Our Reading Adventures/McGuffy’s Readers

I have been waiting for Selena to really get interested in the written word, and short sentences to introduce my McGuffy’s Readers. I have the complete set of 7 books, that go from Kindergarten to 6th grade. I absolutely love these books. We of course will be starting in the McGuffey’s Eclectic Primer. It introduces the basic phonics such as short vowel a, along with the consonants needed on each page to learn to read the simple sentences. An example of the first sentence in the book is, “A cat and a rat. A rat and a cat.” Each page from there the sentences remain small but start building upon themselves and introducing new words like  “the” “ran” “at” “has” . The other thing I love about these books are that they introduce the pronunciation symbols, that make for introducing the dictionary the next step. They also introduce “Script” writing, or as we know it cursive. Now understand I do not expect Selena to learn Script writing yet, but it is important that she begins to see it in print and realize it is more then just scribbles.

The other thing I love about these books is that as the child moves through each book they are learning so much about sentence structure, punctuation, sequencing, and the pace each book moves at the child truly fosters a love for reading. Each book always recaps from the previous book, then strengthens from there. Moving from teaching phonics and simple sentence structure to paragraphs, grammar, then finishes off with a nice chapter book. The stories are good tales, taken from history, this is not to say they are not fiction, but they teach an appreciation for history along their route to teaching good reading and writing skills.

If you are looking for books with Great Illustrations to keep your children captive, these books are not for you. But if you are looking for books that are going to teach everything your child will need to not only be great readers, but understand how to write, and to use grammar, then these books are great.