Sunday, March 22, 2009

Rime to Read - a program for Beginning Readers!


Rime to Read is a reading program which has a color-coded system and based on rimes. Yes rimes and not rhymes. It’s not a spelling mistake!!! Rimes refer to words which sound and look alike for example Pat, cat, sat. Rhymes on the other end refer to words which sound alike but do not always look alike for example son, fun.

Rime to Read is an approach to beginning reading which is available online as well as download. A total of 20 books can be printed or read on the family computer. The online approach permits the child to hear the word that he or she has trouble to read. The system will read the word and the child can then repeat it. This reading program put emphasis on word families and is sold exclusively as virtual books. You have also the possibility to print the books and if you know how your printer works you can print them as a little booklet. I did that with ours and my son loves to carry them around. I didn’t think that he would be able to read right away but he went through a few of them and enjoyed them. They are simple and straightforward. Rime to Read was developed to fill a void in materials for teaching young children to read. Rime to Read is unique in itself because there are few riming books on the market. When first launch, the effectiveness of the product was immediately recognized since they sold out the first print run of 2000 sets! Since then, the authors have decided to use the technology available these days and offer the books virtually.

Rime to Read uses a color-coded system which allow the child to see the visual similarities and differences for the readers. The series of books use 20 word families (rimes) and 46 high-frequency words. The program is a beginning program appropriate for children who know most of the consonant sounds and can identify most letters. It is not based on phonics but rather on rimes because these are easier for a child to hear and differentiate. However, the books cover the same material that you would find in a beginning phonics program. Rime to Read is a cumulative program and each book introduce a new rime and new sight words as well as reviewing the ones the child has learned before. Consequently, it is strongly recommended to follow the order of reading and each book has a numerical order.

The ladies who wrote this reading program have some background in teaching. Dr. Hines has a PhD in Special Education with a specialization in Learning Disabilities. She was an educator for students with or at risk for learning disabilities, with a specialization in reading instruction for more than 20 year. Her partner in writing is Mrs Klaiman and she was a first grade teacher for many years. Finally, Mrs Hookman Berger is the illustrator of the series and has a background in Fine Arts. I think these ladies know the type of problems that can rise when a child start to read as well as for older kids who need remedial work.

As I mentioned earlier, my 4 year old son was able to read some of them and we plan to continue with the rest of the series. I am impressed on how well he caught up on them and is excited about being able to read like his big brother. He would love to jump to bigger books and I have to remind him constantly that he needs to start at the bottom and slowly climb the ladder of reading. Teaching reading was something that stressed me out the first time I started to teach it with my oldest. But I since realize that it will come with time… I want my kids to have a love of reading and that they will always seek to read good books. With Rime to Read it will be easy to introduce reading when they know the sounds of the alphabet.

What’s great with purchasing this program is that there is no shipping cost involved or a waiting period! You purchase them and you have automatically access to your books. You can download them on your pc and print them or you can use the virtual ones with the pronunciation tool. Rime to Read is offered in various packages. You can decide to purchase the complete set of 20 books (44.99$) or you can purchase individual packages of 4 books each (9.99$).
If you have a young child who wants to start reading or if you have a child who is experiencing problems in reading, I strongly recommend that you give Rime to Read a try. Like I said, I was personally surprise to see how fast my 4 year old caught on the rimes. And you should have seen his HUGE smile when he finished the first book. .. Priceless.

You can even try the first book for free...Simply go to this link http://www.rimetoread.com/books/purchase and sign up to access it. Have fun reading!

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