Well, it’s time for me to find a Kindergarten phonics curriculum for my twins. We’ve spent the last few months working on teaching them the letters of the alphabet, but it’s time to start teaching them early phonics and reading skills. So I thought, since I was doing research anyway, I might as well share the different Kindergarten phonics programs I found. So let’s see what our options are, and I’ll let you know what I decided to go with.
Choosing the Best Kindergarten Phonics Curriculum for Homeschool
First, before we get into the curriculum options, lets just talk about the components of a good phonics program. We’re looking for a curriculum that is based on the science of reading, which is a vast body of research that provides evidence on what methods are most effective in teaching kids to read.
A program that teaches phonemic awareness is also important. Phonemic awareness is the foundation of phonics, and it’s really essential for kids to develop strong reading skills. We also want a program that is systematic and explicit. This means the curriculum is going to directly teach the phonics skills in a specific sequence.
And we’re going to see if any of these use the Orton-Gillingham approach, which uses a multisensory approach that is especially great for students with dyslexia or struggling readers. I’m not looking for any programs that focus heavily on sight words or any curriculum that teaches phonics in a more indirect way.
Logic of English Kindergarten Phonics Curriculum
Ok, so now let’s take a look at each of these kindergarten phonics programs one by one. We’ll start with Logic of English. Their tag line says “combining to science of reading with the joy of learning,” so that’s a good start. For Kindergarten phonics, we’d be looking at the Foundations program, of which there are 4 levels. Kids will get instruction in phonemic awareness, and will learn complete and accurate phonics rules, learning to decode every word with no sight words. They also include handwriting practice and early composition, grammar, and comprehension strategies.
If we take a look at the scope and sequence for the first level of the program, I’m happy to see there is a heavy focus on phonemic awareness. So you can look through the scope and sequence yourself and you’ll see that this program is very thorough. It’s also interesting that you can get it in either cursive or manuscript form.
This homeschool phonics curriculum has a lot of pieces to it, and you can either purchase them separately or buy the bundle. There’s a teacher’s manual and a student workbook, and you can flip through to see what the workbook pages look like. You can even download sample pages from the workbook.
There’s also the Doodling Dragons book of sounds. I guess you could probably get by without this if you want to save a few bucks. And then there are the core materials, which you would use for each level of the program, so you only have to buy these once. So could buy the whole set, or purchase these each separately as you need them. Or you can get the Foundations A bundle which will include all of this.
There is also an optional online planning guide that you can purchase to help make planning and teaching this kindergarten phonics curriculum a little less intimidating.
This honestly looks like a great program, but I do tend to get overwhelmed with all these materials. So I’m going to keep looking.
All About Reading
Next on our list of kindergarten phonics curricula is the All About Reading program from All About Learning Press. This is a reading program based on the Orton-Gillingham approach, so it may be a great choice for students who struggle with reading or have been diagnosed with dyslexia.
If you’re just starting out teaching phonics, you would want to start with the pre reader level, which is designed for kids in preschool and kindergarten. If you’re not sure which level to start with, they do have a placement test you can do to help you decide.
The pre-reader level includes a puppet, which is kind of silly, but I imagine kids probably love it. You’ll also get a teacher’s manual and student packet, 2 books, a review box, and some stickers. You can also add on optional letter craft books.
The pre-reader level includes 78 lessons, and the lessons are not meant to be completed in one day. Some lessons may take up to a week to complete. You can review the scope and sequence to see what is being taught here.
It’s going to teach the capital letters and then the lowercase letters in order. I’m not sure how I feel about that, because it’s been my understanding that it’s better to teach higher frequency letters first, and it’s also better to teach the capital and lowercase letters together. My twins already know all the letters, so I feel like if I bought this program, we’d be starting about 2 thirds of the way through it. So maybe it would be better for us to start with level one if we did this program.
You can view samples of the teacher’s manual and lesson books to see what this program is going to be like. Each day, you’re going to be reading a short selection from the Zebra book, which is written in a way to help support phonological awareness. There are also craft sheets for the letters, which is probably fun for kids, but I have to admit I cringe at the idea of having to incorporate crafts into lessons. I am just so not a crafty person. I’m also not seeing any writing practice in this program. Since we already have the twins writing their letters, I don’t think this would be beneficial for them.
I took a look at the scope and sequence for level 1, and this seems more in line with what I’m looking for. There still seems to be a lot of cutting and pasting and not any handwriting practice though, so I’m not sure if this is the right program for us.
100 Easy Lessons
Next is a popular book to teach your kids to read called “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.” This kindergarten reading curriculum is designed to help teach phonemic awareness, build a firm phonics foundation, and encourage your child to become an enthusiastic reader. Sounds good to me!
This book is designed for parents to teach kids ages 3 to 6 how to read, and it includes 100 20-minute scripted lessons. This book guides parents to teach the sounds of the letters with very explicit instructions. It looks like it’s very simple to follow, and I like that it doesn’t include all that extra stuff like arts and crafts that I just really don’t have time for. But it looks like this is just a reading program, so I’d have to find something additional to do for writing, because I want to teach both at the same time.
Still, this is the most affordable homeschool phonics program I’ve found so far. You can get this book for just $16.49 on Amazon. And if you go to their website, you’ll also get videos to help you teach this program effectively, as well as free printable supplementary materials. So you really get a lot of phonics instruction for a very reasonable price.
A lot of homeschool parents swear by this book, so it’s definitely worth considering. But for now let’s move on to the next kindergarten phonics curriculum on our list.
Hooked on Phonics
So I know I’ve talked about Hooked on Phonics a lot in the past, but today we’re not looking at learning apps. However, the Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read program that you might remember from your childhood is still available to purchase. And it even includes free lesson videos to go along with it. And those lesson videos are free to anyone, whether you’ve purchased anything from this company or not. So it’s worth checking out.
You can purchase the complete Learn to Read kit that covers all 8 levels, or you can purchase them individually or in sets of 2. For some reason, you can’t find all of the individual levels on the Hooked on Phonics website, but you can find them individually or in sets of 2 elsewhere on the internet for less than $30 per level.
Levels 1 and 2 are designed for the preschool level and will teach all of the letters and their sounds. Even though my twins know their letters, this would still probably be good to start with because they don’t yet know how to identify the beginning sounds of words. It’s also teaching them to write the letters, which I think is important.
If you want to get a feel for the Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read program, I suggest you go to this free section that I mentioned. You can watch all the videos and see what this program is all about. All you’re missing are the workbooks, storybooks, and flash cards that go along with the program.
My only issue here is that this is an older program, and I’m not sure if they have updated it. It seems that it includes a lot of sight words, but I’m looking more for something that’s going to focus on decoding skills. I do like the workbooks that come with the Hooked on Phonics app, but I’m not sure if these are similar. I also don’t want to sit my 5-year-olds in front of these video lessons. So I think I’m going to pass on this one.
Explode the Code
Next is an interesting kindergarten phonics curriculum that I’ve heard a lot about called Explode the Code. This is another more affordable Orton-Gillingham-inspired program that includes direct, systematic phonics lessons and multisensory instruction.
There are 3 beginning level books called “Get Ready for the Code,” “Get Set for the Code,” and “Go for the Code,” that I could probably start the twins with, but it’s really hard to know which level to purchase. I like the look of the worksheets and what they’re teaching, and they’re only $8.59 each on Rainbow Resource Center, so that’s a really great price.
They’ll be learning all the individual letters and their sounds, and how reading and writing goes from left to right. And you can also buy the teacher’s guide as well which gives explicit instructions as to how to teach this. It’s fully scripted, so you just have to follow along and do exactly what it says, which is helpful for busy parents like me.
Explode the Code Book 1 looks more like what the twins might be ready for, as this starts to get into blending sounds to read words using all the short vowel sounds. This book is only around $10, plus extra for the teacher guide, or you can get a bundle with books 1 and 2 and the teacher guides for $29.50, which I think is a really great value. Since I’m looking for 2 kids, something affordable like this is really appealing to me.
There’s also an online version of Explode the Code, and you can get a free trial with just your email address. You’ll also get an email with details on how to get a free online assessment worth $20, so you might as well sign up. If you do decide to check it out and want to keep it after the 30-day free trial, it will cost $41.99 for a 12-month subscription for one child.
Explode the Code seems like it may be my favorite kindergarten phonics curriculum so far, but we’ve still got quite a few more homeschool phonics and reading programs to cover, so let’s keep going.
Pride Reading Program
Next on our list is another Orton-Gillingham program aligned with the science of reading called the Pride Reading Program. This program is especially geared towards students with learning difficulties and uses a repetitive, step-by-step Orton-Gillingham, multisensory approach.
They have an online placement check that you can do to help determine where your child should start in the program. I tried it and it told me I should start with the first level, Pride Beginning Letters and Sounds. There is a whole kit to purchase here, including the student workbook, online teacher’s guide and sound cards. There is also an optional activity kit and set of alphabet books that you can purchase. But if you get just the basics, it will cost $94.90. And for me, I’d just have to get a second workbook for an additional $29.95. So it’s a bit expensive, but still relatively affordable for 2 children.
You can view their scope and sequence online, and for this level of the program it shows that kids are going to learn all of the letters and their sounds starting with the consonants. You can view some sample pages from the workbooks, as well as a sample of the online teachers guide. This is another fully scripted teachers guide, so you just follow along step by step and say and do exactly what it tells you. So that definitely takes the pressure off of teaching phonics. You can also purchase the print version of the teachers guide if you prefer to hold a book.
Looking through the sample of the teacher’s guide, I really like the direct phonics instruction. I think this is what I’ve been missing in teaching the twins their letters. They recognize them and can write them, but they haven’t caught on yet with knowing what sounds each of the letters actually make. So I think this might actually be perfect to start with and kind of bridge that gap between knowing the letters to actually get to start sounding out words.
First Start Reading
Next is a phonics and reading program for kindergarten from Memoria Press called First Start Reading. Now I know I said we were only looking at phonics programs based on the science of reading, but I wanted to include this one for my viewers that may be using a more classical approach to homeschooling.
This program is based on traditional phonics, which was how phonics were taught in the early 1900s. It has a big emphasis on short vowel sounds, as well as proper pencil grip. So if you’re looking for a more traditional approach to teaching phonics and reading to your children, this might be a great choice. It does follow the same sequence as the Orton-Gillingham approach, but it’s not really that type of a program in every sense.
This is also a very affordable phonics curriculum. You can get the whole first start reading set for kindergarten for just $54.20 on the Memory Press website. This set incudes student books A – D as well as the teacher manual.
You can view samples on their website, and you can see that the teacher manual gives very explicit instructions on how to teach the curriculum. Kids will be learning the individual sounds for each letter, and they’ll be getting handwriting practice, which I do think is important. Looking at this program, it looks similar to the method that was used in the Horizons phonics and reading program, which is what we used with my older daughter. And it did work well, and she learned to read without any issues. But I was just thinking maybe a program based on more current teaching methods might be better. It’s so hard to choose!
We still have three more kindergarten phonics programs to look at, so let’s move on to the next program.
Evan Moor
Next on our list isn’t a whole phonics program like some of the others on this list; it’s really just a workbook. But I’m including it because it covers everything we’re looking for, including phonemic awareness, phonics skills, and spelling, which is something I wish I’d focused more on with my older daughter when she was this age.
It’s from Evan-Moor and it’s called Smart Start Phonics and Spelling. Although I’ve been looking mostly at Kindergarten phonics curricula, for this one, I’m looking at the pre-kindergarten level. Some of the other programs we’ve seen on this list have the preschool levels just learning to recognize the letters, but this preschool phonics curriculum actually has kids learning letter sounds and actual words. So it’s not exactly a beginner’s curriculum.
Looking at the sample lesson pages, this is definitely the kind of thing I’m looking for. It includes writing, it teaches kids what the sounds of the letters are, and it even has kids learning beginning spelling skills. Unfortunately it does not include any parent or teacher guides, but you could definitely spend some time working on the letter sounds for the letters in each unit before having your kids do the worksheets. To be honest, that’s all I did with my older daughter, and she did learn to read. So I guess I had a good enough understanding of what I needed to teach her. But for parents who are looking for more guidance or more of a scripted lesson plan, this is probably not a good choice.
Then again, at only $10.99 for the whole book, it might be worth a try, especially if you’re comfortable teaching phonics and your child doesn’t seem to have any learning struggles in this area.
Adventures in Phonics
Another kindergarten phonics curriculum that doesn’t have a lot of extra fluff is Adventures in Phonics. You will only need to purchase a workbook for each level and guide your child through how to complete the activities. It follows a logical sequence teaching the individual letter sounds, and it does include practice writing the letters which is definitely something I’m looking for. The level A workbook is only $11.75 on Christianbook.com, so it’s definitely affordable.
There’s really no prep involved with a phonics curriculum like this. You just help your child in learning the letter sounds, and then guide them in what to do in each activity. This type of phonics instruction is ideal for parents like me who are pressed for time and homeschooling more than one child. But I do wish it included some sort of instruction on how to teach the letter sounds.
Some of the programs we saw earlier on this list, with those scripted lessons did seem nice. But for parents who are confident in teaching the letter sounds and providing support to their children, I think this curriculum would be just fine. You can even get it as a downloadable PDF and start using it right away!
Reading Horizons
And finally, last on our list, I thought it would be good to include at least one online phonics and reading program. So I found one that is based on the Orton-Gillingham approach using direct, systematic phonics instruction. It’s called Reading Horizons Discovery, and it’s designed for kids ages 4 to 9 to learn the skills they need to pronounce and spell words correctly.
In addition to the online program, you can also include instructor-guided materials, so you can get a complete phonics curriculum that is also used in classrooms. So if online learning is something that interests you or your children, this might be something worth considering.
You can also get a 30-day trial of the Reading Horizons program for $10, so you can have a chance to see if it’s something you and your kids like before committing to the full program. After that, the cost for 12 months’ access to the software is $199 a year for one student, and $25 for each additional student. So while it is pricey, it’s also in line with the cost of some of the other phonics and reading programs on our list. Although if you choose to bundle it with the home instructor materials, this cost will be quite a bit more.
Still, this is a solid program based on the science of reading that you can definitely rely on to teach your children to read, especially if you don’t have as much time to devote to teaching them yourself. If you were looking into something like ABC Mouse or Reading Eggs or even Hooked on Phonics, this program is worth considering instead, as it’s going to provide more direct, research based instruction.
Which Kindergarten Phonics Curriculum Did We Choose?
So that was our list of 10 homeschool phonics curriculums for kindergarten. Wow that was a lot to go through! Now it’s time for me to decide which one of these programs I’m going to get for the twins.
It sure is tough to decide. I don’t have a whole lot of time to devote to teaching, as I already have a lot on my plate. But I want to make sure they’re getting what they need to develop into solid readers. So I’m trying to balance that all out. Budget is also a concern, especially when I need to teach 2 children at the same time.
Ok so let’s eliminate a few of these programs that I know I’m not going to use. And sadly, although I know it’s a great program and it comes highly recommended from so many homeschool families, I just cannot get on board with All About Reading. Even though I know how important it is to make learning fun, I don’t want to HAVE to do it every single lesson. But believe me, many a stuffed animal has “taught” the lessons in my homeschool, especially on days when I’ve gotten the most grief about it. It’s amazing what you can accomplish simply by making a stuffed animal teach the lesson. But this program is just too overwhelming for me as busy as I am right now.
I’m also eliminating Reading Horizons, even though I know it’s a really great program, I’m just looking for something I can sit down and do at the kitchen table with the kids.
I’m also eliminating Logic of English, even though I think it looks amazing, because I just don’t feel like I have the time for something like that. But I’m also eliminating Evan-Moor and Adventures in Phonics, because I’m looking for something more than what we did with my older daughter.
So that leaves 100 Easy Lessons, Explode the Code, Hooked on Phonics, Pride Reading Program, and First Start Reading. I’m going to eliminate Hooked on Phonics, I can’t really say why, it’s just not my favorite. I do like the Hooked on Phonics app, but I’m just not that into their learn to read program, at least not with all these other great options out there. I’m also getting rid of 100 Easy Lessons, because I want something that gives them worksheets to do and handwriting practice.
So we’re down to 3 now, and this is super hard. I really like the look of the Pride Reading Program, but it is a little bit more than I was hoping to spend. Explode the Code seems perfect for us, but I’m just stuck on which level we would start with. And First Start Reading looks really good too, although it’s a lot like what we used with my older daughter and I was hoping to try something a bit different.
Our Kindergarten Phonics Curriculum Pick
This was SUCH a tough decision. But after very careful consideration, I’ve decided to go with Explode the Code. And even though I’m a little unsure of where to start, the books are affordable enough that I’m just going to start at the beginning, so I can make sure we don’t miss anything or leave any learning gaps.
I’ll need 2 copies of the workbooks, but only one teacher edition. So I can get one bundle of books A – C including the teacher’s guide for $36.95, and then I can get a second bundle of just the A-C books without the teacher’s guide for $24.50. So that’s just about $60 for 2 kids for books that will probably take us awhile to get through.
My only concern is that it isn’t going to get into short vowel sounds until we get through these books and into level 1. But if you look at the guidelines, books 1 through 3 are recommended for 1st through 3rd grade, while the books I’m planning to get are for pre-K through 1st grade. So I’m probably overthinking this. In my state, if my twins were going to attend school, based on when their birthday is, they wouldn’t even be starting kindergarten until September.
I know I probably left out a lot of great kindergarten phonics and reading curricula, but I wanted to limit this to 10 picks, so I apologize if your favorite wasn’t mentioned. I’d love to hear about other great kindergarten phonics programs, so let me know what else you’ve used and had success with! And if you think I made the right choice (or the wrong choice) I’d really love to know! There may still be time to change my mind!
