I have wanted to try Horizons by Alpha Omega Publications for years and our Horizons 1st Grade Phonics and Reading Set is finally here!  Oh happy day!

Horizons 1st Grade
Phonics and Reading Set

Student Workbooks 1 & 2

Teacher’s Guide

Readers: The Fox In The Box & The Deer In The Woods

Retails $106.95

 

Horizon Curriculum Features:

• Christian Workbook Curriculum
• Reinforces Learning
• Teacher-directed Curriculum
• Hands-on Activities
• Brightly Illustrated Pages
• Fundamentals of Phonics
• Letter Recognition
• Memorization of Phonics / Spelling Rules
• Word Relationships
• Explore Phonetic Sounds
• Practice Learned Concepts

Student Workbook 1

Lessons 1-80 plus 8 review tests.

Student Workbook 2

Lessons 81-160 plus 8 review tests.

Horizons helps kids learn to read with phonetic based word recognition. The curriculum contains 160 lessons dived between two student workbooks, and has a review test after every ten lessons.

Readers

The Fox In The Box & The Deer In The Woods

 

There are corresponding stories to read together in the readers that go along with each lesson in the student workbook to expand the learning and reinforce the concepts.  The teacher assists with the reading until about lesson 40 when most students are able to read the stories on their own.  Then you are encouraged to have the students to go back and re-read the first 40 stories and practice the skills they have learned.

Teachers Guide

The Teacher’s Guide is a huge 420 page book that contains all of the student lessons, teacher’s lesson plans, reproducibles, and answer keys.  There are flash cards in the back of the Teachers Guide as well as additional worksheets for the student.

Scope and Sequence:

Lessons 1-30
• Consonant and vowel sounds
• Silent “e”
• Consonant digraphs: th, ch, wh, bt, ph, gm, mn, ck, gh, gn, ch, tch, hn, kn, mb
• Vowel pairs: oa, ee, ie, ay, ai, ea, oe
• Consonant blends: cl, cr, bl, br, fl, gr, gl, sp, nd, nt, ng, nk, sk, mp, lp
• Suffixes: -ful, -ly, -less, -ness, -y, -en, -able
• Capitalization and punctuation

Lessons 31-60
• Consonant digraphs: mb, wh, wr, gn, hn, kn, ch
• Consonant blends: sc, scr, pl, sm, pr, tr, fr, sn, lk, lt, lf, ft, tw, sr
• Words with “x”
• Contractions: will plus not, have; am plus us, are, is
• Compound words
• Suffixes: -ing, -ed, -s, -es, -ful, – ness, -less, -ly, -y, -en, -able, -er, -est

Lessons 61-90
• Long vowels
• Writing lessons: story, letter, and personal narrative
• Vowel diphthongs
• Prefixes: re-, un-, dis-
• Beginning consonant blends with “r,” “l,” and “s”

Lessons 91-120
• “Y” as a vowel
• Consonant digraph checkups
• Writing lessons: report, thank-you note, and personal experience narrative
• Syllables: words with prefixes, suffixes, and compound words
• Synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms
• Alphabetical order to second letter

Lessons  121-160
• Words with the sounds “f” and “s”
• Writing lessons: imaginative story, poem, journal entry, and friendly letter
• Checkup: contractions, r-controlled vowels, prefixes, suffixes,
capitalization and punctuation, and plural words
• Irregular plurals
• Possessives

How we used Horizons 1st Grade Phonics and Reading in our home:

I have six kids and we have used Alpha Omega Life Pacs for part of our homeschool education. The Life Pac curriculum is awesome and worked great for some of my kids, but not great for all of them.  One of my kids who is a visual auditory learner, struggled with Life Pacs and would often resort to arguing if I asked him to work in his workbooks after I explained the lesson.   Over time I came to realize he needed more color and less information on a page than what Life Pacs offer.   I read on their website about Horizons and have had it on my wish list since.  His younger sister learns just like he did and this time around we can learn reading skills without the frustration and arguing which is a tremendous blessing!

We have been using the Student Workbook 1 and the Reader Book 1 in the set everyday so far since they arrived, we have also taken it on trips in the van too.   She doesn’t leave the house without putting it in her backpack.  We put the diffuser with her favorite essential oils (Peppermint and Wild Orange) that promote focus close by her so she can enjoy it as she studies.  This has been a fun treat for her to set up as she gets ready to study and promotes her active participation and focus.  Then we sit side by side as she goes through her assignments. First she learns a grammatical rule and she practices applying it in fill in the blanks, sounding out words and circling the correct options that go with colorful pictures, word searches, crossword puzzles, and more.  She is doing great.

Since my daughter was struggling in her reading skills last year, I felt it would be best to go back to the 1st grade level and learn the basics with this curriculum instead of putting her in the 2nd grade level at this time. My hope is that she will really be excited about this and we can move ahead to the 2nd grade level half way through the year if all goes well.   What I am realizing is that I need to purchase another student workbook and have her and her younger brother go through this course together at the same time.  She learns better by observing.  He learns better by just having it explained and then he takes off and gets it done independently.  It would help her to watch him and learn with him together.

I am thrilled!  More importantly my daughter is motivated to do her workbook.  She is making progress each day over the past several weeks and this course will help lay a solid foundation for reading, writing, and spelling for her this school year.  This curriculum is everything I had hoped it would be.

Social Media

Be sure to follow Alpha Omega Publications on their social media links for all the latest news and updates.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aophomeschooling
Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/+Aophomeschooling/posts
Twitter: https://twitter.com/homeschoolers/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/aophomeschool/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/aophomeschooling/

Check out what other homeschool families on the TOS Review Crew had to say about using Horizons curriculum products with their kids.