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Phonics are a big part of the Reading 1 course of the Ron Paul Curriculum. The first phonics rules that are taught are the most basic sounds made by each letter of the alphabet. Here are the crafts we made to reinforce the lessons.
Even if your child is already familiar with “the letter sounds,” it is always good to review. Studying these basic phonics is an excellent way to help a child prepare for reading.
Alphabet Activity
Whenever a new letter is featured in a lesson there is an assignment focusing on that letter. There is a printable page for each letter, or you can always just use a regular sheet of paper.
The instructions are to think of anything food related that starts with the featured letter. If the child is to the point where they are ready to write the words on the page, then that’s great! Otherwise, illustrating the food-related words will suffice.
After the course covers every letter in the alphabet, the student should have 26 pages of these assignments, one for each letter. Then the pages can be bound into a book for the student to look at.
Since the course doesn’t go through the letters in alphabetical order, the pages are all mixed up. I had my kids put the pages in order before punching holes in the margins and putting them in a folder with fasteners. The last time I checked you can get a two-pack of these folders at the Dollar Tree.
Making Progress
The alphabet books are a great way to boost a child’s confidence in their schooling. Since this was a project that was completed over quite a few weeks, my girls felt a sense of accomplishment that they don’t necessarily get from completing an assignment that only takes a few minutes.
I try to give my kids complete control over the artistic direction of open-ended assignments. I say this, because if you’re looking at the photo, you may be thinking, “Wait, your daughter considers ‘aardvark’ to be a food related word?” I just go with it. The important part is that it starts with an “a.” I think she’ll find it to be pretty hilarious when she looks at it in a year or two.
It is also nice to be able to look back at their alphabet books and see how much progress they have made in their drawing and writing skills from the beginning of the course to where they are now. It will be interesting to see how far they’ve come when we get to the end of the school year.
How we used the Ron Paul Curriculum for kindergarten
If you have read my blog you may already know that my 6-year-old is going through Reading 1 for the second time. In lieu of a kindergarten curriculum, I had her go through Grade 1 of the Ron Paul Curriculum, but with different expectations. I did not expect her to do every assignment or to remember all of the concepts the way that I do now that she is 6.
The first time she went through Reading 1, she did not make an alphabet book. We made the books together over the summer as a way to reinforce what we learned the previous year and to get ready for the next year.
This means that when my 6-year-old started Reading 1 for the second time, she had already made an alphabet book. I didn’t want her to do the same project over again right after having finished it the first time, so I took matters into my own hands.
Alphabet Arts and Crafts
My kids absolutely love anything crafty or artsy. They all love crafts so much, my 3-year-old refused to be left out of this project. Whenever a lesson featured a new letter of the alphabet, we would make a craft of something that starts with that letter.
We limited our crafts to fairly two-dimensional representations and we used the same-size paper for each one. This way, when we made it through the alphabet we could make another, completely different alphabet book!
A lot of my ideas came from Pinterest, some were my own ideas, and other ones came from suggestions that my kids made! I plan to make posts for each of our alphabet crafts. Maybe one day I’ll even get around to making printable templates for them.