I started All About Reading Level 1 with my son a few months ago. We flew through level 1 and we are now a decent number of lessons into level 3 (I had to edit that sentence multiple times as I started this blog post a full level ago….). I wanted to share my review and some thoughts on the program. We are definitely unconventional All About Reading (AAR) users so I thought our experience might be helpful to some.

Do you have a beginner reader? Have you heard of Bob books but wondering if there is something just a bit more engaging? I am here to tell you (with a resounding yes) that there is! This blog post shares some of our favorite decodable books for beginner readers!

When people find out my son (who is around 3 and a quarter) is reading I naturally get a lot of questions about how I taught him to read so young. But I also think there's a more important first question. Why teach a 3-year-old to read? I do not think 3-year-olds need to be reading and this is why I do not talk about my son’s reading very frequently. This blog post covers the why and how of teaching my son to read at 3.

The first step to reading for all children is developing pre-reading skills. This blog post covers all activities we did before he showed any interest in actual reading and these are activities I would consider developmentally appropriate for many children starting around 2 or 2.5. A child does not need to have any interest in the alphabet to build some of the foundational skills that will be useful when they start to show interest in reading. When I am asked how to introduce the alphabet to a young toddler I generally steer people to instead start here.

We recently started doing a letter of the week in our home with my nearly 3-year-old. I have gotten so many requests for what we do and how we structure it so I wanted to share some activities along with how we are doing letter activities in general.