Customer Reviews

Alpha Tales Teaching Guide (Grades PreK-1)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My kids love these stories and their parents love building their at home library too.

I teach English in Japan and this prodoct has been a big hit with my young students. I highly recommend this series.

I'm thrilled that I decided to go ahead and get these regardless of some other reviews. The AlphaTales series, is just that, it's a series that is all designed to work together and build upon the original stories. These mini-books go along with the stories and give the kids a book of their own that they can color in or write in. The activity suggestions are included at the end of the story books. I haven't received my big book,The Big Book of AlphaTales: 26 Irresistible Stories That Build Phonemic Awareness & Teach Each Letter of the Alphabet so I cannot comment on that yet, but it states that fact in this teaching guide. I do recommend that you tone down your printer to save on ink and this will also make it easier for the kids to color. The stories are fantastic and you could use thes alone without purchasing the big book or individual story books. I chose to do the big book because it has all the stories in one location (so I wouldn't have to worry about losing them), and so the kids could go back and read the stories again after their mini-books are gunked up. I use one mini-book a week and we do several activities with them. First is the initial reading, then we all read together and follow along in our own books. We color pictures, underline each word in the sentence, count words, count sentences, count syllables, make word cards to create our vocabulary lists, and discuss how we could add to or change the story. I also take each page of the mini-books and resize the pictures and sentences to use in our wall charts. The kids have to then match the sentence with the picture. Just a few ideas of activities you can do to build on these mini-books and I'm sure there are more out there. These are working fantastic for our homeschooling family (2-4 year olds and a 5 year old). I will be purchasing more items in the AlphaTales family because I like the idea of the kids having familiarity. Number Tales: Teaching Guide, AlphaTales: A to Z Letter Formation Practice Pages: Fun-filled Reproducible Practice Pages That Help Young Learners Recognize and Print Every Letter of the Alphabet, and Word Family Tales Teaching Guide have already been ordered and I'm sure that I will not be disappointed. (The rest are still in my wishlist. ;) ) I have not decided yet if I will order the readers for these because what I have been doing so far is working well and I can make that assessment better after I read the teaching guides.

I bought this for my preschooler but was disappointed when I noticed that the pages don't align on the cutting line. The pages have to be printed double sided, but when you cut them in half the back side might be off. You can notice how bad it is if you look at your book from the side before you take off any pages, you'll see the "zig zag" from the middle line being off in all pages. Also, the pages are not letter size when ripped from the book, so you'll have a border. I'm sure you can have even sized book by measuring and cutting over and over each mini book, but still you're gonna have some pages where you are going to see the guide lines are still there. This might not be a big deal for some, but for me it is. Is not like I didn't pay for the product, and ink, and paper, and didn't have to put all the books together myself... Good thing I decided to copy each page instead of using the originals from the book, if I decide to re-copy them in the future I can. I just don't see why because teachers or we parents are the ones doing most of the job that doesn't mean we don't deserve a good looking product as a result. I know none of this is the sellers fault, but this is my product review. Shipped fast and in good condition(came wich a bunch of other books). Would recommend this seller!

I was not really happy with this book. When reading the discription of the different activities the book offered I was really excited about using this book in my classroom. Once I receive the book there was nothing I could do with it. It did not provide any supplimental activites. The only thing I could do is give my students a run off copy of each story, but no real hands on activites or art projects. (What I was looking for)