Blast Off with Ziggy
One of the BEST aspects of All About Learning Press‘ Pre-Reading program was ZIGGY !! He’s a lovable zebra puppet friend who takes part in your lessons. There’s something about a puppet…. my child tended to listen to anything Ziggy wanted to say or do… not me. 😉
Even though we skipped Level One and went right to Level Two I still purchased the “Adventures in Reading with the ZigZag Zebra” game book (aka “Blast off with Ziggy!” as Bam Bam calls it.) So glad I did – he begs for these games. The beauty is that I can use these games as review with new material…. new phonograms, harder words. It’s quite flexible! The games are cut out, glued by you into folders. Once assembled you just pull it out and play. You keep the game pieces in a little ziploc bag which fits in the pocket they provide for the front of your binder. The games are short enough to not get boring, but long enough to get some solid review completed. I tend to use these as a treat in addition to his Level Two lesson – if he asks. The other fun thing is that we’re doing our own global geography adventure – these games tie in with a world map where Ziggy blasts off to different countries in his adventures – a perfect tie in.
They have a free phonogram app too for the iphone or ipad that you can use too to ‘check’ any phonograms instead of you having to say them. 🙂
I have much more to say about All About Learning Press which I hope to get to in other posts – but suffice it to say that it’s been the perfect backbone to our Pre-K and K years so far! It get’s DONE ! It might be so effective… there’s a chance we may need to jump past Level 3 and go to 4. Will have BamBam take the readiness test and see…. The customer service line is amazing too – and they have tons of free downloads and advice on their blog.