I had high hopes for this curriculum based on what I had heard of it so we decided to purchase it for use with our 1st grader. This review is ONLY for the Blue Book, I have no experience with any later levels.

“The Common Sense Reading Program… is the perfect reading program for beginning readers. The updated third edition is even easier to use with clearer instructions and a colorized companion Student Booklet. Lessons include: phonics instruction using the “Successful Reading for Beginners” series. Your student begins reading stories right away!”

My Pros: The few reading selections we have read together so far have been enjoyable. I like the focus on Aesop’s Fables which have a strong emphasis on teaching good morals and character. I like the discussion questions that the teacher’s guide provides to help improve and inspire conversation.

My Cons: Unfortunately the cons far outweigh the pros in this review. This teacher guide is MUCH too wordy and teacher-intensive in the sense of reading through the daily lesson plans and weeding out what I don’t care to complete with my daughter. I’m a “scanner” when it comes to reading through personal instruction so for it to keep my focus and desire to continue, I need it to be simple reading and minimal prep.

As far as my daughters’ reaction to it goes: the content and activities bordered on being much too dry. That is the main reason I would be hesitant to continue forward into other levels. I found myself fully skipping many of the lessons because they got too redundant or my daughter just fought back on the particular activities as not being interesting enough for her full attention. The artwork and the worksheets were boring to her even in the sense that, for example, she LOVES to color normally but she did not like the coloring options and would refuse most days. Something about the visual appeal was lacking for her.

She’s in 1st grade, technically speaking, but at a higher educational level than what this course has to offer. I believe she may have benefitted more from a later level to start because it may have been a more advanced reading level and not so much review. The Blue Book is still heavily focused on letter sounds which, for her, was completely unnecessary. I blame the fact that, at the beginning, we were homeschooling with help from a public Charter School and since her birthday just missed the cut-off in September she had to go through both the TK & K levels. Essentially this gave her 2 years in Kinder, which in my opinion is just asinine! (I’ve experienced this with 2 out of our 5 kiddos and both of them who went through TK/K together have experienced boredom staying on their technical level. I can only imagine what teachers in a public school setting deal with, with children who are completely stunted in their abilities but unable to go into the next grade up.) Thankfully because we also homeschooled I made the decision to just push her into other 1st grade requirements early because she takes to learning new things so quickly. In retrospect, she’s closer to (if not already in) a 2nd-grade level in regards to curriculum and so I wish I had had the forethought to choose that.

I also would have preferred if the curriculum simply used more fables or other literature easily found in the library or used bookstores. The Blue Book uses their own authored readers, which is fine, but because my daughter wasn’t drawn to their artwork, she didn’t enjoy reading through them. She did like the fables, as I previously mentioned, and a couple of other books like The Story of Ferdinand, etc.

All in all, I’m decisive that we won’t need to try another level as there are many other more substantial options to choose from. (I’ve already reviewed The Good and the Beautiful’s Language Arts Program, which remains a favorite of ours at the elementary level. I also do have a few more to blog about soon that I would easily choose again over Learning Language Arts Through Literature.)