Alpha-Phonics....A Review!

The Original Alpha-Phonics!

It’s been my pleasure to review the Alpha-Phonics Reading Program. It’s an easy to use reading program for not only young beginning readers, but really anyone who wants to learn to read.

The concept is this: Teach the alphabet orally (by having the student say the letters of the alphabet), visually (by having the student identify letters by name) and kinesthetically (by having the student practice writing upper and lower case letters.) Then, starting with lesson one, move on to learning the sounds of the letters- vowels, consonants, blends, and so forth. There are a total of 128 lessons.

The first thing I noticed about this program is its simplicity. There weren’t pages and pages of instructions and hours of trying to figure out how to use it. There were a few introduction pages in the teacher’s manual, and then you can basically just jump right into the lessons. There is practically nothing to prep ahead of time as far as using the lessons. Your student can work at their own pace. So, if you cover the first ten lessons in one day-great! They are fairly short lessons, but if you need to spend more time, you can do that as well.

Note: If you want to use this as a spelling program in addition, you would need to decide what words from the lessons you want to use as a spelling list for that week. Spelling rules and minimal activity suggestions for the week are given in the Companion Workbook. The workbook pages could be used as an activity to go with the lessons or as a test to see how well your child is grasping the lesson.

The Alpha-Phonics Primer for Beginning Readers also comes with a CD of the entire Primer (with audio instructions) for free, and is very reasonable priced at around $34.95. The Companion Workbook is around $19.95.

The Primer can be used "stand-alone", but if you would like to use this as a spelling program also, I would recommend getting the workbook for the reinforcement activities and spelling rules.


This set of Ten Little Companion Readers are around $24.95. These aren’t really necessary in order to use the program, but are a nice addition.

Thomas said, "Oh!! Do I get to read those?"   (Well, yeah!)



My Alpha-Phonics Bullet List Assessment:

• The program could be used with any age. It doesn’t have cutesy drawings and sayings that an older child would feel silly using.

• The book is very no-frills. It is written in very nice hand lettering, and there are no pictures. This would be perfect for the “easily distracted” learner, but would need to be adapted quite a bit for the kinesthetic learner.

• The price is very reasonable for what you’re getting, and is a Cathy Duffy Homeschool Pick.

• This program is for the homeschooler, tutor or classroom.

• The website and blog also offer tips for using the program and more.

Click HERE to purchase your copy of Alpha-Phonics!

*I received an Alpha-Phonics program free for review. The opinions in this post are my own.