Gentle Phonics with Dash into Reading: Our Journey

This week I boxed up our Dash into Reading curriculum until my next child is ready. (She’s 18 months right now.) As my now-fluent reader blew through the final story, let’s just say I felt quite sentimental. It has been a journey getting to this point. Incidentally, the Dash books were the first books my son took into his bed with him to read at night. Because he loved them and he COULD!

After purchasing and loving Dash, I became an affiliate. Links in this post are affiliate links. You can use my code for 15% off a regular price purchase: librarianinthehouse20

I found my way to Dash into Reading after having used All About Reading (AAR). I have been an AAR fan since my first child began that program when he was 3 years old. I still am; we have transitioned back to AAR with the newly fluent Child #2 that I mentioned earlier, and completed the entirety of the program with Child #1. It’s thorough and really outstanding. [Read my full review of All About Reading here]

Part way through the early levels of instruction with AAR, my son began to be very resistant. He began to hate reading, no matter how I split the lessons, modifications I made, etc. My mama gut said that he just wasn’t developmentally ready yet for the speed/depth/format of AAR.

I came across Dash into Reading and decided to give it a try. I didn’t want to completely put aside reading. I felt that I wanted to maintain the skills he’d already gained, but we needed something different. A different approach.

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Dash was the perfect solution! We took a step back, and he gained confidence. The “curriculum” is so simple that it doesn’t feel like a curriculum at all. It’s a set of ten 6″ square books. They are not intimidating in the least. The illustrations are darling, and my son loved them (don’t be fooled if you think they look too “pretty”! lol).

Each book in the entirety of the curriculum is 10 pages long, just with varying amount of text/pictures per page. In the front cover/first pages of each book is the lesson- the sounds the book will work on. The child can place a sticker on the page each time they complete the warm-up blending activity.

To introduce Dash, I started by wrapping up each of the 10 readers in gift wrap (with labels indicating which # was inside). We’d then work verrrrry slowly on mastering a book together. When a book was mastered, he would read it to Daddy, and then we opened the wrapping paper of the next book.

There are other components you can add in (activity packs, handwriting books). But we largely didn’t.

This is where we parked for probably a year. I told you we took it slow. 🙂

And now we’re moving back to All About Reading for more sophisticated word attack strategies and the support of the other components of language arts that it teaches (comprehension skills).

You might be interested in reading this list of 5 Reading Readiness Indicators from the AAR blog.

I am so grateful for the freedom and time that we had to take a step back and let my “late bloomer” bloom! He has fond memories of his time with Dash, and I am truly looking forward to pulling this out with my next reader when she’s ready!