by Joanne
(Mossman, Queensland, Australia)
My comments are only about the books in grades 1-4 of this series. My four eldest children have all enjoyed reading these books, though none of them have taken to the accompanying workbooks, so we have not pursued these. In some respects they are quite challenging for the grade listed on the front, but no one has been adverse to reading them them when they were older than that particular grade.
As a stand alone reading program, I would not recommend this series, we tend to prefer a more straight forward and phonetic approach. However, for reading practice they have been outstanding. We have mostly used them for oral reading practice, the family all sitting at the table working on handwriting practice or copywork, whilst each child in turn reads aloud to me a lesson from their BNReader. This practice has led to the children all having a good Bible knowledge (they get to hear the stories over everytime a younger sibling starts on the books)and being comfortable with reading Biblical vocabulary - words, places and names that just would not come up in other readers.
If the child struggles with reading the lesson confidently I take turns with them, paragraph by paragraph. (The paragraphs are generally very short, and thus achievable.) This approach has the bonus of all the children being modelled good expression and correct pronunciation of difficult words.
We have found these books to be an integral part of our home school journey, and I hope to keep them for my grandchildren.
Jul 27, 21 08:57 AM
Jul 08, 20 06:47 AM
Jul 07, 20 09:02 PM