Waseca Readers app for iPhone and iPad

Parts of a Biome Readers teach emerging readers about the world around them with phonetically controlled stories and gorgeous illustrations. Four collections of stories (ENERGY, SOIL AIR WATER, PLANTS, and ANIMALS) introduce the parts of a biome and build literacy skills story by story.

Waseca Biomes has been designing and producing Montessori-inspired educational materials for nearly 20 years. Our materials emphasize incremental skill-building to empower kids to learn and gain competencies at their own pace. Our language materials, including the Waseca Reading Program and Parts of a Biome Readers, are used in classrooms across the country and around the world.

We’re excited to have adapted this classroom classic to digital! For those familiar with this product in the classroom, this streamlined version serves as a great accompaniment to the hard copy or digital download version. Here, each story is reformatted from separate text and picture cards to a single reader booklet.

Designed for emerging readers (appropriate for ages 4 and up) to practice reading and develop reading comprehension, each story’s cover is color-coded to denote increasing difficulty as a succession of phonetic elements are introduced. The sequence follows that of our Waseca Reading Program and is based upon the Orton Gillingham Method.

RED focuses on three-letter phonetic words and isolates short vowel sounds.
ORANGE focuses on blends. These include common beginning blends such as s, l, and r blends; ending blends; and words with both beginning and ending blends.
YELLOW introduces consonant digraphs like sh, ch, th, and tch.
GREEN explores words ending with ng and nk.
AQUA focuses on the silent e rule as applied to each vowel.
BLUE explores different phonograms used to make each long vowel sound.
PURPLE introduces various diphthongs such as r-controlled vowels and oy, ow, and aw.
PINK focuses on combinations that produce silent letters like wh, mb, kn, and gh.
GOLD explores less common phonetic rules including spelling variations for the same sounds and hard and soft consonants.

You can read these stories with your child or use the color-coding to determine the appropriate level for your child to read on their own. If your child is working with the Waseca Reading Program, the child will know the color level to which they can read. Please note that we have done our best to phonetically control these stories, but there may be sight words that do not completely align with the color level (words like “eats,” technically a blue word, and “lives,” technically an aqua word, are necessary to convey information about biomes).

These readers can be used in conjunction with our traditional classroom material Introduction to the Biomes (currently available as a hard copy material or digital download) when introducing the concept of a biome to help children explore the different parts of a biome or alongside any other materials you are working with about biomes. There are 9 readers within each collection, and each collection is available as an in-app purchase.

ENERGY

Red: The Sun
Orange: Scat
Yellow: Lunch
Green: The Big Bang
Aqua: The Earth Moves
Blue: A Day on Earth
Purple: Glow
Pink: Incredible Life
Gold: The Reason for the Seasons

SOIL AIR WATER:

Red: Do It
Orange: What Is It?
Yellow: This
Green: The Rotting Log
Aqua: Explore Land and Water
Blue: Rainy Day
Purple: Soil
Pink: The Water Cycle
Gold: A Fern

PLANTS:

Red: Is It?
Orange: If a Plant…
Yellow: Plants and Me
Green: A Tree
Aqua: Plants Adapt
Blue: Seeds Travel
Purple: A Plant in the Seasons
Pink: The Turtle and the Fig
Gold: Photosynthesis

ANIMALS:

Red: It Can
Orange: Yum
Yellow: A Fish
Green: A Skunk
Aqua: A Reptile
Blue: Squishy or Crunchy
Purple: A Bird
Pink: What Makes a Mammal?
Gold: An Amphibian

We believe these readers offer hours of educational entertainment and literacy building. We hope that both you and your child enjoy them!