Bookshelf

Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read: K-2nd Grade Deluxe

My daughter could not wait to read! Every day she would ask me to teach her. I've purchased several teaching tools for phonics and reading. This one definitely provided the fastest and best results. My daughter read the first book after just ten minutes of working with this program!! My husband and I were amazed.

This set includes several elements: flashcards, workbooks, CDs, reward stickers, charts and individual reading books. All of these work together within a repetitive system to teach children phonetic combinations. In other words, the kids learn rhyming word families in a systematic order: fat, cat, sat, bat, hat, etc. These words are then put together into a simple book. My daughter was so excited to be able to read a whole book all by herself! As the child progresses, word families are combined until the child completes that level of reading. It's a very effective method of teaching literacy. Best of all: everything you need is right here in this box.

My only problem: this program is not terribly exciting. It caters to one or two learning styles (listening and repetition) and that's it. Some of the other programs we've used (like AlphaTales - A Book For Each Letter Of The Alphabet) have held my children's interest much better and much longer. My kids need more hands on stuff like drawing and singing and dancing. Hooked on Phonics is a lot of sit-down type "homework" between the fun stuff of reading. Repetition is great for learning, but not necessarily inviting for young kids.

Final Thoughts: I definitely recommend the program, but am happy I have other tools and books to supplement when my kids get bored. I got a great deal on this, so I'm sure that contributes to my review. If I had paid full price, I might be disappointed. If you're on a tight budget, you may want to keep looking. There are many other teaching tools available for much less.