Abeka Kindergarten Reading Curriculum

One especially good product from Abeka is their Kindergarten Summer Reading Library, “Reading for Fun”.  This is a boxed set of 55 little books that my children really enjoyed.

All five of our children used this book set to move from learning how to read to being able to pick up a book and read it.  It took two of my children a long time to get through these books. My daughter, however, whizzed through them and got on to reading any and everything else.  Going step-by-step through these beginner Abeka books was part of our family’s homeschool reading instruction.

The fifty-five books include whimsical and factual stories about children, animals, and toys;  Bible stories; and character-building stories.The books come in three sizes. The easiest books are the smallest. The medium sized books are harder, and the largest books are the hardest.

The set starts with a simple book, “Tim Can” which is mostly  three letter words with short vowels. For children taught to read by phonics, these types of words are the easiest to read. The book, “Luke”, adds the long vowel made with a silent final “e”. Anyway, the books mostly follow the order that phonics are taught with a few exceptions. Several of the books did not fit the order of easiest to hardest.  We adapted by pulling out the books that were too hard and saving them for later, after more practice.

These little books are all softcover books. In fact the cover paper is no different than the book’s pages. (You might consider laminating the covers if you have many children who will be using the books)

Some of the books were favorites of my children. Others were not liked so much. But all 5 of our children enjoyed the sense of accomplishment of improving their reading skills as they proceeded through the books. The set of books represented their path to learning to read and every one of my children remembers the experience of learning to read with these books.

We even set up a chart based on progress through these books that allowed the child to move a thumbtack along the chart as he/she progressed through the books.  Learning how to read is a big deal. It is fun to find ways to celebrate the accomplishment. It is so motivating to a child to make it fun.

Though this set cost $42 new through Abeka, it is often available on eBay for much less.  If there is no set of readers showing up below on eBay, check this page for other Abeka Kindergarten Readers.

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Other Homeschool Phonics Curriculum Resources

A free Phonics online resource