The science of reading – phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.  These are the stepping stones to growing a proficient and confident reader. This in turn is foundational for future academic success. Proficient, confident readers ensure happy and proud parents, makes a teacher’s job easier, and builds a solid reputation for a school in the community.    

Practice makes perfect.  Once a student has moved from the phonemic awareness stage, Homestead Readers helps propel the student through the ensuing four stages of learning to read, as these decodable books cement the principles taught in your current learn-to-read curriculum.  Success breeds success and results in a student who can’t wait to read because they have found that learning to read really is not hard!

Homestead Readers is unique as a set of incremental decodable books. Why? Because, it features real children doing real things.  Children are drawn to such stories.    Many children wonder what it would like to grow up on a farm.   Most Homestead Reader stories have their setting on a farm, so lambing, shearing, chores, horseback riding, seeding, harvest, and typical problems and adventures weave their way into the stories.  For an urban child, this is a gateway to a different “world”.  For a rural child, these are experiences to which they can relate.

The systematic and incremental progression of the fifteen books in the Homestead Readers series aligns with several learn-to-read programs thereby providing students with the extra practice needed to perfect new skills.  This progression is similar not only in the introduction of sounds, but in the number of times a word is used in a story, the number of words in a sentence, and the number of words on a page. To further speed the journey to reading proficiency, Homestead Readers initially uses very few sight words.  

Homestead Readers can not only be used in a reading circle in a class situation or as independent reading material, but Homestead Readers feature an added bonus for when the books are sent home for reading practice.  Many parents no longer remember how they learned to read.  But each Homestead Reader book gives simple, brief explanations for an adult.   This enables them to help a child learn the sounds introduced in that book. Also included are tips of how to ensure their child is comprehending what they are reading.   

The below chart demonstrates the progression of reading skills in the Homestead Readers series.  It also indicates how each book complements the UFLI Foundations curriculum.  

Bulk pricing of Homestead Readers is available.  Contact Homestead Readers for quantities other than listed in the Homestead Reader online store.