When my daughter was 5 she really wanted to learn how to read. She loved listening to read-alouds, she had been paging through board books since she was a baby, and had been “reading” (by memorization and recitation) since she was old enough to talk. She now understood that those marks on the page meant something and she wanted to unlock that mystery!

So we started to learn how to read… I used some basic well-recommended programs and Bob books…. And she ended up in tears almost every single day. While she had all the enthusiasm her brain would not cooperate. She would get frustrated, I would get frustrated and over the course of a few weeks what had started out as a joyous journey turned into a difficult and disliked chore. 

So we stopped. We went back to me reading aloud, to her listening to audiobooks for pleasure, and remembering that reading is fun and every book is an adventure. Our break lasted about a year. In that time I researched reading and language arts curriculum, trying to find a program that would match my daughter’s strengths and give us the structure we needed to tackle this challenge. I found Logic of English Foundations (LoE).

Logic of English takes a phonemic awareness and systematic phonics approach to teaching reading and language arts. In plain terms that means that it focuses first on making sure the child understands the 45 sounds of the English language; what sound does each letter and/or combination of letters make and how do we make those sounds ourselves. Then LoE teaches the 75 phonograms (letters or combinations of letters that represent sounds) and the 31 spelling rules which make up 98% of the English language. Putting these together allows students to decode any word without relying on sight words, or guessing. It also explains the exceptions so it’s clear to the student why some words don’t “follow the rules.”

This sounded right up my daughter’s alley. What I found in our earlier attempt at reading is sight words did not work. She had a definite strength in hearing sounds and being able to memorize what she heard but seeing those sounds represented by letters on the page was just a jumble of lines to her. So we dove in. And I’m happy to say that it was a success. 

LoE uses a multi-sensory approach to teaching. There are games and tactile boards, writing practice, recitation, and worksheets. This worked well as there wasn’t time to get bored. Each part of a lesson was relatively short and then we moved on to a new activity. I did feel that the lessons were long but we took our time and did not do all the activities in one day. Sometimes we skipped activities if I felt she had a good handle on the material and sometimes we spread it out over multiple days. 

The curriculum bundle is a hard copy resource that comes with all the materials you need. There is also an online supplement that you can add (this is newer and we did not use it). I liked that the program was open-and-go with lots of teaching instruction and explanations. While I did not always follow the instructor's script I felt prepared and informed about what we were doing and had explanations when my daughter inevitably asked, “but why is this word different?” 

The other aspect of the curriculum I appreciated was that I could choose to have the printed student material either in manuscript or cursive print. Cursive script can often be easier for some students to form and it was a nice option to have.

We ended up using all four levels of LoE’s Foundations program which is designed for early elementary students. From there they offer an Essentials program for older elementary students and up. This program follows a similar format but goes more in-depth and focuses more on spelling mastery, grammar and vocabulary. You can see a comparison of the two programs here.

Overall, I was thrilled with how well LoE met our needs, how easy it was to use and how engaged my daughter was while using it. As I said earlier, I did adjust the schedule and moved at different paces depending on her level of mastery; I also did not always follow the instructor's script as it felt forced when I was speaking with my own child! I did appreciate having the script and the additional instructor explanations. Tailoring LoE in these ways was not difficult or time consuming. Price-wise the curriculum is expensive but you can often find used copies online or at curriculum sales or alternatively, you can sell your copies and recoup some of the cost when you are through with the curriculum. I found it well worth the price for teaching reading without tears and frustration!