Rime to Read

Ethan and I had the chance last week to review a sweet little reading site called Rime to Read.

Visiting the site reminds me of my friend Tami, who always helps me remember the principal of keeping it simple. In our fast-paced world, even those of us who "stay at home" (ha!) for our schooling have resources abounding at our very fingertips. It's easy to overwhelm ourselves and our children with curriculum craziness.

Rime to Read is intentionally a very streamlined series of books available for you and your child to read, and print if you desire, from their site. As children learn "rimes," they are led through a series of stories that build their reading vocabulary. Nope, I didn't misspell - "rimes" are words that both sound, and look, alike... examples would be big, pig, wig, fig, or cat, bat, sat, and rat!

An added bonus is that key words are color-highlighted, and your reader can click on those words to hear them read aloud! (Ethan LOVED this feature - he had to click on each word, whether he "needed" to or not!)

Theoretically, we learn these groups or "families" of words, and as our knowledge expands, so does our ability to read!

I've had the privelege of communicating with Lynn of Rittenhouse Reading, who manages Rime to Read, and asked her a few preliminary questions. Here are her helpful answers!

"A child who already knows consonant sounds fairly well, can recognize both upper and lower case letters, and who expresses a desire to learn to read
is ready to begin using Rime to Read.
It is not necessary to use another program in conjunction with Rime to Read. If too many different approaches are being used simultaneously, it can get confusing. It is not a very long program, and when completed, children are ready to leap into more advanced readers. The wonderful thing about our program, is that it is a cumulative. Each books teaches a new “rime” or word family and new sight words while reviewing those taught in previous books. Short vowel sounds, sightwords and some consonant blends and digraphs are taught in the 20 books. The most common praise we here from parents is that the children feel so proud of themselves while working through the books. They were carefully designed for success. "

If you have a beginner in the "Three R's," and especially if you're longing to get back to the basics, Rime to Read is just the program for you!