A little over a year ago, I was in eastern Washington at a teacher store and I came across a few books called “Build-a-Skill Instant Books”. I thumbed through them and thought these would be great for both of my boys to use. What I loved about them at first glance was it reminded me a lot of lapbooking.

Grades 2-3 Language Arts Books
If you’ve done lapbooking before you might be familiar with the concept of cutting out templates or booklets and filling them in with information and pasting them into a folder, binder or scrapbook.

Grades K-1 Series of Books
I decided to purchase all of them since I live in Montana and have never seen them locally. They come in two sets of grade levels. K-1 and 2-3. The ones we are working on are all pertaining to Language Arts and are very hands on in approach. They do have Math books to use but we have not used those.
Grades K-1 come in several different areas of study for Language Arts including:
- Word Families-short vowels
- Word Families-long vowels
- Consonant Blends and Digraphs
- Color, Shape and Number Words
- Short and Long Vowels
- R-Controlled Vowels-Vowel Digraphs
- Sight Words, Part 1
- Sight Words, Part 2
- Beginning-Ending Consonant Sounds
- Synonyms and Antonyms
Math includes:
- Time and Money
- Math Facts to 20
Grades 2-3 areas of study include:
Language Arts:
- Synonyms-Antonyms
- Homophones
- Contractions
- Irregular Vowels
- Compound Words
- Prefixes-Suffixes
- Plurals
- Parts of Speech
- Verb Forms
Math includes:
- Multiplication and Division
- Time-Money
- Fractions

Short Vowel Word Family Booklets
We’ve worked on several of these books in both grade levels and my boys have learned alot. Each book has several styled books to cut and fill out. Some to color if you choose or copy them onto colored paper. We have taken the books they’ve done and placed them like lapbooking or added them to existing lapbooks they were working on that related to the Build-a-Skill books.

Learning Sight Words Booklets
They include different booklets to cut out to learn different concepts. For an example on the sight words that you can see to the left here there is many ways to teach the sight words through these books that will help reinforce the spelling of each word. Such as writing them out with your “I Can Read” and “I Can Write” flip books and then taking those same words and seeing them in sentences while filling out different booklets and coloring pictures.
Even though these come in the grade levels specified I noticed some concepts were a bit advanced for the grade they recommended so we waited to introduce the concepts. They are easy to use and fun to put together.
Once you purchase the books you will need to photocopy the pages for your child to cut out and put together so there will be an additional cost for that.
The books are inexpensive to purchase at around $4.99 each and can be copied over again for more than one child.
If you are looking for a hands on way of teaching Language Arts and Math that is fun and engaging then these might be something to explore. We love all of the books this series has to offer and will continue to use them until all of these concepts are mastered with all of our children.
Written by Lynn Pitts, mom of 3, from Big Sky Country Montana. You can read more about her life at Learning by Living
Brenda (141 Posts)Brenda is a homeschooling mother of 5, who has a wonderful husband encouraging her to be the best woman that God has created her to be. Together they are very intentional about spending time together as a family. She considers her daily life with her children as her ministry and has found many avenues to encourage others to live a lifestyle of learning. She is the founder of an online homeschool community, Our Lifestyle of Learning and a curriculum review site authored by a group of well-known homeschool bloggers, Curriculum Choice. She blogs about their homeschool journey and family traditions at Tie That Binds Us.
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Nice review, Lynn. You are so conscientious in all you do. It really shines in your online work. Thanks for going above and beyond. These look like great resources for getting those foundational skills in the little ones. I only wish they had some for older kids. I’m going to check out the website. (Just what I need — more books for the wishlist! LOL)
.-= Jimmie´s last blog ..Sex Ed Book Reviews =-.