Abeka is an AWESOME curriculum! My child was reading with in 3 weeks of starting kindergarten. It highly phonics based. The public schools need to use it.
you have my complete attention on this marriage of Abeka and AAR, thank you for continuing to show how this works and the individual components. also, your hair is SO long!!!
Hi! I love your videos. You are are a great video creator! I just had not commented in a while. I am so happy to see you have found something that works for your kids in both Math and Reading! What an amazing break through! I see what you mean with the charts that help kids blend! I love those charts and the readers. Thank you for showing us! I had never seen Abeka’s resources 🙂
@@sciencemama yes I have! It’s actually very easy but I too was nervous at first. It’s great bc it gives a suggested price to sell your item at and helps you figure out shipping costs as long as you have a scale at home. I just use our basic bathroom scale 😂
We are yet to do handwriting as I didn’t need to teach my older kids to write and my younger daughter is doing mark making. I’ve taught it at pre school when I was working so I’m trying to teach her that way. The games look awesome, I wouldn’t do it with my older kids but I probably would for my 4 year old!!! Those Flashcards are massive!!! I like the steps of reading!!!
Thank you for sharing! I love following along with your journey. My oldest turns 6 in a couple of weeks. I’m already looking towards the 22-23 school year and getting some planning in now. He just finished AAR pre-reading and I picked up AAR level 1. We did the first lesson over the last two days. After watching your video, I’m thinking to do some Abeka next year. He’ll likely be a mix of kindergarten and 1st grade next year. I’m thinking Abaka K5 over 1st grade? I’d just be using the reading and potentially the writing parts as I really like our math program and I have other plans for science and history.
We started Abeka Letters/Language 1 with a very young child and are stretching it out to mastery over 2 years, because there is plenty of practice work and the readers really are K2 in my opinion 😅 they start at emerging reader and get all the way to full alphabetic code. So yeah, great phonics and readers. We don’t purchase the teacher guides or answer keys or anything, just the workbooks and readers because that’s really where they shine
I really appreciate your videos. Yes, it all made sense. You always speak in a very clear and understanding way. I had abandoned Abeka in favor of AAR and while we love AAR it's moving so slowly that my son has lost interest in it. I stopped using Abeka because the K5 lesson plans were so overwhelming and not teacher friendly (I have an old edition). But after watching your video I pulled out all my Abeka stuff that I had stored away in our attic and now I'm so excited and motivated to teach my son to read again. My son is a young 1st grader and "behind" in reading so my plan is to start with the last half of K5 to help get him on track. My other thought was to use A Handbook for Reading to get him up to speed. Have you used A Handbook for Reading? I noticed it never shows up in the lesson plans.
Hi! So glad this video was helpful! A Handbook for Reading doesn't show up in the teachers guide until Grade 1 ... I think starting halfway through K5 sounds like a great place for your son :)
Can you please show your Abeka organization? I just got our level K stuff in and I'm overwhelmed by the amount of flash cards to figure out what to do with.
Haha, yes ... I literally just filmed a "Get it Done with Me" Homeschool Reset video where I clean out the school room and re-organize all the supplies because I was also feeling overwhelmed by that! So, check that video out but the short answer is that I moved most of my Abeka stuff into a file container as well as one drawer in the hutch in our school room ... I just needed it all very accessible but out of the way!
My son is almost done with AAR 1, would you recommend going with abeka grade 1 once I start AAR 2? I totally agree with your con on your other video that AAR moves SO SLOWLY, but it's also really awesome and we love it and it's the first curriculum that finally worked for my son!
I'm so glad AAR is working well! If you want to add a bit of Abeka, I would say that grade 1 lines up well with AAR2. Although, they do tackle things in different ways and in different orders ... so it requires a bit of adaptation, but it's not hard to combine them :)
@@sciencemama Pray you & yours are having a very blessed Christmas/ New Years.. These vids are truly a g-dsend. I've always been drawn to both Abeka & AAR, yet was a bit whelmed w/ all the various components. When it's right for you...very curious..how do you store all of the Abeka items & are you still using the D'Nealian (Scott F.) Handwriting & or Abeka Handwriting? ^_^
Thank you for sharing! Just curious… four your preschool kids, do you think you’d purchase any parts of the k4 curriculum or would you just utilize the resources in the k5 possibly at a modified pace (since you said it is letters for such a large chunk). Asking be cause my almost 4 year old already knows all his letters and basic sounds. We are casually working on blending at the moment and I’m trying to decide what’s next for him… not sure if k4 is worth spending money on if I’m willing to take our time with k5…
I AGREE! It sounds like he could definitely handle K5 ... I did pick up K4 but more for my twins, who are 4 and don't know any of there letters or sounds :)
Hi! I’m going to start K5 with my daughter soon and plan to order the child kit and the basic parent kit. I’m just trying to decide if I should REALLY add on all of these flashcards. Having a hard time with the price of them! Is it easy to tell what I need to make flashcards for using the charts in the books? I can put in the time… but I want to make sure I’m setting her up for success with the right information.
No, I liked it but I realized that as a teacher I like a bit more handholding. I love how gentle and laid-back the program is, and I do believe it is adequate, I just didn't jive with it :)
Hi! I feel like switching curriculum could confuse a child, but in our case I have a solid handle on the things he knew and what he doesn't know ... so when we switch I can pick and choose from the new curriculum, if that makes sense! And because of that we are able to complete the curriculum within the school year because I don't feel like I have to use everything in the new currriculum!
Hi, Thanks SO much for doing this video. We are on lesson 23 of AAR 1 and my daughter is not wanting to learn reading. She said it is too hard and wants to do something else and then come back to AAR 1. I want her to love reading and not dread learning to read.I am being drawn to Abeka K5. Would I need all the items you showed and would you recommend starting at lesson 1 in Abeka? Also do the games get utilized all year? She loves games:)
Hi! You’re very welcome! You definitely don’t need all the things - I would recommend the teachers manual and workbook at the minimum! Also, don’t feel like you have to start at the beginning- we started about midway because my daughter knew her letter sounds, but you could also start at the beginning and going quickly for a while!
Thanks so much!! We received everything and she is loving all the workbook pages and the easier side of all this. We are starting at beginning and just having fun within this so that hopefully she will look forward to reading time again. I plan on continuing with Abeka and AAR. Thanks for these videos- so so helpful.
I totally agree with you! I actually started out with LOE, but I think I wasn't confident enough with how to teach phonics ... at think at this point I could probably handle LOE again :)
Hi! K5 is probably fine ... my only caution is that Abeka tends to run advanced, so it depends on the age of your kiddo. I'm thinking of starting my twins (who will be 4/almost 5 next fall) in K4 just to make sure it doesn't go too fast. But then again all of my kids have had a bit of a challenge reading, so I've never had a natural reader :)
Hi! The only blend ladders in the instructor's guides are the blends with the single letters (ta, te, ti, to, tu) - so there are many more ladders in the Blend Ladder book.
I will be starting K5 phonics with my kindergartener daughter this fall. I am considering doing lessons 4 days a week instead of 5. That would leave us approximately 36 lessons short of finishing the curriculum at the end of the school year. Do you think it’s better to pick up where we left off when we start first grade? Or just jump into Level 1 since it starts with a review of concepts anyway?
We usually only do 4 days a week as well! Sometimes I go a bit quicker in the beginning, so that I can get to some of the later lessons. But I usually just move on to the next level especially if we have finished about 80% … there is always enough review the next year!
Did the language arts package have all the materials that you presented in this video or did you have to add some of them into the package for extra cost?
I didn't end up getting the package because we had some of the resources from K4 but it might have saved me money in the end because I just found the extra resources helpful! But I know of a number of moms that don't use the extras.
At this point I have put aside Sonlight LA because it just was a bit too relaxed for my personality and needs 🤣. So we are mostly doing Abeka and supplementing with All About Reading!
I know this has been a while....my daughter knows almost all of the letter sounds and is 4.5. Should I start with k4 or k5? Bound or unbound? Thank you!!
I would start with K5 and slow down if needed, but she should be fine with K5. I always get unbound, but it just depends on how you think you will store it :)
I stopped Abeka k4 because my daughter is very bright, but she was not ready for such structure. We began a gentle curriculum for K5. I began to sense her boredom, so I went back to Abeka k4 and she is doing well with it. She has completed about 2/3 of K4. Do you think it would be ok to just begin with K5 and not finish the K4? She will be 6 in a couple months. ( or should I finish the k4 and just go through the first half of K5 at a more rapid pace?)
Question. Can I skip a lot of it that she already knows? She knows the letter sounds, and she’s working on cvc words but her fluency is not great. Or do you recommend to start from the beginning?
Abeka is an AWESOME curriculum! My child was reading with in 3 weeks of starting kindergarten. It highly phonics based. The public schools need to use it.
you have my complete attention on this marriage of Abeka and AAR, thank you for continuing to show how this works and the individual components.
also, your hair is SO long!!!
Haha, I realize that is all I've been talking about lately! It is crazy how long my hair has grown ... I started growing it January of 2020 :)
Thank you! This solidified my love for TG&TB and their LA program!
Thank you! Super helpful
Love this video! Thank you!
Ahh, thank you!
I would love to see you do a few lessons
Hi! I love your videos. You are are a great video creator! I just had not commented in a while. I am so happy to see you have found something that works for your kids in both Math and Reading! What an amazing break through! I see what you mean with the charts that help kids blend! I love those charts and the readers. Thank you for showing us! I had never seen Abeka’s resources 🙂
Ahh, thank you so much for the encouragement - it is so nice to have settled into curriculum that is working so well for my kids!
Another great video!! I don’t have FB so I’ve bought a lot of Abeka flashcards, readers and teacher lesson plan books used on eBay.
I really need to check out eBay! Have you sold anything on there? eBay intimidates me!
@@sciencemama yes I have! It’s actually very easy but I too was nervous at first. It’s great bc it gives a suggested price to sell your item at and helps you figure out shipping costs as long as you have a scale at home. I just use our basic bathroom scale 😂
We are switching from TGTB to Abeka Language arts I think and this was SO HELPFUL! You're the best :)
So glad it was helpful!!
We are yet to do handwriting as I didn’t need to teach my older kids to write and my younger daughter is doing mark making. I’ve taught it at pre school when I was working so I’m trying to teach her that way. The games look awesome, I wouldn’t do it with my older kids but I probably would for my 4 year old!!! Those Flashcards are massive!!! I like the steps of reading!!!
Haha, yes the flashcards are huge :)
Thank you for sharing! I love following along with your journey. My oldest turns 6 in a couple of weeks. I’m already looking towards the 22-23 school year and getting some planning in now. He just finished AAR pre-reading and I picked up AAR level 1. We did the first lesson over the last two days. After watching your video, I’m thinking to do some Abeka next year. He’ll likely be a mix of kindergarten and 1st grade next year. I’m thinking Abaka K5 over 1st grade? I’d just be using the reading and potentially the writing parts as I really like our math program and I have other plans for science and history.
Yes, that is exactly what we do - and I would recommend combining Abeka K5 and AAR Level 1 :)
We started Abeka Letters/Language 1 with a very young child and are stretching it out to mastery over 2 years, because there is plenty of practice work and the readers really are K2 in my opinion 😅 they start at emerging reader and get all the way to full alphabetic code. So yeah, great phonics and readers. We don’t purchase the teacher guides or answer keys or anything, just the workbooks and readers because that’s really where they shine
Would love a review of abeka handwriting! Or a link if you already did one :) we are coming
From handwriting without tears and it’s getting boring
I really appreciate your videos. Yes, it all made sense. You always speak in a very clear and understanding way. I had abandoned Abeka in favor of AAR and while we love AAR it's moving so slowly that my son has lost interest in it. I stopped using Abeka because the K5 lesson plans were so overwhelming and not teacher friendly (I have an old edition). But after watching your video I pulled out all my Abeka stuff that I had stored away in our attic and now I'm so excited and motivated to teach my son to read again. My son is a young 1st grader and "behind" in reading so my plan is to start with the last half of K5 to help get him on track. My other thought was to use A Handbook for Reading to get him up to speed. Have you used A Handbook for Reading? I noticed it never shows up in the lesson plans.
Hi! So glad this video was helpful! A Handbook for Reading doesn't show up in the teachers guide until Grade 1 ... I think starting halfway through K5 sounds like a great place for your son :)
Can you please show your Abeka organization? I just got our level K stuff in and I'm overwhelmed by the amount of flash cards to figure out what to do with.
Haha, yes ... I literally just filmed a "Get it Done with Me" Homeschool Reset video where I clean out the school room and re-organize all the supplies because I was also feeling overwhelmed by that! So, check that video out but the short answer is that I moved most of my Abeka stuff into a file container as well as one drawer in the hutch in our school room ... I just needed it all very accessible but out of the way!
Thanks for this video. It was helpful! We are picking up all the extra cards this year for grade 1.
My son is almost done with AAR 1, would you recommend going with abeka grade 1 once I start AAR 2? I totally agree with your con on your other video that AAR moves SO SLOWLY, but it's also really awesome and we love it and it's the first curriculum that finally worked for my son!
I'm so glad AAR is working well! If you want to add a bit of Abeka, I would say that grade 1 lines up well with AAR2. Although, they do tackle things in different ways and in different orders ... so it requires a bit of adaptation, but it's not hard to combine them :)
This is fantastic! TY again!
Thank you and you are very welcome!
@@sciencemama Pray you & yours are having a very blessed Christmas/ New Years.. These vids are truly a g-dsend. I've always been drawn to both Abeka & AAR, yet was a bit whelmed w/ all the various components. When it's right for you...very curious..how do you store all of the Abeka items & are you still using the D'Nealian (Scott F.) Handwriting & or Abeka Handwriting? ^_^
Thank you for sharing! Just curious… four your preschool kids, do you think you’d purchase any parts of the k4 curriculum or would you just utilize the resources in the k5 possibly at a modified pace (since you said it is letters for such a large chunk). Asking be cause my almost 4 year old already knows all his letters and basic sounds. We are casually working on blending at the moment and I’m trying to decide what’s next for him… not sure if k4 is worth spending money on if I’m willing to take our time with k5…
I AGREE! It sounds like he could definitely handle K5 ... I did pick up K4 but more for my twins, who are 4 and don't know any of there letters or sounds :)
Hi! I’m going to start K5 with my daughter soon and plan to order the child kit and the basic parent kit. I’m just trying to decide if I should REALLY add on all of these flashcards. Having a hard time with the price of them! Is it easy to tell what I need to make flashcards for using the charts in the books? I can put in the time… but I want to make sure I’m setting her up for success with the right information.
Hi! I think you could definitely find all the information you need to make the flashcards yourself :)
I was just watching your flip through for the sonlight language arts. Are you not using that now?
No, I liked it but I realized that as a teacher I like a bit more handholding. I love how gentle and laid-back the program is, and I do believe it is adequate, I just didn't jive with it :)
I’m new to homeschooling what products do I buy to get all of this? My daughter is 8 but is more on a first grade level. (She’s autistic)
I have a question, how do you actually complete a school year if you’re switching curriculum often? Does it confuse him? How does that work?
Hi! I feel like switching curriculum could confuse a child, but in our case I have a solid handle on the things he knew and what he doesn't know ... so when we switch I can pick and choose from the new curriculum, if that makes sense! And because of that we are able to complete the curriculum within the school year because I don't feel like I have to use everything in the new currriculum!
I really enjoyed this video and your other video sharing how you combine Abeka and AAR. DO you combine AAR level 1 with Abeka K5? Or Abeka 1st grade?
I combined AAR 1 with Abeka K5 and AAR2 with Abeka Grade 1 ... although this year we are just using Abeka grade 1 by itself!
Hi, Thanks SO much for doing this video. We are on lesson 23 of AAR 1 and my daughter is not wanting to learn reading. She said it is too hard and wants to do something else and then come back to AAR 1. I want her to love reading and not dread learning to read.I am being drawn to Abeka K5. Would I need all the items you showed and would you recommend starting at lesson 1 in Abeka? Also do the games get utilized all year? She loves games:)
Hi! You’re very welcome! You definitely don’t need all the things - I would recommend the teachers manual and workbook at the minimum! Also, don’t feel like you have to start at the beginning- we started about midway because my daughter knew her letter sounds, but you could also start at the beginning and going quickly for a while!
Thanks so much!! We received everything and she is loving all the workbook pages and the easier side of all this. We are starting at beginning and just having fun within this so that hopefully she will look forward to reading time again. I plan on continuing with Abeka and AAR. Thanks for these videos- so so helpful.
I'm curious - have you looked into Logic of English program? It seems to be the perfect blend of this and AAR.
I totally agree with you! I actually started out with LOE, but I think I wasn't confident enough with how to teach phonics ... at think at this point I could probably handle LOE again :)
@@sciencemama oh I hear you on that one - it is kind of intimidating! :) I think I might buy the online program a go to see if that helps me
You started with K4? Would you recommend starting K4 or K5 for a child that can’t read, but knows his letters.
Hi! K5 is probably fine ... my only caution is that Abeka tends to run advanced, so it depends on the age of your kiddo. I'm thinking of starting my twins (who will be 4/almost 5 next fall) in K4 just to make sure it doesn't go too fast. But then again all of my kids have had a bit of a challenge reading, so I've never had a natural reader :)
Are all the blend ladders you need in the back of the book or does the blend book add extra?
Hi! The only blend ladders in the instructor's guides are the blends with the single letters (ta, te, ti, to, tu) - so there are many more ladders in the Blend Ladder book.
I will be starting K5 phonics with my kindergartener daughter this fall. I am considering doing lessons 4 days a week instead of 5. That would leave us approximately 36 lessons short of finishing the curriculum at the end of the school year. Do you think it’s better to pick up where we left off when we start first grade? Or just jump into Level 1 since it starts with a review of concepts anyway?
We usually only do 4 days a week as well! Sometimes I go a bit quicker in the beginning, so that I can get to some of the later lessons. But I usually just move on to the next level especially if we have finished about 80% … there is always enough review the next year!
Did the language arts package have all the materials that you presented in this video or did you have to add some of them into the package for extra cost?
I didn't end up getting the package because we had some of the resources from K4 but it might have saved me money in the end because I just found the extra resources helpful! But I know of a number of moms that don't use the extras.
@@sciencemama you started with K4? Would you recommend starting with K4 or K5 for a child that can’t read?
Do you use sonlight language arts and abeka language arts?
At this point I have put aside Sonlight LA because it just was a bit too relaxed for my personality and needs 🤣. So we are mostly doing Abeka and supplementing with All About Reading!
Did you buy the entire set for K5?
No, because I had previously purchased K4 for my twins and there was a decent amount of overlap ... so I just picked up what we needed!
I know this has been a while....my daughter knows almost all of the letter sounds and is 4.5. Should I start with k4 or k5? Bound or unbound? Thank you!!
I would start with K5 and slow down if needed, but she should be fine with K5. I always get unbound, but it just depends on how you think you will store it :)
@@sciencemama Thank you so very much!!
I stopped Abeka k4 because my daughter is very bright, but she was not ready for such structure. We began a gentle curriculum for K5. I began to sense her boredom, so I went back to Abeka k4 and she is doing well with it. She has completed about 2/3 of K4. Do you think it would be ok to just begin with K5 and not finish the K4? She will be 6 in a couple months. ( or should I finish the k4 and just go through the first half of K5 at a more rapid pace?)
YES! K5 would be perfect for her, my twins just turned 6 and are doing well this year with K5.
Thank you
Regarding the K5 book…. Does this mean that if my daughter already knows the alphabet (including sounds) that the whole first 50+ lessons are useless?
No, the first 50 lessons focus on alphabet sounds but also the blending of those sounds to the short vowels!
@@sciencemama Got it. Thank you! These videos are super helpful!
Question. Can I skip a lot of it that she already knows? She knows the letter sounds, and she’s working on cvc words but her fluency is not great. Or do you recommend to start from the beginning?
I would recommend skipping to where she is at - I started my daughter halfway through K5 last year!
@@sciencemama thanks
Thank you! Super helpful