{REVIEW} Get Ready for the Code: Books A, B, and C

I have heard of the Explode the Code series for as long as we’ve been homeschooling. But for us, I never really saw a place for it. HOWEVER, that changed this last year. When Ben was having a difficult time learning his A, B, C’s, I really did not know what to do. I tried all the tricks I had but it just wasn’t clicking. Many suggested just taking a break altogether and revisiting it. And we did take a break for a little while – but when I brought it back, Ben was still not clicking with the letters.

That is when I remembered this series and thought – “hey, we might have a use for that!”. This was a fun supplemental curriculum to learning our letters. For me, I don’t think I would use it as a full preschool curriculum but it was a fun addition. We used all the books in this level (A, B, and C) as well as the Picture Letter Cards (flashcards). We did not do every page in the books. We worked on the letters that Ben needed additional practice in and skipped the others.

Get Ready for the Code Series

This books are the primers for the Explode the Code series. They are very basic. There is no explanation at the beginning of the books and I don’t think they really need them. Over the course of the three books, they cover the consonants (no vowels) of the alphabet. I wish there had been the inclusion of the vowels (as those were a particular struggle for Benjamin). Also, the letters are not presented in alphabetical order in the books.

Each letter had a visual page to show which images are different in a line, a visual picture of a word starting with that letter, tracing, matching the letters in the a series, copying the letter, introduction of the letter sound, and following directions activities (these were oddly Benjamin’s favorite).

Book A

Practices consonants b, f, m, k, r, and t.

Book B

Practices consonants p, j, h, s, n, and d.

Book C

Practices consonants c, l, g, w, y, v, z, q, and x.

Picture Letter Cards

We did not use these as much as I thought we would. We used this series along with The Good and the Beautiful Preschool Course – which included flashcards and so we mostly used those. The upside to the cards in this series is they do have the picture associated with the letter included on the flashcard (used in the course book) which can help trigger the memory of the sound. So I would say they are beneficial.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I thought this was a great supplementary program to use while teaching letters and their sounds. Mostly for us, it was a nice way to add variety to this process of learning. I think it would be a fun supplement even if you had a child that was learning their letters easily to keep them busy if you had other kiddos to work with while homeschooling. My only downside was that it didn’t include the vowels of the alphabet. But overall, a great additional program!