Join Us for an Animal Adventure!

In this fun 26-week series, we are posting an easy-to-assemble animal craft for every letter of the alphabet! Read the summary below, and then gather the craft supplies for the series. But be careful … our first craft has a very toothy grin!

Thanks to her masterful ability to capture the essence of childhood, Beverly Cleary’s books have sold over 90 million copies and have delighted readers for over 65 years. If you haven’t yet made the acquaintance of Cleary’s charming Henry Huggins, you’re in for a special treat!

It’s a common scenario; people everywhere do it—maybe even you or your child.

You’re writing a note and are about to write the word peak. But wait! Your pencil poises midair: is it sneak peak? Or is it sneak peek? Now consider stationary and stationery; they are both pronounced the same, but which one means writing paper?

It can be challenging for young readers to read at the right pace. Some kids read too slowly, while others read too fast.

Reading too fast may seem like a somewhat unlikely problem. Having a child who reads too slowly can throw up obvious red flags, but parents and teachers aren’t always as concerned when a child reads too quickly.

There are some definite problems with reading too fast, though.

Here’s a fact: Your child is going to make an occasional spelling mistake.

The question is: How will you handle these mistakes?

Now is the perfect time to think through the answer to this question—because the way you handle errors can make a huge difference in your child’s ability and confidence. So let’s dig in!

Q: What happens when you combine the style of classic fantasy series like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings with a group of adventuresome sword-bearing rabbits?

A: You get The Green Ember series by S. D. Smith, of course!

“I have three kids in three different levels. Will your program work for me?”

It’s a question that our customer service reps have heard many times before. Because All About Reading and All About Spelling are programs that require active instruction, some parents assume that if they have more than one child, these programs won’t work for them.

When you read, you probably don’t spend much time decoding the individual words. You just read, and as you get to each word, you instantly recognize it. But beginning readers don’t have that kind of instant recall, so it is important to teach them how to sound out words.

Catchy rhymes can be a fun and easy way to remember some of those pesky phonics rules. Have you heard this one?

When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.

Eleanor Estes once said that, as a writer, she hoped to reflect “the true image of childhood.” And she did just that in the nearly twenty books she authored over a period of forty-six years, including the much-loved series about the charming Moffat family.

When you teach reading and spelling, it’s a good idea to have a general overview of long vowel sounds. Let’s dive in!

A long vowel is a vowel that is pronounced the same as its name. For example, the word emu starts with the long E sound.

We’re all different, but encouraging children to embrace their differences and the differences of others isn’t always easy. Picture books can help!

Here are some of my favorite picture books that celebrate differences.