As a very new homeschooling mom, choosing curriculum can be difficult and overwhelming. It’s especially daunting when ordering online without the opportunity to see everything and flip through the books. I rely on reviews from seasoned homeschool moms to help me navigate the curriculum waters and figure out what will work best for our family. One of the most highly recommended companies I’ve found is All About Learning Press. After reading tons of positive reviews, I settled on the All About Reading Pre-reading curriculum for Bryson.
To give you an idea of where we are, Bryson is 4.5 years old. He knows the alphabet and each letter sound. He can sound out words and figure out the letters so simply going over letter sounds became redundant and boring to him. I knew he was ready to move onto something a little more challenging, but nothing that would discourage him. After using All About Reading Pre-reading for over 2 months, it is clear that it is the right curriculum for him.
All About Reading Pre-reading Deluxe Package
What’s Included:
- Teacher’s Manual (208 pages)
- Student Packet
- My Book of Letters and Sounds Activity Book (192 pages)
- Picture Cards
- Letter Sound Cards
- Capital Letter Alphabet Chart
- Lowercase Letter Alphabet Chart
- Progress Chart
- The Zigzag Zebra: a rhyming alphabet hardcover book
- Lizard Lou: a collection of rhymes old and new hardcover book
- Divider Cards (to keep your Picture Cards and Letter Sound Cards organized)
- “Letter Sounds A to Z” CD-ROM
- Ziggy the Zebra puppet
- Activity Box to hold your student’s learning cards
- Adorable Animal Stickers for the progress chart
- All About Reading tote bag to keep your components organized
All About Reading Pre-reading
Why It Works for Us:
We have used the Letter of the Week curriculum for quite a while, so we easily fell in step with the Letter of the Day theme for All About Reading Pre-reading. Most weeks, we work on our All About Reading lessons 2 to 3 days so we are covering the letters at a slow pace. This works well for Bryson, because I want him to love learning and I do not want him to get burned out quickly. I was stumped about the next steps for Bryson since he knew his letter sounds and the All About Reading Pre-reading curriculum has helped me in that aspect.
Ziggy the Zebra is a huge hit, of course! Both Bryson and Bella love to see him come out and Bella often asks to sit for our lessons or for her own “schoolwork.”
The daily letter craft is something Bryson enjoys. It breaks up our learning time and offers him some time to create and craft while still learning. There is also an entire page of hand-on letter activity suggestions which I find myself using a lot. It is a wealth of information and ideas!
The included picture cards to go along with rhyming games are my favorite. Rhyming games had never even crossed my mind and they are challenging for Bryson, so I know it is something we need to cover. He likes playing the games with Ziggy and it’s so awesome to watch his face light up with something just “clicks” and he figures it out!
All About Reading Pre-reading covers the Five Big Skills– letter knowledge, phonological awareness, print awareness, listening comprehension, and motivation to read. I had no idea where to begin to teach those things to Bryson at age 4 and All About Reading was a home-run for us. It has filled in the gaps and is now the basis of most of our homeschool currently.
What I love most about the All About Reading Pre-reading Deluxe package is that it arrives ready to go. You don’t have to gather a ton of supplies or put hours of preparation into the lessons. You can absolutely open to box and begin right away. For a new homeschooling mom like myself who sometimes lacks confidence, this is exactly what is needed.
If you have specific questions about this curriculum, please feel free to reach out to me and ask.
We received the All About Reading Pre-reading Deluxe package for review. This post contains my affiliate link, so if you click through and make a purchase, I will earn a small commision. Thank you for supporting my site! All thoughts and opinions remain my own, as always, and we absolutely do love All About Reading and plan to continue with it.
Sounds like a great program for early readers.
This sounds like a great program, I wish I felt confidant enough in my abilities to do home schooling with my children. Without a doubt I want to work on reading with them though so I will check this out. We’ve starting by simply reading every night, Mason already recognizes some words but I know he’s not actually reading them if that makes any sense lol.
I wonder if this is the curriculum that our preschool uses. They also focus on one letter a week and I think it’s really helped with my daughter’s prereading, understanding the beginning sounds letters make, and even picking up some sight words!
We work on our letters and number recognition at home. I think it is very important to start early!
This looks like such a great program. I need to look into this for my 5 year old. We could work on it over the summer.
Sounds like a great reading program. I love that they included the Ziggy the Zebra puppet. Fun things like that really motivate kids to enjoy learning.
That package looks great for homeschooling. The Zebra puppet is adorable, of course.
We are about to delve into All About Spelling with my 2nd child, and I have been considering getting this AAR program for my 3rd. I love how hands on it is, which would be perfect for my busy little boy. Thanks for the awesome review! It really helped being able to see more pictures of it in use than the product website provides. 🙂
Thanks so much for your review!! I also did Letter of the Week last year with my son (3-4 yo at the time) and decided on AAR for this year (he’s 4 now)….so it looks like I’m at the same starting point and age as your son! He also already knows all the letters and letter sounds and I was worried about boredom, so this helped a lot. I still ordered Level 1 just in case I need to ‘level up’ but I plan to do pre-reading first and follow his lead.
Oh this looks really good! We will need to start something like this in the near future with Carter! I love how you do not need alot of supplies and can basically open and start! Looks like a GREAT program!
I am considering buying this for my 3.5 year old. We are JUST starting “school” with him. He doesn’t know his letters or sounds at all yet. With my daughter I made up my own curriculum type stuff, but now that I have a full load with her I am hoping to find something more open and go for him. My thoughts were to go slow with it. Especially since we have 2 more years before he’d be starting kindergarten. Do you think this would work well for that level?
I absolutely think this would work for just starting out, because you can work through the lessons at your own pace. Since your son is just 3.5, I would suggest working on one lesson per week instead of a new lesson daily. I would pair it with Confessions of a Homeschooler’s Letter of the Week lessons which are geared for younger children. Good luck!
[…] it each weekend so I’m not scrambling to find what I need each day. It holds books, his All About Reading curriculum, craft supplies, worksheets, puzzles, games, […]
i have been trying to decide whether to jump right into AAR Level 1 with my five-year old son or do a pre reading program with him first such as AAR pre reading or Get ready for the code. We have not done any formal reading training just lots of reading aloud together. i do’t want him to be bored or overwhelmed. Have you started on level 1 yet and, if so, would you share a comparison?