When it comes to teaching (or rather helping) my children learn how to read I did what comes naturally. I wait until they are ready. How do I know when they are ready? They begin to show interest in letters and the sounds that the letters make. As well as they begin to ask me, “what does that say?”. That has just been what works for us….until now.
I have been blessed to review Foundations, Level A and the Reusable Resources from Logic of English. In addition to the teacher’s manual, student workbook (my choice was manuscript, not cursive) and the reusable items, I was also privileged to review both Apps from the company, Doodling Dragons and Phonics with Phonograms. There is also an extra book that I was given Doodling Dragons: An ABC Book of Sounds that was another wonderful way to enforce the ideas being taught, this book is needed to go along with the Foundations, Level A set. 
The Foundations, Level A has the Teacher’s Manual and the student’s workbook and the extra hard backed book Doodling Dragons: An ABC Book of Sounds and the price is $71.00 for all of these books. The age range suggested on the site for this program is 4-7 years old.
The teacher’s manual is a beautiful hardback book that will last for a very long time, I think I’m in love! The student workbook is a soft cover with removable pages for ease of writing out the lessons. The teacher’s manual is one of the easier books I have used. The instructions are well written and easy to explain to my little Joseph, which is 6 years old. He is able to follow the directions easily and loves to work on his worksheets. Some of the first lessons were so much fun that we ended up doing more than one a day! We ended up doing just one lesson a day because of the time that we needed to review previous lessons.
Joseph has been a bit hesitant with the writing portion of this curriculum, so to be honest, I’ve not pushed that section of the program. He has enjoyed learning the phonograms and the phonics section though. I too have learned a bit I never thought of myself (probably why I don’t have my own curriculum for sale, lol) about voiced and unvoiced letters. A brilliant way to encourage the learning of the letters and their sounds!
The Foundations, Level A works well with the added reusable resources and the Doodling Dragons: An ABC Book of Sounds. By using the extra items, it allows the little ones to engage more in the learning process. And for me, that is a wonderful help due to a bouncy little 6 year old boy that would really rather be playing instead of learning!
The Doodling Dragons: An ABC Book of Sounds is so fun to read! All the rhyming words and adorable pictures to go with each sound was always a favorite to re-read for both of us.
The white board was fun for Joseph because he was allowed to use it during the lesson part that I was reading out loud to him. He practiced his letter writing and I allowed him to write the letters as he liked, not always as instructed with the manuscript cards.
Joseph especially liked to use the Basic Phonogram Cards because it didn’t really feel like “doing school” for him. We would review them daily as well as the ones asked for during lesson time. The lessons we did at the end of this review took us along the lines of 30 minutes, just to make sure that we were covering all of the needed materials. That time did include the reviewing of the game cards and basic flash cards.
Check out the goodies that come in the Reusable Resources, which is totally usable with Foundations, Level B and Foundations, Level C. So many wonderful items that come from a one time purchase, that is the way to go for me! I love being able to use and reuse and reuse a product, so this works for me! Reusable Resources:
- Basic Phonogram Flash Cards, $18.00
- Half size white board, $9.00
- Manuscript tactile cards, $28.00 (also cursive tactile cards available)
- Rhythm of Handwriting Chart, $10.00
- Blue book face game cards, $10.00
- Red Manuscript game cards, $10.00
Along with all of the incredible books and reusable items I also reviewed the Apps that the company offers. I have an iPad so I was able to get both of the Apps, Doodling Dragons and Phonics with Phonograms. 
Doodling Dragons has a few different ways to use the App. The most helpful way is the read along option in the application. The read along follows page by page with the Doodling Dragons: An ABC Book of Sounds. It was nice to have Joseph turn on the app and then hand him the physical book to follow along. He got the best of both worlds, a read aloud story and the use of the iPad! If you want, during the read along, you can actually turn off the readers voice and the child can touch items on the page and the application will pronounce the word the phonemically. That was really neat and a feature you don’t usually find in a read along app.
Also, in Doodling Dragons the child can play a phonemic awareness game. They can choose a letter then the app will supply the word using phonemics and the child then chooses the correct image on the screen. An awesome way for little ones to get the knowledge without all of the (sometime) frustrations of class time. Joseph enjoyed this part of the app the most. The last way that the app can be utilized is the child can learn all of the phonograms by choosing a letter. I think that for Joseph this felt too much like class time, and he did not use this section of the app unless I instructed him to spend some time in this area.
The Doodling Dragons App is available through Google play, Amazon and the Apple AppStore for $4.99.
The other App that I reviewed was the Phonics with Phonograms. This was by far the application Joseph preferred. The App allowed him to play a matching game with tiles. The program would say the phonogram and he would have to select the correct tile that matched the spoken phonogram. There is a total of 74 phonograms in the application that can be used and a total of 10 levels to complete. He has only been able to complete 3 levels so far but with continued use he will improve.
In the app there is also a way to show all of the phonograms and you can touch each one and it will produce the correct phonemic sound. Also, the app will allow you to chose lowercase letters or uppercase letters. I like this option because it helped Joseph with letter identification and he was also able to hear the phonemic sound too. Lastly, the app also enables you to set up a custom list of phonograms. This is especially helpful on the phonograms that Joseph was having a much harder time grasping and recognizing. This App is one of the best I have seen so far in the letter sound department, we really enjoyed the use of this application.
The Phonograms App is only available through the Apple AppStore, for the iPod, iPhone or iPad for $2.99.
I am thrilled that we were able to review this product from Logic of English. For the time spent using all of the goodies we were reviewing, I have been so pleased to witness Joseph garnering an amazing understanding of the sounds of the letters and the beginnings to reading. What an excellent curriculum! We will continue to utilize these products and I will definitely consider moving on to the coordinating products. It is a fun and easy way to help my son in an area of worry for this mama, learning to read.
The website is an amazing site, so very easy to navigate between products and nicely laid out. It was refreshing to visit and learn more about their products due to the ease of the site. Make time to visit and look around at all of the fantastic items they offer for sale. 
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I hope you found something you didn’t even know you needed or wanted! Thank you for reading my latest review and I look forward to sharing the next item on our list! In His Grace.
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