Teaching Hooked on Phonics

This is another post about teaching the Hooked On Phonics.

Below is a video clip taken during one of her revision lessons.


Here are a few guidelines that I follow. I am sure there are better techniques, if you know one, please let me know.

1) Conduct short lessons. In my case, I will stop when my daughter get bored, usually about 10-15 minutes.

2) Praise a lot... I know, I lose patient too, as you can see in video clip. And I did not praise as much as I am supposed to do.

3) Play games.. Hide and Seek Word Game. She finds a word from one page, sometimes, compete with her brothers.

4) Hint my daughter the phonetic sound of the first letter..

5) A bit unusual, but I played spelling game.

6) Practice often.. I print out one copy and let her revised whenever she feels like to do.

I am thankful that my son benefited from this course. I hope that I can repeat this with my daughter. I am encouraged that many friends use this too after I show them the products, I hope that they will be successful too.

My daughter is glad that I shared this with her friends. She seems motivated to read because her friends are reading the same thing!

Spelling -- Hooked on Phonics Material Revisit!

This morning, my son showed me his spelling test results. Other than one time he misspelled one word, he scored full marks in his spelling tests this year. Certainly he deserved my praises. To be honest, I did not even supervise him anymore since almost a year ago. He managed his spelling test almost all by himself.

My son told me that learning "Spelling" is quite fun and easy. I can see that he has very strong foundation in spelling, thanks to the Hooked on Phonics and Hooked on Spelling.

For your convenience, I will paste the link to the product from Amazon website:

Hooked on Phonics




Hooked on Spelling






However, to be honest, I know some of my friends are not successful in using the same material. Here are some tips from them that might benefit you:

[1] Don't start too early... The recommended age is 4 years old. My son started at 3.5 years old, and we were having a hard time as the first few pages took us more than 3 months. I do not see this problem with my daughter now.

[2] Don't start too late... a friend of mine started the material at the age of 3... but his daughter found it too difficult. When he used it again at the age of 5.5, she found it too easy and somehow, my friend could not raise the interest.

[3] Make full use of the games and stickers... and remember to praise. For some reasons, some of my friends did not use the stickers.. or perhaps not giving enough praises... They were not successful in using the material.

[4] Never kill interest... Stop when the child is bored. Every child is different. I notice that my daughter can concentrate less compared to the brother. So, I have to adjust the teaching time accordingly.

[5] Don't start Hooked on Spelling until you are about to start level 2! I have a friend who starts Hooked on Spelling at the age of 5-6, and I heard that she is not doing well either.

Regarding primary school spelling test, my observation is that I am taking the right approach to empower my son to learn spelling all by himself. I can see that he is taking a lot of pride in his good work, and he is motivated to continue to do well. Without supervision, he can enjoy the spelling test better!

I would like to thank all my friends who feedback to me about their findings. And also to thank the author, and to thank God that I was lucky to start at the right timing. I hope I can repeat the same success story for my daughter!

Please share your experience with us too by leaving a comment below!

Update 2015: This product is now available in SG. I prefer the older version better though...

Learn Spelling without "Spelling Test" -- Hooked on Spelling

Most school children hate spelling. Let's put ourselves in a child's shoes. First of all, having a "Spelling" means they have to allocate time to learn the spelling. Secondly, if they do not do well, parents will get disappointed. What's worse? Their parents may punish them.

When my son was attending kindergarten in Malaysia 2 years ago, I had no choice. I cannot change the syllabus of the school. Everyone is taking test and learning spelling. Can he do without those? I had completely no idea on the alternative method to learn Spelling.

Some Singapore kindergartens do not have any "Spelling" sessions. Sometimes I was worried. I wondered whether he could cope with school as the level of English education in Singapore is very high. I bought some spelling games. The game was good, but too simple for my 6-year-old as it has only 3-4 letters word.









Being successful in using the "Hooked on Phonics" material, I decided to try the "Hooked on Spelling". I bought it from Amazon directly. The material came with 2CDs plus a book. Due to misunderstanding as I did not read the instructions carefully, I did not use any of the books but only the CDs.







The lessons start with "sounding out words". Then, it is followed by activity to group the words according to the sounding of pronunciation. After this comes the so called "unscramble" game which is a game requiring the user to re-arrange letters into a word with correct spelling. The next level is slightly more difficult. It's spelling game but with multiple choices. The activity is to pick the right letter to form a word. Finally, the user has to spell the whole word all by himself.

The material is "Superb". If he does it wrongly, the software lets him spell again. No scolding, no pressure! Again, the software comes with a progress sheet in which the child will put a sticker to show his progress.

My son told us some rules and what he learned, which was quite new to both my wife and me, like long "I" and short "I". My son's capability in spelling improved significantly. His teacher told us that she told the class "If any of you have problems in spelling out any words, you can either ask me or Yi Kai". Last week, I asked him to spell "library", this is a new word to my 6-year-old. He said, "libary", very close! I praised him for his good attempt and encouraged him to learn more. Now, he is interested to spell things right.

On a side note, there are some bugs in the software, but my son can get around it. I am not sure how he did it because he learns the lessons from the CDs all by himself. I did not follow closely, but I can see the combination effect, by Hooked on Spelling, as well as Hooked on Phonics!

Hooked on Phonics --- Don't miss this

Some boring history
I came across "Hooked on Phonics - Learn to Read" in one of the bookstore in US. At that time, the original set was USD80, but they were selling it for USD50. Immediately I decided to purchase. My wife disagreed at that time because we had not heard about it, and nobody recommended the set. Besides, USD50 was not a small sum for us.

I have to admit that my command of English is not really good. Being educated in Asia, my pronunciation comes with Malaysian slang. I think I want something better for my son. But that was not the real reason of my bold move. Actually when I was 12 years old, my mother spent RM200 (at that time that was really a big sum for my family) to purchase a material for learning English that came with cassette tapes. I did not make full use of it and I really felt guilty. Probably the sense of guilt drove me to spend that USD50.

The contents of Hooked on Phonics
I kept the set for 2 years until my son was 4 years old. The lesson starts with flash cards and song, helping my son to memorize the phonetic sound for each alphabet. This part is really time-consuming and it took us about 3 months before my son could memorize. I followed the instruction very well and kept my son's interest going. Sometimes he requested the session, sometimes I suggested. I stopped when he got bored.

Once he remembered the basic phonetic sounds, the real lesson began. First he went through a simple lesson. Then he was asked to read a simple story by himself. The results was fantastic. He could read the story all by himself! I could still remember my son's happy satisfying face when he managed to read the first story. That also created his interest in learning more.

May be it's hard to understand but that can be easily understood if you look at the actual product. Please look at the sample here that I downloaded from Hooked on Phonic facebook page and note that the story was written with limited words that the children know.

Kindergarten Level




The set came with flash cards, CD, stories book and the important one, is the sticker. After every session, my son is supposed to put a sticker on a progress sheet. This is the part that my son likes most.



You can find more information from the list below:

Hooked on Phonics - Learn to Read Website,
Hooked on Phonics Official Website,
Hooked on Phonics Blog
Check out this Demo page

It took my son about one and half year to complete the Kindergarten course. And last year, having convinced about the effectiveness of this material, I purchased the Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read Grade 1 and Grade 2 sets, plus the Master Reader ses at a cheaper rate USD30-USD40 per set. Okay, before you get confused, let me explain about this product first.

Hooked on Phonics --- Learn to Read
Most of my friends are confused when they search the web on what to buy. Actually this is very simple, you just need to decide which level you need first. It comes in 4 levels, Pre-K (I did not buy this), Kindergarten(4-6yr), Grade 1(6-7yr) and Grade 2(7-8yr). Next you need to decide whether you want deluxe set or not, because that comes with additional stories books. Go for the deluxe set. Reason is that our children needs those additional stories book for practice. The hooked on phonics is also sold in bundled sets or paperback sets.

To add to the confusion, Hooked on Phonics has revised the contents and came up with a new version. I will put a link and pictures at the end of the blog.

Why this is highly recommended?
My son has almost finished Grade 1 material now. See the sample below:

Grade 1




What I can say is that he can read almost any story books meant for his age. This is something that I could not have imagined. I could only read English stories book at the age of 11-12. But my son can read simple stories book at the age of 5 since last year. Certainly, his kindergarten teacher deserve most of the credits but I think the role this Hooked on Phonics has is also significant. My son's teacher told me that my son's phonetic reading is among the top in his class. I will surely get my daughter to use the set.

I know a friend in Singapore who send his son to a phonetic reading course, called "I can read", and I know that he is paying more than SGD100 per month. Compare to this, I think my investment in Hooked on Phonics really pays off. The benefit is not so much on academic, but also, I can see that the method had been effective to increase my son's self esteem and confidence. I enjoy spending the time teaching him myself without worrying of passing him my incorrect pronunciation (he will only listen to CD, not my pronunciation).

I showed this to a friend who is married to a US citizen. His wife told me that Hooked on Phonics has been around in US for many years. I checked this at Wikipedia and found out that this set was created in early 1980s. Well, when we know a product has been selling for 20 years, quite unlikely we would question the quality of the product, isn't it? :)

Why do I put this academic material into this blog? Shouldn't this be merely toys? Dr Glenn Doman said that children wants to learn, rather than play. I find it very true. In fact, I think my son enjoy this more than some toys he has.

Where to buy
Finally, let me also list down where to buy these items from Malaysia or Singapore. Unfortunately, you can't buy directly except from the website.

Let me put the link below:
Hooked on Phonics Official Website provides a clear illustration and it's very neat. But you cannot buy from them because they do not ship outside USA. I made inquiries earlier and they asked me to purchase from Amazon.

You can try to get older version from Amazon at cheaper price. But, once the old stocks have been cleared, you may find missing links below.


P/S: Most of the pictures here are downloaded from relevant website and quoted for reporting purpose, which is supposed to be a fair use in copy right law. However, if there's any issue of intellectual property rights, kindly let me know and I will remove them.

Updated 2011 Jan 26:
I have added the link to Amazon on the top and bottom of the blog. These link created from Amazon Associate will reflect the latest price. I know the link I pasted earlier may be outdated. The link at the top are the combined version whereas the link at the bottom are individual sets at different level.



Old version :




Updated new version:





Larger pictures of the product :

Kindergarten Level (Try this first if you are new)


1st Grade


2nd Grade


The all-in-one version, K - 2nd Grade, buy this if you are confident. Cheaper to buy at once.