Best Homeschool Reading Curriculum – How to Find it!
Whether you have a child on the verge of reading, or a full blown reader who just benefits from extra read aloud practice, this post will have all the essentials you need to get started. First, I will say the heading, Best Homeschool Reading Curriculum is a pretty confident, maybe too confident, title.
We all know what’s best for one person may not necessarily be best, or even close to being right for another person. Same thing applies to choosing curriculum, and all of homeschooling.
I am simply sharing what I found worked best for my kiddos, and some helpful tips I’ve picked up along the way.
Choosing the “right” curriculum:
As mentioned above there is no absolute best homeschool reading curriculum out there. There are many, many opinions on many, many different types of reading curriculum.
I was overwhelmed to say the least when choosing the first real reading program/curriculum for my child. After a lot of online research (we didn’t know a single other homeschooling family when we decided to start homeschooling our kids, so online research was my best, most informative friend!) I came across Cathy Duffy Reviews and realized I had struck gold haha!
Cathy provided the most thorough, educated research on all areas of homeschool and beyond! Her primary goal (from her website) is: “To help families successfully educate their own children!”. For a full review click here.
Although our household is a big reading household, and my children took naturally to books, I did know we needed a formal reading program.
Through much research I decided on All About Reading and chose to start with the Pre-Reading Level. This was a wonderful fit for us.
All About Reading is a parent led, very interactive and fun program. It’s based on the Orton-Gillingham style of learning. 97% of the English language using phonetic rules and the other 3% as sight words.
My kids took to this system very well. I know it helped strengthen their skills with each level they completed. The program runs through Level 4, which is around 4th grade.
I will say my kids were sad when the All About Reading lessons came to end, they really enjoyed them!
Once you’re beyond a reading curriculum:
Around 4th grade the basics of reading are usually established. Which is why a lot of instructional “reading” curriculum ends at this level. Your focus on finding the best reading curriculum for homeschool may now shift.
The basics of language arts: grammar, vocabulary and spelling will all continue to need to be learned. However, there are more focused options available for each.
Vocabulary, grammar, spelling & reading comprehension:
For instance All About Reading does well to incorporate new vocabulary instruction. However around 3rd grade I added in a separate vocabulary lesson to expand upon.
After MORE research, I chose Wordly Wise vocabulary. It is an awesome, comprehensive vocabulary program that was very easy to incorporate in our daily schedule. My kids use this through high school and it’s remarkable the impact it made on their vocabulary and writing.
After finishing Level 4 of All About Reading, I also added in separate grammar & spelling lessons.
For grammar I went with the highly recommended Easy Grammar and it’s been a wonderful fit throughout the years. Easy, yes since each lesson is one daily page, but so, so thorough.
With spelling, I have used a couple of different curriculum options. We used Spelling U See for a couple of years and also All About Spelling. Both were good fits for my kids, for different reasons.
All About Spelling is part of the All About Reading family and has the same Orton Gillingham approach. Bite sized lessons that build upon each other, with a focus on hands on activities and emphasis on phonetic rules.
Spelling U See is another great option with a a focus on repetition and visual memory being a main component. The daily activities are themed according to what level your child is in, and have great, educational paragraphs to practice spelling.
Separate reading comprehension lessons are another great idea at this point. Helping your child to learn how to “dissect” what she/he has read. To be able to retell or interpret the reading, is a great skill to work on at this level.
There are so many options for this. By selecting classic stories and then creating your own comprehension questions.
Or, searching on Teacher Pay Teachers (a fabulous website with free or low cost worksheets/units created by teachers).
Or even a writing based approach to understanding literature.
Benefits of reading aloud:
Looking for the best homeschool reading curriculum is important however it can distract you from one of the most fantastic ways to share some reading time together – reading aloud!
The benefits of reading aloud to your children start as early as you start reading to them. Babies & toddlers learn to mimic our tone and cadence with reading, eventually leading into learning words.
Even as children become fluent readers there is still so much merit to reading aloud as part of your homeschool day.
It continues to add to our children’s vocabulary as well as encourage active listening. A skill which is becoming less and less practiced in the age of all things social media/app related distracting kids from a young age.
A wonderful benefit to reading aloud is the conversations that flow after finishing a chapter or story. Hearing their perspectives, answering questions, each sharing their thoughts is such a special time. Removing the pressure of answering comprehension questions & writing a book report, kids tend to open up more.
Your children reading aloud is also another great way to strengthen their reading skills, as obvious as that may seem. Choosing books together to read aloud, my kids and I each read a chapter of a book every day, can be so fun.
My picks tend to be along the more classic route. Titles like: Anne of Green Gables, The Wind in the Willows, Narnia series, Little Women, the Little House series etc. My children choose a chapter book they want to read aloud too.
My kids also have their own books they read silently for school (my choice). Also, for recreation (whatever their little heart’s desire!). So this is a nice balance with us both choosing a read aloud.
Don’t worry about a book being the perfect age level for all. The younger children will benefit from hearing the older kids read their books.
The main thing is just have fun with it all! Such beautiful memories can be created being cozy together reading to start your day or end your day, or as a mid-school day break!
Choosing seasonal books to read aloud:
Again, while finding what the best homeschool reading curriculum is for your family is a big focus with homeschool, adding some fun when it comes to reading is a perfect fit when seasonally homeschooling.
In a previous post I mentioned our love of schooling with the seasons. Choosing read alouds that fit with the seasons is such a fun way to change up the reading routine you may have established.
Even storybooks can be enjoyed by older children when there is a theme involved like Christmas. Your local library is a great resource when it comes to selecting seasonal books that you may not want to purchase to add to your home library.
Beautiful Feet books is a literature based curriculum that has preselected packs of books for specific times of year or for holidays, making it super easy if you want an open and go approach to adding in some seasonal books.
“Listen” to books:
Listening to books on CDs (wow, “on CDs,” does that date me or what?! Haha!) in the car, while building with magnetic tiles, or while your kids have some free art time is another fabulous way to incorporate reading lessons. All without the stress of choosing the best homeschool reading curriculum.
Again your local library is an excellent resource for audiobooks. Hoopla is a free service that allows immediate streaming from your library’s catalog of movies, music, audiobooks, ebooks, comics and TV shows. You also have the choice to download the file to your device to listen when you may not have constant internet access like in the car or on vacation.
Importance of modeling reading for fun:
A really important part in raising children who love to read is showing them your love of reading. Choosing a book to read instead of scrolling on your phone, or deciding on putting off a chore for 10-15 minutes is such a great way to model how reading can be fun.
It’s not like they are going to drop their toys or jump off the swings to grab a book, but as we all know our children learn from what we do.
I would say showing our own love of reading to our kids may just be as important as choosing the best homeschool reading curriculum.
The “BEST” for YOU:
Remember, we have to all choose what works best for us and our kids, and not be afraid to ditch what’s not working or try something new when things get stale.
Teaching our kids to read and to love reading is no different. Finding the BEST homeschool reading curriculum boils down to what works BEST for you!!
I hope these tips above help give you guidance and a boost of confidence in choosing the path that’s right for you and your kids!
Happy reading!!
