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Helping Children with Dyslexia

Bravo! Reading knows your dyslexic child. We also know how to get reading results like you’ve only imagined. And…it’s not how you’d think!

Did you know that kids with dyslexia learn differently than other kids? That doesn’t mean these kids aren’t smart; they’re very intelligent. As a matter of fact, one of the symptoms of dyslexia is average or above average intelligence.

Kids with dyslexia are usually hands-on or tactile learners. This means they learn by doing, not by seeing or hearing. Because of this, they especially like to move to learn. After all, movement is a big dose of “doing”.

Sadly, traditional reading programs don’t include enough movement in their curriculum to meet the needs of the dyslexic child. Phonics sheets, flashcards, and “drill and kill” workbooks will make a child with dyslexia glaze over in boredom. Even worse, these kids will feel like these educational materials speak to them in a foreign language.

Since twenty percent of children have dyslexia, that’s a lot of kids being spoken to in the wrong “learning language”!

If your child has dyslexia, then you need to understand right off the bat that learning for your child isn’t like that of other kids. And that’s perfectly fine! There’s nothing wrong with your child!

There is something wrong with your child’s reading program, though! It isn’t speaking your child’s “learning language” and that’s a terrible travesty!

If you want your child to make reading progress, you need a new and different approach to reading. After all, reading is the most important subject. Even math today involves a lot of reading!

Kids with dyslexia are usually right-brain dominant. This means they learn best through movement, rhythm, pictures, color, creativity, and music. They also learn by “seeing a whole”, not piece by piece learning. Emotions…not logic…are in the forefront for them.

These kids do not do well with left-brain dominant skills like phonics, bit by bit thinking, math, and reasoning.

Did you see the word phonics in that list?

Traditional reading programs lean heavily on phonics activities to teach kids to read. Although this works well for the masses, it doesn’t work for kids with dyslexia.

Kids with dyslexia need to move to learn. They need pictures, color, and rhythm. They can learn to reason through difficult bit by bit thinking and learning…if there’s movement involved.

Movement is their jam!

If your child has dyslexia, chances are that visual and auditory processing skills are weak. You see, kids with dyslexia learn differently from other kids partly because they process information differently.

It was once thought that dyslexia was purely a visual processing issue. But new research has shown us that there’s an auditory component to dyslexia as well. This means that kids with dyslexia take in auditory and visual information but along the way, it gets skewed or distorted.

Because kids with dyslexia are at a disadvantage for processing visual and auditory information and stimuli, they resort to their tactile or hands-on senses to learn. Often, because of this, people with dyslexia are mechanical and architectural geniuses!

But that’s only if they survive the torment of learning to read, of navigating a school system that is not geared toward their “learning language”.

Most schools today rely on visual and auditory means to get information to students. The teacher stands before the classroom talking (auditory) while the student follows along with a whiteboard, projector, screen, a book on the desk, or taking notes (visual).

There is no movement involved in this scenario.

There is no way to stand up and stretch, to “move to learn”. Even science these days involves reading a science passage and answering comprehension questions. Rarely, do kids get to use hands-on science experiments as a route to learn.

This is hard on the child with dyslexia!

Kids with dyslexia can learn; they just need different ways to help them along!

And once reading and decoding skills are strong, then other subjects fall into place. Homework quits becoming a battle. Tests are passed without fear, and grades soar.

Like a detective looking for clues, readers must decode. They must understand symbols and sounds. But this is a difficult process for kids with dyslexia.

Most children with dyslexia are “word guessers”. This means they don’t sound out words but throw in wild guesses at what a word they come across while reading might be. It’s not like these kids don’t have the skills available to decode…it’s putting all the smaller subskills of decoding together that trips them up.

Decoding is the ability to translate printed words into speech. It requires a reader to associate letters with sounds, blend those sounds together, then determine what word is represented by the combination of letters.

Decoding is basically the ability to sound out words. It’s also the backbone of reading.

Think about it. If you can’t decode a new or unfamiliar word, then there isn’t much left to do except guess at the word.

Kids with dyslexia really struggle with decoding. This is partly because of being right-brain dominant, hands-on learners. It’s also because decoding is a bit by bit learning skills, and this doesn’t make sense to them.

Still…

If given the right opportunity to learn how to decode, kids with dyslexia do well!

The first step in helping your child learn to decode is to ensure that large motor movement is used. Large motor movements set in decoding skills for kids with dyslexia. It’s their main way to learn, so it not only resonates with them…it works!

Decoding skills are crucially important for reading. If a reader is weak in decoding, then bad habits set in. Like guessing at words.

Traditional reading programs either fail to spend enough time on true decoding skills or teach it in a way that kids with dyslexia can’t understand. Even programs aimed at helping kids with dyslexia fail to spend enough time on true decoding skills in a way that resonates with these kids.

There’s also a hierarchy to decoding. First, letter sounds must be learned – including long and short vowel sounds. From there, most reading programs launch readers right into sounding out three-letter words. For most kids, this isn’t a problem. But for kids with dyslexia, it’s a huge mistake.

Kids with dyslexia need to decode two-letter words with confidence before they are asked to sound out three-letter words. It’s like building the foundation of a house! These foundational skills must be in place in the correct order. One skill at a time. Not a mish mash of unrelated decoding skills that make little sense to a child with dyslexia who struggles to fill in learning gaps.

Learning to decode is a difficult process if your child has dyslexia. But by making sure your child has strong phonemic awareness skills, it’s a step in the right direction. Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate spoken parts of words including initial letter sounds, syllables, and phonemes.

Phonemes are the smallest units of speech that distinguish one word or symobl from another. They are small units of sound that make up our language. Examples of phonemes are “ig”, “ap”, “op”, “um”, and “ed”.

If you add a single letter to any of the above phonemes, you will make a real word in our language. For example, if you added the letter “p” to the first phoneme “ig”, you would come up with the word “pig”.

There are forty-four phonemes in our language. Our words are built around these phonemes.

Research tells us that children with dyslexia do best with a strong basis of phonemic awareness. This means they need to be taught to decode by using these phonemes. From there, they need to learn to add to these basic units of sound to build words.

This makes sense to kids with dyslexia, and they enjoy building their phonemic foundation because it resonates with how thet learn. Phonics, flashcards, and “drill and kill” workbooks do not make sense to a child with dyslexia. Forcing them to use these materials is like speaking to them in a foreign language!

Research also tells us a child with dyslexia does better with an Orton-Gillingham approach. An Orton–Gillingham approach is a structured method of breaking reading and spelling down into smaller subsets. This starts with letter sounds and builds on them over time.

The Orton-Gillingham approach was developed in the 1930’s by neuropsychiatrist Samuel T. Orton and educator-psychologist Anna Gillingham. It was used primarily as an intervention for children with dyslexia or other reading delays. With that said, it’s important to take note of the years that have passed since this approach was founded as well as the invention of computers, the internet, and other technology that kids today use and are exposed to.

In other words, an Orton-Gillingham approach is a great starting point…but it needs more for kids who have evolved a lot since the 1930’s! It needs a shot of “steroids” to meet the needs of the modern dyslexic child. More punch, more power. More movement for kids today.

For example, in traditional Orton-Gillingham based activities, students might learn the letter “c” by seeing it, saying its name, and sounding it out while writing it with their fingers in shaving cream. This is a great use of multisensory methodology.

However, because kids with dyslexia are so movement-oriented, this method can be made better. Kids with dyslexia recall more when large motor movements are involved, and this method only uses small motor movements.

When your child uses the entire arm, the shoulder, and the hand to learn the letter “c” by pounding with a dot dabber and saying the sound out loud while looking at a colorful picture of the letter along with another picture cue related to the letter – all at the same time – it drives in the letter sound much more quickly and efficiently.

The Orton-Gillinham approach emphasizes the importance of beginning with predictable sound -symbol connections before moving on to less predictable concepts, such as double vowels, the tricky silent “e”, or variant word spellings (words that don’t follow traditional spelling or reading rules).

Predictability is important for kids with dyslexia!

That’s because they take in information that is skewed or distorted. They need something they can depend on because their worlds are often “topsy turvy”. Thiw approach also helps kids learn and understand the patterns and rules of reading so they can decode.

In addition, the Orton-Gillingham approach focuses on a multisensory route to teach reading skills. This means that visual, auditory, and kinesthetic methods are used to help drive in the skill being taught. Because kids with dyslexia are usually weak in visual and auditory processing skills, this gives them a triple-boost for success!

The main goal of an Orton-Gillingham approach is to focus on reading at the word level. This is so kids with dyslexia know what to do when they come across an unfamiliar word. It gives them strategies for decoding or sounding out the word and helps eliminate “word guessing”.

The Orton-Gillinham approach teaches to mastery. This means that your child must master one skill before moving on to the next. Too often, kids are moved up before mastering lower-level skills. This is a huge disservice, as a reading and decoding foundation must be built one small step at a time.

If lower-level skills are weak or missing, the entire reading foundation can crumble! When your child gets older and is expected to read fluently and answer difficult comprehension questions, there must be lower-level decoding skills present to function properly.

Kids with dyslexia often panic when they come across an unfamiliar word. They have a few decoding skills but not enough to sound out a new word. They also feel pressure to perform and on top of it all, their visual and auditory processing skills are usually weak. They end up blurting out the first answer that comes to mind.

If your child struggles to read or has dyslexia, then you know all about “word guessing”. Guessing at words is merely a bad habit and can be corrected with the right set of tools. It is also one of the Three Pillars of Poor Reading.

There are three main bad habits that kids use when they have weak decoding skills. They are called the Three Pillars of Poor Reading. If your child guesses at words, memorizes words as a strategy to decode, or engages in trial and error reading, then it’s time to get those bad habits erased!

Did you know it only takes about three weeks to stop a bad habit? And that it’s even easier to break that habit if a new, usable skills replaces the bad habit?

Kids with dyslexia struggle to decode because they didn’t intrinsically pick up the ability to sound out words when it was being taught. This is because traditional (and even most dyslexia-aimed reading programs) fail to teach decoding in a way that resonates with the child who has dyslexia.

Out of desperation, these kids randomly shoot at the moon. They will do anything to just get an answer blurted out so they can move on. Often, they have poor reading fluency skills – stammering and stuttering as they read aloud. And comprehension is usually just as bad because they are working at capacity just to read a few words and fatigue quickly.

It’s a vicious cycle!

Guessing at words is the most common Pillar of Poor Reading. Kids with dyslexia struggle to decode, so they end up panicking, and from there they don’t know what to do. The teacher is waiting. The class is watching. Any word has to be better than no word!

They blurt out the first word that comes to mind and move on to the next word, often repeating the process. The problem is that incorrectly read words affect reading fluency and comprehension – all in a negaitve way. Your child will fall further and further behind in all subjects if “word guessing” is one of the main ways of decoding.

The next Pillar of Poor Reading is memorizing words. Kids with dyslexia will often fail to sound out a word or decode it and once again, panic. Their logic tells them to memorize the word, which is easy enough once you or the teacher tells them what the word they are tripped up on is.

But the problem with this strategy, however weak it is, is that there are over a million words in our language! Because kids with dyslexia are aren’t strong in visual and auditory processing skills, it means their visual and auditory memory abilities are also weak. This relates to difficulty in memorizing words that might not even have meaning to them.

It’s not a method to count on, that’s for sure!

The last Pillar of Poor Reading is using trial and error reading. This means that your child randomly picked up a spelling or reading rule along the way – from using trail and error learning. From there, your child randomly applies this rule to words that are new or unfamiliar. Random is the key word, here.

Sometimes it works.

Most of the time, it doesn’t.

It’s random, at best!

One moment the rule works, the next moment, it doesn’t. There’s no consistency in this bad reading habit. And it leads to reading words incorrectly, which directly affects reading fluency and comprehension.

Kids who engage in the Three Pillars of Poor Reading found ways to get them through long school days – ways to survive. But survival isn’t going to make your child a strong reader. Your child needs a way, a system, a blueprint for decoding…in a way that makes sense to your child.

Not in a way that makes sense to you, to siblings, to grandparents or teachers or anyone else. Flashcards won’t work for a child with dyslexia. Phonics lessons won’t work for a child with dyslexia. “Drill and kill” workbooks don’t work for a child with dyslexia.

If you even suspect your child has dyslexia, it’s time to take the bull by the horns and give your child the gift of decoding.

Because reading should be a joy. It should be easy and fun and empowering!

Since kids with dyslexia learn differently than other kids, they need a way to build new learning pathways. Brain-based learning is what works for them!

So…what exactly is brain-based learning?

Brain-based learning uses neuroscience to instill new information. It centers around the brain’s ability to change, remap, and reorganize itself while your child is learning new information. In addition, brain-based learning stresses that the more physically active and engaged a child is, then the better the learning outcomes. Brain-based learning also lets children gain a better understanding of material studied through practice as compared to rote memorization.

Brain-based learning is extremely important for a child with dyslexia. Since these kids take in auditory and visual information that’s skewed or distorted, they desperately need ways to process information in a way that works for them.

Through movement – specifically crossing the vertical midline of the body while performing another activity – remapping of the brain takes place and sets in the skills through these motions. It works much faster and more efficiently than having a child with dyslexia run through flashcards over and over.

Remember how kids with dyslexia learn…through tactile means…through movement?

Brain-based learning takes movement into consideration right off the bat. Kids move with brain-based learning. They don’t just sit in their seats and try to absorb information from a teacher in the front of the room. They are actively engaged in their own learning!

Kids with dyslexia (and all kids as far as that goes) enjoy being engaged with learning. It makes sense to them, encourages them to keep going when times are tough, and speeds up their learning. Instead of “drill and kill” methods, kids are able to move and participate in their own learning. Because of this, they are more likely to remember the information being taught.

Even better, with brain-based learning, kids are intrigued from the start. They aren’t swimming upstream in an effort to understand something that seems unreachable and foreign to them. Instead, they have the tools to complete and succeed in what was asked of them.

Kids with dyslexia are often under tremendous stress. This is because they are usually quite bright and verbal. Because of this, expectations are high when output is often low, even when they are working at capacity. Stress chemically changes the brain – and not in a positive way. In a positive, stress-free, calm learning environment, your child has the opportunity to perform at higher levels.

Brain-based learning is stress-free learning. It is explorative in nature.

In a nutshell, brain-based learning allows your child to participate in learning, to use movement to learn, and to remap the brain while learning new information.

If your child’s decoding program is brain-based, it speeds up the process of learning to sound out words and makes learning easier and more enjoyable!

Turn Your Child Into a Bravo! Reading Shark

Reading sharks don’t hesitate when they come across words they don’t know. They just sound them out and move on to the next word. They have the gift of automaticity. This simply means that they can decode letters and words without conscious thought.

Other activities that involve automaticity are driving, typing, and riding a bike. At first, to accomplish these tasks, you had to really focus and concentrate. But over time, they become so easy, you hardly noticed doing them.

Reading is a skill that requires automaticity, and reading sharks have this down pat.

Reading sharks don’t stammer or stutter when reading aloud becuase they have reading confidence. They know exactly what to do when they come to an unfamiliar word. Fluency and comprehension come naturally to reading sharks because the process of decoding letters and words into meaning doesn’t trip them up.

They attack reading like they might attack riding their bikes, swinging at a baseball, or tumbling on a mat.

It’s just another activity. No stress. No fear. No hesitating.

Here’s the great news.

Your child can be a reading shark!

Have you ever gotten lost in a book? So much that you weren’t even paying attention as to what was happening in the very room where you were?

Kids with dyslexia rarely get the opportunity to get “lost” in a book. This is because the process of reading is difficult for them. These kids work so hard just to sound out words that they get tense, frustrated, angry, and start to doubt their own abilities.

Add in teasing from other kids and poor grades, and it’s a true natural disaster!

Bravo! knows how difficult it is for kids with reading problems. And we give you an easy to use formula that resonates with your child. It’s learning that makes sense to your child – not to you or anyone else.

Just your child.

Because kids with dyslexia learn differently, they need a reading program that’s different!

If your child has dyslexia, then decoding words is probably a difficult process. This directly carries over to reading fluency and comprehension, as meaning is changed when words are read incorrectly. Comprehension scores plummet. Fluency isn’t where it should be, either, as your child is probably stuttering and stammering while reading if decoding skills are weak.

It’s disheartening to hear your child struggle to read. But the good news is that if taught in a way that makes sense to your child, it’s easy to learn how to decode. Strong decoding skills lead to better reading scores. And better reading scores translate to better grades.

So…what’s this formula for decoding and reading success?

The Bravo! Decoding Formula is a combination of skills that gets results for kids with dyslexia. These easy to do exercises were pioneered by Dyslexia Expert, Lisa Harp, the founder of Harp Learning Institute, Harp Learning Academy, and Bravo! Reading.

The Bravo! Decoding Formula has been used successfully for over twenty-four years and is now available to you so you can help your child can to learn to decode without tears, fits, or fights. It’s easy to use and has a high success rate so you and your child can have enjoyable times instead of hours of homework every night.

When your child uses the Bravo! Decoding Formula that’s used in the Bravo! Reading System, the Bravo! Booster Pack, the Bravo! Super Booster Pack, and the Bravo! Decoder Pack, your child puts the skills of decoding together – in a way that makes sense.

The five decoding steps come together in a way that connects with your child’s learning style. And from there, progress is made! The average reading jump from using the Bravo! Reading System is five grade levels!

Remarkable!

By using a dot dabber or bingo marker to drive in large motor movement, the Bravo! Reading System meets your child’s need for movement! From there, brain-based learning takes over. Cross-lateral movements make learning more meaningful, quicker, and easier. Add in extreme usage of phonemic units, and your child is decoding like a champ!

With eleven levels, covering decoding skills from start to finish, your child makes huge reading progress.

Decoding becomes easier as visual and auditory cues are added. This gives your child that multisensory connection that’s so important.

This is the Bravo! Decoding Formula, the formula that works for kids with dyslexia! When your child uses the Bravo! Decoding Formula, soon words are being sounded out with ease. Stammering and stuttering while reading out loud stops. Your child quits guessing at words and uses strategies to decode words. Memorization of words is no longer tempting.

Reading fluency scores increase as confidence mounts. Comprehension scores soar, which relates to better grades all the way around, because reading affects every subject in school, even math these days.

Level 1 of the Bravo! Reading System teaches your child how to blend two-letter words! As easy as this sounds, it can trip up a child with dyslexia. Kids use gross motor movements to pound a dot dabber onto the Bravo! Bullseye (a small, red target) while saying the sound of the letter out loud at the same time. Kids love this part! The entire unit focuses on only two-letter words to help your child build a strong phonemic awareness and decoding platform. Once your child passes the Bravo! Level 1 Checkup, which is a skills test to see if your child has mastered decoding two-letter words, it’s time to move on to Level 2.

When your child uses Level 2 of the Bravo! Reading System, three-letter words are decoded with ease. These are the traditional consonant-vowel-consonant words like cat and hot. Your child will use a dot dabber to pound each letter sound then slide all three sounds together to form a word. Level 1 introduces the use of nonsense words to help break bad habits like guessing at words.

Level 3 of the Bravo! Reading System uses a huge dose of brain-based learning to teach your child how to blend two consonants together. It is a difficult concept for kids with dyslexia to understand that two letters can come together to form one new and unique sound. With the multiple brain-based, cross-lateral motions in Level 3, your child will make short order of learning consonant blends!

Now that your child has a grasp on double consonant blends, it’s time to apply them in words. This can also be difficult for kids with dyslexia or other reading issues. But with Bravo! Level 4, it’s a snap to take what was learned in Level 3 and apply it to decoding two consonants that come together to form one sound. Examples of double consonant blends are “ch”, “st”, “fl”, and “gr”.

Level 5 of the Bravo! Reading System helps your child master the elusive and very tricky silent “e”. Through the movement of using the Silent E Slide and using the Silent E Shuffle, your child intrinsically understands that the e at the end of a word makes the vowel sound long and the “e” is silent.

Kids with dyslexia typically struggle with the silent “e”. It’s as if they can’t see the “e” at the end of the word! Because they fail to properly “see” the “e”, they ignore it and the rule that goes with silent “e”. By sliding across arrow paths and pounding with a dot dabber at certain spots, kids with dyslexia learn to “see the e” really quickly. Suddenly, silent “e” words are no longer a problem!

Word endings can be challenging for your child, too. In Level 6 of Bravo! Reading, your child once agains connects the dots about having two letters come together to form a new, unique sound – only this time the consonant blends are at the end of words.

For some reason, word endings trip up the dyslexic reader. It’s as though your child gets fatigued by the time the end of the word comes along! It’s too easy to throw out a wild guess instead of reasoning out what the consonant blend at the end of the word might be. With Level 6, your child use a dot dabber to “pound” in word endings. Examples of word endings in this level are “ll”, “ck” “ff”, “ng”, and “ft”. Of course, there are many, many more that your child masters, which makes reading the ends of words so much easier!

One of the hardest decoding skills for kids with dyslexia to master is the double vowel blend. Once again, it’s a difficult concept to understand that two letters come together to form one new and unique sound. When vowels are involved, it complicates everything.

Vowels alone are difficult for the dyslexic child to master. That’s because the differences between vowel sounds are very subtle and they often fail to pick up on this. For instance, the difference between an “i” and an “e” is quite small. In the process, kids with dyslexia mix them up. Add in two vowels, and it’s enough to set them off!

With brain-based learning, pounding bullseyes with dot dabbers, saying letter blend sounds at the same time, large, cross-lateral movements, and a multisensory approach, your child masters double vowel blends painlessly.

Now that your child can recognize and use double vowel blends, it’s time to use them in words! This isn’t a difficult process now that Level 7 has been mastered. Level 8 shows your child how to use these same vowel blends in words, something that is traditionally difficult for kids with dyslexia.

By pounding on the Bravo! Bracket with a dot dabber or bingo marker while saying the letter sound combination out loud at the same time, your child learns to read words with vowel blends. Easily and confidently!

Your child now has a strong decoding foundation and is ready for variants that are presented in Level 9. Variants are words that don’t follow traditional reading and spelling words, and they can sure trip up a child with dyslexia. Learning rules is hard enough without having exceptions to rules.

By using the same methods of pounding letters in words with dot dabbers while saying the sound out loud then sliding the sounds together above the Bravo! Bolt, kids drive in these variants.

Now that foundational decoding skills are in place, your child is ready to decode two-syllable words. In Level 10 of the Bravo! Reading System, your child once again uses a dot dabber. Only this time, instead of pounding on specific letters, your child will pound on syllables.

It’s a natural progression, and kids delight in sounding out words instead of just parts of words. Once the Bravo! Checkup is passed, your child is ready to decode three-syllable words! Your child is almost a Bravo! Reading Shark by now, and you should be so proud of the progress made!!

Your child is decoding like a champ by the time Level 11 is reached. This is where three-syllable words are mastered. Kids gain a lot of reading and decoding confidence in this level and by the time they are finished and pass the end of level Bravo! Checkup, you can be proud of your Reading Shark.

Step by step, decoding skills have been in place. The next step? On to the Bravo! Expansion Packs that will pick up right where your child left off!

If you’re wanting more for your child, check out the Bravo! Reading Expansion Packs. There are three supplementary decoding packs to take your child to the next level after finishing the Bravo! Reading System. These decoding packs are geared for kids third grade or higher or those who know all letter sounds (including long and short vowels) as well as those who can blend three letter sounds together.

The Bravo! Booster Pack helps your child expand the basics of phonemic awareness. It takes this basic skill a step further than any other program. It is the most thorough collection of phonemes that you will find, starting with easy phonemes and building up to more difficult variants, which are words that don’t follow traditional reading and spelling rules.

The Bravo! Super Booster Pack is a bit different. With large print that gets gradually smaller, it prepares your child for real world reading. In addition, it uses phonemes and decoding units in nonsense words to help your child break bad reading and decoding habits.

The Bravo! Decoder Pack is the most challenging Bravo! Expansion Pack. It uses three methods to help your child finish off decoding skills. First, the simple phonemic unit is introduced. From there, your child practices reading it in easy form, a more difficult form, and a difficult form (multi-syllable word). After that, your child reads a series of nonsense words that gradually get more difficult – all based on that same phonemic unit from the start. And finally, your child reads a funny, real world story chock full of words that contain the same phonemic unit. Once again, this prepares your child for real world reading.

The “Seeing” for Reading Pack helps your child strengthen visual processing skills so reading and decoding is an easier, more natural process.

The Race from Reversals Pack helps your child overcome reversals in both reading and writing.

The Bravo! Reading System and the Bravo! Expansion Packs come to you as digital files so you can get going right away!

You will need to purchase a dot dabber or bingo marker in order to have your child perform the activities in the Bravo! Beginner, the Bravo! Reading System as well as the Race from Reversals Pack. For the “Seeing” for Reading Pack, the Bravo! Booster Pack, the Bravo! Super Booster Pack, and the Bravo! Decoder Pack, your child will only need a fat-tipped marker.