Phonics Switch.

Lately I've been suffering quietly over our phonics instruction. I have been using Phonics Pathways this year and believe me, it has been a very, slow year. Teaching Marco to read has gone from easy and fun, to difficult and frustrating. He is no longer responding to the text and complains at every opportunity. Our best selections have been the Nora Gaydos books, which he loves and finds extremely funny, and Explode the Code. Other than that, reading is just not fun anymore.

I have tried so hard to turn our lessons into something to look forward to. But I am failing. So now I am giving up on our text and moving on and looking for something better. In the past we have also tried The Ordinary Parents Guide to Reading, but that was even worse. I'm starting to think it all has to do with the bland text. Black and white is boring. Nora Gaydos readers are fun and colorful; Explode the Code keeps his interest with the writing portion. So I'm thinking that I need to appeal to the visual part of Marco.

Overall, I've been feeling a bit guilty about switching around with this so much in my mind. I've kept Marco with Phonics Pathways because I want to be consistent until I find something good. I wonder if all homeschoolers deal with these problems early on. I'm hoping to accept that it's ok to change a program while in the middle of it. If it's not working, why use it...right?

So my conclusion? With all my research and reviewing, I think I'm taking the plunge into Sing, Spell, Read, and Write. It's a bigger investment than I would want, but if it works it will be well worth it. I hope this is the solution I've been looking for. The good thing is that I'm planning on enrolling with Angelicum Academy in the future and this is the program they use for phonics. If it doesn't work, I guess I'll have a phonics program for sale!