Curriculum Reviews

Phonics Pathways (10th ed.)

Format: paperback, ~250 pages, black and white
Bought from Amazon, I think. I previewed it at my library first. It runs around $25, or you can get a previous edition for even less.
Used for reading instruction, about ages 5 1/2 to 7 1/2, but with Logic of English Foundations B and C used in between.
Pros:

• Very reasonable cost. 
• Mostly open and go. 
• It goes clearly, step by step, starting with the short vowel sounds. By about page 40, the student is blending CVC words (e.g., hat, hen, hid, hot, hug). By pg. 200, there are sentences like "The badger gyrates and wedges himself under the stage," and "Paul did not always floss, and he lost almost all his teeth."
• My child liked "the little guy" (Dewey) and his inspirational sayings.
• My child liked the games, which helped sweeten the lessons at a stage when he was having to work very hard.
• It is marked All Ages, so an older remedial student does not need to feel embarrassed about using a book marked "first grade" or the like.
  

Cons:

• You do need access to a copy machine for a few (<10)  pages, such as the train game and the bug game. My printer was able to do this for me.
• In the middle of the book, my child found the amount of text on a page overwhelming. This would not be an issue for an older or more enthusiastic student, but it's why I put it aside--stopping after pg. 116--for just over a year. We completed Logic of English Foundations B and C when he was six, and then came back to Phonics Pathways before starting LOE Essentials.
• It does not have any stories, so you will want to supplement with BOB Books or Nora Gaydos books in the beginning, and something longer like the Pathway Readers or Henry and Mudge books later.
• It does not include handwriting pages, so you will want a separate spelling notebook if you want to use it for spelling. On the other hand, because it's not consumable, you can use it for more than one child.
• There are very occasional printing errors. For example, on page 208, the box for the picture and saying with Dewey overlaps the bottom half of the g in guzzle, cutting it off. These were rare enough not to bother me, and easily corrected with a black pen.

Conclusion: 
Phonics Pathways is inexpensive and systematic. I liked it better than Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (which has an unnecessary phonetic marking system that doesn't make up for a few cute stories to read), and it's more kid-friendly than The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading (which is otherwise very similar). If your budget does not allow for Logic of English Foundations, Phonics Pathways is a very good choice.

Logic of English Foundations B and C

Format: I bought hard copies of the teacher books and PDFs of the student books and readers, plus the phonogram cards. You do need to buy both the student and teacher books to make it work.
Bought from LogicofEnglish.com at a total cost of about $140, plus paper/cardstock and ink for printing.
Used for fourteen months, middle of kindy through middle of first grade, including summer. We normally did two lessons a week.

Pros:

• Colorful, attractive materials and fun activities were successful in engaging my child! This was not the annoying (to my child) "Let's Color!" type of material that is virtually ubiquitous in kindergarten work--rather, the child is to hop across the floor and read the card at each hop, or read the paragraph and draw a line from one basketball player to another to show where the ball went during the game.
• He did make significant progress in reading. Feeling more confident about it, he was ready to go back and tackle the rest of Phonics Pathways.
• This could be used for more than one child, making it a far less painful expense.
• It includes handwriting, if you're interested in that. You can choose between manuscript and cursive. We used HWOT instead, since I don't care for italics.

Cons:

• I never want to cut out another flash card again. 
• Printing from the student book, I had to be careful which pages to print in color and which to do in b&w, which ones on card stock and which on regular paper, print the readers double-sided, etc.
• I found it awkward to switch back and forth between the student materials and teacher materials; and the phonogram cards really ought to be numbered.
• Very occasional grammar errors bugged me a little.
• The cover material for the teacher books feels awful to me, so I used book covers. (It's easy to make one out of a paper grocery bag, and then I glued a color copy of the cover onto the front to make it easy to identify and orient.)

Conclusion:
 Foundations B and C were a good investment for us: my child read better and was happier to spend time on it. I've decided to hold on to them for possible future tutoring. That said, I didn't enjoy some things about this curriculum, and if a less expensive alternative works, it's probably a better choice.
We are not buying level D; my child will be going into second grade and is a solid enough reader that we'll move on to Essentials next.

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Note

I paid for all of these out of my own pocket, and the authors/publishers do not know that I am reviewing them. I am only reviewing items I used for a full school year or longer.

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Coming soon, reviews of...

Pathway Readers
REAL Science Odyssey Earth and Space, Level 1
Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding K-2
Miquon Math
La Clase Divertida 1

and eventually...
Logic of English Essentials
Treasured Conversations
Spanish for Children Primer A.



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