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Adventures in Phonics, Levels A, B, and C

Publisher: Christian Liberty Press Review last updated: 2009

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Adventures in Phonics teaches phonics in a traditional manner. It is similar in concept to the Modern Curriculum Press Plaid Phonics series, but it is definitely more challenging. In Level A, basic phonics is covered along with some suffixes and the articles "a" and "an." Letters and sounds are taught along with practice in letter formation. Little attention is given to teaching how to blend the sounds together for words. Instead, children practice writing and saying simple words. Since this series is intended to work alongside a phonics program, blending should already be covered elsewhere, so this should not be an issue. However, parents might need to adjust progress through these workbooks to stay in tune with where their children are in their actual reading skills.

Vowel sounds are taught in "sound families" (e.g., all the ways of making the long "o" sound). Almost all phonograms are taught in Level A, and by the end children should be able to read simple sentences. Levels B and C become much more comprehensive and also more challenging.

Level B reviews previously taught information, then continues with more challenging phonics, syllabication, prefixes, suffixes, apostrophes, synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. Level C covers essentially the same topics, advancing the level of difficulty with more challenging vocabulary, additional rules, smaller typestyle, and more activities to complete per page.

The student workbook and teacher's manual are both essential for whatever level you are using. Workbook pages are mostly typical fill-in-the-blank or circle-the-correct-answer exercises. Especially for Level A, the workbook is dependent upon the teacher's manual for lesson presentation. Level A also has a companion set of phonics flashcards and charts you will need to teach the lessons. The teacher's manuals have brief, easy-to-follow lesson plans, and Level A's manual also shows how to correlate the flash cards.

Adventures in Phonics is best used as an adjunct to a basic handbook such as Noah Webster's Reading Handbook (also from CLP). You probably would not want to use these alongside a comprehensive program such as Sing, Spell, Read, and Write that already has its own workbooks, since it would overwhelm your child with seatwork. Using Noah Webster's Reading Handbook with all three levels of workbooks provides a solid grounding in phonics and reading. Add a few practice readers (such as those published by CLP) for a complete program.

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