The program grows!

Hello from Doreese

After writing my first book, "ABC's See What They Say" to teach the alphabet names and sounds, I thought I was through with writing books. But then I volunteered with first graders who could say the individual sounds of a word, but could not blend them together to make a word. So, I saw that there was a need for a blending book. I then wrote, "ABC's See How to Chop and Blend - a Recipe for Reading". I wanted them to be able to come up with letter sounds on their own, so I created my own fonts with picture clues, "costumes", on them that matched the clues they had all ready learned. For example, the letter 'o' has some of the octopus legs on it. Putting a word together is a 4-step process. The child uses their finger to sound out the word, following along the lines. Because it uses this tactile sense, children pick up on it really fast. Also, the visual given to show them how the sounds come together to make a word makes it easy for children to understand the process. In this book they are taught long vowels as well as short vowels. In Level Two, they learn how to read the consonant blends - words with two or three sounds at the beginning like: bread, crib, skate, etc. They learn a lot of skills in this book.


Next, I wanted to give children something fun to read that did not require any memorization of sight words (rule breakers). This builds their confidence in their reading abilities and helps them to develop a love of reading. So, I wrote "Prases See What They Say" with little short sentences of mostly one-syllable words. Then I wrote "Stories See What They Say" with 40 Very Short Stories and 20 Short Stories that have paragraphs in them including, "Little Red Hen", "Gingerbread Man" and "Three Little Pigs". I added a fun reading exercise in these books to help children read with expression.


Now came the time to deal with those sight words. What to do when 'a' and 'o' can make nine different sounds each? Because I had all ready been putting little "costumes" on the letters, I had the idea that the same way people can impersonate other people when they want to look and sound like them, the letters can imletterate other letters when they want to sound like them by wearing the costume that belongs to that letter. For example, when the letter 'a' wants to say the short 'o' sound, it will simply borrow the letter 'o's octopus costume, as in the words, "ball", or "car". (See the example on our website http://www.seeabcs.com/ ) Imletteration miraculously unlocks the mystery of why letters make sounds that don't belong to them in a way that makes sense to a four or five-year old. Once the child finishes the book "Imletteration", he/she will be able to read any book he/she wants to regardless of grade level!