Hey, I am Jenny Phillips. I'm excited to walk you through our Level One Language Arts course.
There is meaning and power that comes into learning when a course is connected to God,
family, nature, beautiful art, and strong moral values. The course connects all of these things
as it combines the following subjects into one easy-to-teach, no-prep-time-needed course:
phonics, reading, spelling, writing, grammar and punctuation, literature, art, poetry,
and geography. The Level One course set comes with three components: the 368 page,
full-color course book, the Reading Booster B Cards, and the Reading Booster B Book Set.
I'll explain how the Reading Booster B Cards and Book Set work and then we'll dive into
the course book. The Reading Booster B Cards have 70 cardstock pages and two sticker sheets.
Each card focuses on a certain phonics principle or a group of sight words. The course directs you
to work on Booster Cards with your child for five to ten minutes before most lessons. You
can usually practice one to three cards in five to ten minutes, and once a card is mastered have
the child select a sticker from the back of the Booster Cards and place it on the mastered circle
at the bottom of the card. Review cards are placed intermittently throughout the cards.
These beautiful and fun Reading Booster Cards will also tell you when to read the Reading Booster
Books. These adorable and interesting books correlate directly with each card. For example,
at the bottom of card 30 it says, "Have the child read the Reading Booster B Book Number 11, Snail
Takes A Sail". This book focuses on the phonogram "ai" which was just learned on the Reading Booster
Card, and the book does not contain any words the child has not already learned.The phonics
principles for the Reading Booster B Book Set includes 20 books that correlate with the cards.
These books can be read as many times as desired for review and for cementing principles.
Okay, let's look at the course book! The lessons in the course book are quite short and very
gentle. They were carefully designed to reduce teaching time yet to be academically robust,
exceeding national standards. Let's take a look at how the lessons work. In Lesson 28, the child
practices sound 2 of "oo" which the child already learned in the Reading Booster Cards. Do you see
the number target symbol? In this lesson, the child should have mastered Reading Booster Cards
through this number before starting the lesson. Your child learns the phonics principles through
the Booster Cards before reviewing and further practicing those principles in the course book.
Some children may need to occasionally pause lessons to work more on the Reading Booster Cards.
One of the things we love about this course is that the child can move through the Reading
Booster Cards as quickly as desired. Children often learn to read words faster than they can
learn to write or spell those words, and the reading shouldn't be slowed down by writing,
spelling, or grammar. This program allows children to excel at reading at their own pace, not at
the pace of other subjects such as spelling. If a child finishes the Reading Booster B Cards before
completing the course, wonderful! The child can continue their advanced pace in reading
by moving on to the Reading Booster C Cards and Books while finishing the Level One course book.
For Lesson 49, you practice Reading Booster Cards and Reading Booster Books for 5-10 minutes.
Then the lesson guides you through teaching alphabetical order through simple kinesthetic
activities. You then practice poetry memorization with the child. For independent practice in this
lesson, the child listens to an interesting audio narration while they look at these
two paintings. The audio narration teaches the child to appreciate and study art, and
it also teaches them about color wheels and how artists use warm and cool colors to create moods
and what mood is created by using colors opposite of each other on the color wheel.
Okay, let's look at lesson 72 briefly. After practicing Booster Cards, the course instructs
you to use our free Good and Beautiful Letter Tiles App to practice spelling words with phonics
principles the child has learned such as words with "ea" and "wh". The Letter Tiles App is used
in 19 out of the 120 lessons, but you may opt to dictate the words, have the child write them,
or use your own physical tiles if you choose. After the Letter Tiles activity in Lesson 72,
you and the child watch a beautiful video book titled "Pen Pals From The Polar Region"
to learn more about geography. Books like these can be found quickly on our free
Good and Beautiful Homeschool App and are used to teach geography or art principles nine times
in the course. At the end of Lesson 72, the child then completes an independent practice section.
Lesson 87 starts out with working on Reading Booster Cards and Books for 5 to 10 minutes.
Then the child does a short spelling dictation exercise.
After that, the child gets to look at fun pictures of nature while practicing segmenting and reading
compound words. The child then completes a fun activity to practice reading words with "ew"
instead of just reading a chart of words. The child reads a fun, clever poem about the wind.
The poem is packed with words that contain "ew". The child reads the poem three times.
Repeated reading is a powerful way to improve reading speed and fluency. To make it fun,
the child is instructed to draw an item on the picture on the next page each time after reading
the poem. For example, the poem talks about the wind throwing a ball, so one thing the child draws
is a ball in the sky. This lesson incorporates phonics, nature, poetry, and drawing practice in
a short amount of time. The child finishes the lesson with an independent practice section.
After practicing Reading Booster Cards and Books in Lesson 89, you help the child practice the
unit spelling words and then teach the child the drop the e-spelling rule. The independent
section includes a "My Little Journal section. One focus we had in creating these new versions that I
am really excited about was to make writing less overwhelming. Pilot children loved these writing
practice sections which are included throughout the course. Also, in the independent section, the
child practices segmenting and spelling words and then a beautiful painting is used to give reading
practice with phonics principles recently learned. One of the things pilot children and parents love
about this course are the audio narrations of paintings that are accessed through our free
Homeschool App. The child listens to the narration as they look at the painting in the course book.
Through these narrations, the child learns how to study a painting and how to write about it
using model language. Creating wonderful writers doesn't come from worksheets. It's a whole heart
and mind approach that takes years of exposing the child to beautiful language and effective writing
instruction that pushes the child to think, to dig deeper, and to learn what makes writing beautiful.
I'll end the video with a look at some other pages in the course book.