AllMovie

Maren Schmidt, an educator with a Montessori background, developed the Shining Light Reading Series as a tool for helping children ages three through six to learn the basic skills necessary for language and reading development. The program focuses on two major skill areas: phonemic awareness and letter and sound recognition. Combining traditional phonics-oriented language acquisition techniques with songs, games, and images, the program seeks to develop children's thinking, listening, and visual skills as they travel the path to reading proficiency. The first volume of the series, Shining Light Reading Series, Vol. 1: Lighting the Path to Learning, introduces children to the 26 letters of the alphabet. From there, they will learn to perceive individual sounds within a word and to compare and contrast the sounds with those in other words.