Objective

Letter Mastery begins with a focus placed on ear, tongue, and eye training to assist students in understanding the correlation between the sounds they hear, say, and see. This training helps students hone their skills in both auditory and visual letter/sound distinction, pronunciation, and spelling. 

The Components of Ear, Tongue, and Eye Training taught in Letter Mastery:

• Ear Training: The child learns to hear, identify, and differentiate between individual letter sounds. 
• Tongue Training: The child learns to correctly pronounce each of the sounds in a word, ensuring that they will correctly comprehend the word in isolation and within the context of a reading selection. 
• Eye Training: The child learns that the sounds they hear and say are associated with symbols. Once the connection between sound and symbol is made, they begin to decode and transform letters into meaningful words.  

These foundational skills will serve students well as they progress to reading longer passages and learning to spell. Each skill in Letter Mastery is taught incrementally as children learn to put letters together to form words and simple sentences. 

Every chapter of Letter Mastery offers a wide variety of fun activities to solidify their grasp of each letter as it’s presented and delightful reading selections to further their connections.

Some of these activities include:

• Mouth Gymnastics: Students have an opportunity to play with words in a way that ignites their imagination and reinforces each letter’s sound in their minds. Not only are “mouth gymnastics” a fun and easy way to practice letter sounds, they also begin building the foundation for a child to understand more advanced concepts like alliteration and rhythm later on in their reading journey.
• Listening Lessons: Our “listening” lessons build up the habit of attention while simultaneously teaching the student to distinguish between each and every sound they hear in a word –a skill that will serve them well when they begin reading more advanced literature and working on written composition.
• Picture Studies: Picture studies in each chapter provide a simple, effective way to build up a child’s observational skills while also supplying them with experience in abstract thinking. Students will practice recalling both the sound and symbol associated with the words represented in each illustration.  
• American Sign Language: The incorporation of American Sign Language (ASL) into each chapter gives students an opportunity to practice letters with their hands, adding a deeper level of understanding, and providing another great multi-sensory tool for kinesthetic learners. Children can have fun learning to build new words, one letter at a time, in ASL.

Letter Mastery was designed to be a comprehensive and complete language arts curriculum for the early years. All reading selections, copywork, word-building activities, poetry, and literature suggestions are included…everything you need to teach your child to read effectively and enjoyably.