Earlier this year, the Homeschool Crew had a chance to review All About Spelling and its Level 1 reader. AAS has truly revitalized the language arts portion of our school day and we continue to use it. With perfect timing, along comes the reader for Level 2--What Am I?: a collection of short stories.
These stories are a lot more interesting than those in The Beehive Reader (which is being renamed Cobweb the Cat) from level 1. We're no longer limited to one syllable, short-vowel sound words. Because our AAS Level 2 book predates What Am I, it doesn't include prompts in the lesson on which story to read. I'm assuming newer editions will include this in the lesson plan.
The pictures are as charming as ever! The stories vary from the zany "Broken Robot," to the cute "Skunk Hotel," to stories with profound life lessons like "The Bake Sale" and "Matt the Musk Ox." Sometimes I think the author is a little heavy handed at inserting words to reenforce the spelling lessons though--in "Broken Robot" the title character "...slung a bunch of pumpkins into the bathtub" in a hotel. My Schnickelfritz stopped reading the story to ask why there were pumpkins in the hotel room.
On the plus side, this reader does introduce the student to more than just short stories. "Broken Robot" is written in the form of a letter, chapter 9 is a collection of poems, and chapter 10 is a word game with clues to guess "What am I?"
What Am I? is a high quality hardback book. The first pages allow a student to write to whom the book belongs and begin to take pride of ownership. It will retail for $19.95 and be available on a new website, All About Reading sometime this month. You can read what my fellow Crewmates think about What Am I? by clicking here.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of All About Reading's What Am I? for the purpose of completing this review. I received no other compensation.
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