Reading is two jobs that look like one: decoding the words, and understanding what they say. A kid who struggles with the first never gets to the second, and a kid who hates the passage never tries. A homeschool reading curriculum has to teach the mechanics in order and give the student something worth reading.
Each of these rests on learning science that has been replicated for decades. The studies, in plain language, are on the research page.
Closed syllables, consonant clusters, vowel teams. A beginning or struggling reader needs each pattern taught directly, practiced on real words, and brought back later. Retrieval beats rereading, and spaced practice beats cramming, across hundreds of experiments.
Material connected to a student's own interests raises both engagement and achievement, with the largest gains for students who struggle most. A reluctant reader who gets a passage about otters and a cat named Waffles reads it.
Read-aloud support improves comprehension, most of all for the students who struggle most, and it works best when it is simply part of every lesson rather than a tool a kid has to ask for.
A lesson on consonant clusters like str, spl, and scr marks the matching words in the passage as chips. Tap one and Primer breaks it into its component sounds. It appears automatically on exactly the words the lesson is teaching. A closed-syllables lesson for Lily ended in a worksheet that splits kitten, rabbit, and tadpole into chunks.
Closed syllables worksheet →
Comprehension lessons pair a passage with questions that point back into it. Jordan read about the flag, the bald eagle, and the Liberty Bell; Alex read how the Declaration was drafted and approved. The passage is at the student's level and about something they chose, and the exit ticket checks whether they understood it.
American symbols reading worksheet →
Listen to this lesson reads the page aloud. The gear icon switches to a dyslexia-friendly typeface, scales text up, and tints the page. None of it is required and all of it is one tap away, in the lesson, the puzzle, and the placement check.
Personalizing the lesson player →
The Starting Point Check finds where a reader should begin. Spelling, phonics, and decoding questions are dictation style: the student taps Hear The Word, and the word is spoken rather than shown. Eighteen questions, no timer, no score shown, and their usual supports on.
The Starting Point Check →
Every lesson has a Puzzle step built from its vocabulary, often a crossword with clues read aloud, so the new words have to be produced rather than picked from a list. Then five practice questions, then the exit ticket.
Inside a lesson →
Subject and predicate, conjunctions and prepositions, capitals and end punctuation, all taught as lessons with worksheets written around the student. Handwriting pages are generated from the letters they are shaky on, with stroke-order animations, and are measured letter by letter on an iPad.
Handwriting practice →Yes, as sequenced lessons on specific patterns: closed syllables, consonant clusters, and so on. Phonics lessons mark the matching words so the student can hear them sounded out, and the worksheet that follows practices the same pattern on real words.
Comprehension lessons pair a leveled passage with questions that send the student back into the text, then an exit ticket that checks understanding. Reports show which kinds of questions they tend to miss, which is usually the most useful thing to know.
The passage is about something they chose at intake, which changes the refusal more than any encouragement does. Read-aloud is there for the days reading itself is the obstacle, and the Unplugged step and worksheet give them a way to show what they learned off the screen.
Optionally. Intake lets you check lessons against Common Core ELA or your state framework, and every rung on a reading path shows its typical grade level.
One free lesson, no account: their name, one thing they love, and one topic. Or start a free trial and let them find their starting spot.