McGuffey's Eclectic Primer

This is a good primer for beginning readers. It is focused on phonics and repetition. ( )

I'm of mixed feelings about these as a teaching tool. They were a concise reference for several students of different ages, very basic stuff. We used them and my children are articulate young adults now, but they did get tired of these before we worked through them all, so we stopped and moved on to whole books instead. ( )

Four to eight new words are taught in each lesson, but there's not enough support to make it a stand-alone reader. Children will still require substantial help.

Begins with "A cat and a rat", moves quickly into more complex readings such as "If the boat can not get to them, they will drown", and culminates with the poem: "All you do, and all you say / He can see and hear; / When you work and when you play / Think the Lord is near."

This is a reproduction of the original. This phonics based beginning instruction book makes me wonder how kids learned how to read with it. A teacher would definitely have to explain the principles of phonics to any student attempting to learn with this, but I'm picturing children learning with it in one room school houses and having difficulty because there are so many gaps and so little explanation. ( )

http://www.books.hwtk.net/subpage1.html ( )