a review of the alphabet, along with dot-to-dots. The letter recognition includes matching lowercase letters with uppercase letters. The best part of this section is the exercises explaining the difference between individual letters and words. Even though this book emphasizes beginning sounds, this section helped my son realize that words can also be recognized by the end consonants. The section, Beginning Consonant Sounds, was very useful. After every three letters, there is a review page, and a skill check at the end of the section. The next two sections, Sight Words and Color Words, are the main reason we used this workbook. There is a page to write the sight word, and after every fourth word, there is a review page. The sight word lists include: pets, farm animals, things to eat and drink, things that go, things I see outside, and toys. I appreciated that the words were ones that most children use everyday. The color words are red, yellow, blue, green, orange, purple, black, and white. These are followed by some lined pages for your child to write other words they are familiar with, sight word flashcards for all the words used in the workbook, and a booklet, "My Book of Colors," which your child can color. This was a great follow-up to Spectrum Preschool Beginning Reading (Little Critter Workbooks).