Customer Reviews

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

5 star:		(559)
4 star:		(73)
3 star:		(39)
2 star:		(24)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

I'm so impressed with how this book was put together. The lessons are fool proof for the parent, as they are written with detailed directions. New sounds are gradually worked into previously mastered tasks so that the child is never given more than he/she can handle (this does wonders for my daughter's reading confidence). Before you know it, your child is reading three and four paragraphs, and the process of getting there wasn't painful at all!

One note: I have read other reviews from parents using this book with 3 and 4 year olds. Certainly, if your preschooler shows an interest in reading, this book is an excellent choice. But NOTHING will work unless your child is READY to learn, not even "100 Lessons." Reading readiness happens at different ages (like every other milestone in childhood), and we as parents must respect our children's personal timetables (difficult to do sometimes, I know). Hey, remember when WE were in kindergarten? We spent our days playing, painting, napping (do they even nap anymore these days). Reading came along in first grade, and many of us may not have been ready to learn until then.

That said, buy the book and use it when your particular family is ready ~ ENJOY! :o)

This book starts painfully slowly, but my advice is "hold on." At first, I couldn't stand the agonizingly plodding pace. And it wasn't just impatient me. My three year old didn't see the point of saying the list of words as slowly. But we gave it a chance anyway, after all the good Amazon reviews and marketing hype on the book itself. By a quarter of the way through, we began to look forward to reading time. One small addition I made to the scripted course was to invite in stuffed animal guest teachers (see suggestion 1 below). It worked like a charm.

I love the way the parent's part is scripted. The script turns anyone who can read into a patient, supportive master teacher! I love the way all sorts of short activities make up each lesson - very balanced. Best of all is the way this book's lessons touch all the bases. They connect letter sounds with words with stories with writing and finally, with reading comprehension, the point of the whole exercise. I really appreciate the short stories and the picture from the story with discussion questions. Now that I've talked to some teachers, this balanced, comprehensive approach is a perfect way to start a child reading. It doesn't lack any aspect that they will use later, or emphasize one to the exclusion of the others.

I didn't expect the writing, but I am very happy that it's in there. I bought the book for my three year old, but I am putting my 5 year old through it too, because it is so complete and methodical.

When I first saw the phonetic alphabet, I thought it was a little strange. But my child has no trouble recognizing the joined "sh" symbol as an "s" and an "h." And the "sh" is a single sound in his mind, as are "s" and "h." The notation caused us no problem at all, and I only mention it because another reviewer found it problematic. We did not. Likewise, I wasn't disturbed by short e not being mentioned sooner. Who cares? The order presented was gradual, and as logical as any other.(Although it led to a lot of stories about ants.)

I would also offer a few suggestions:

1. If your child loves his or her stuffed animals (or Power Rangers, etc.), then you can use them to be "guest teachers." When I started with this book, I hadn't yet come up with this diversionary tactic, and sometimes working through a lesson was harder than it needed to be. With a beanie baby teaching, my three year old is far more interested in the lessons. My boy picks which animals will help each night, and then he listens intently to them. They help sound out words, rhyme, and watch him write. They are much more interesting than old Daddy, as they are allowed to have excessive personality! When it is time to find certain words in the story, my son doesn't like to just point to the requested word. He prefers to race the beanie-baby guest teacher to the words. (The beanie baby invariably loses.) When it is time to write letters, the beanie baby counts them in Spanish. And so on.

2. Check out some of the "We Both Read" books to supplement toward the end of this book. The "We Both Read" series has a complicated left page for the adult, and a simple right page for the child. You take turns reading, and continue the "reading together" experience beyond the 100 easy lessons.

So after a slow and frustrating start, which in retrospect was absolutely necessary, we both look forward to our daily reading time. We brought in the beanie babies to inject the missing element of fun. I know Matthew will have a solid foundation in all the parts of written communication, and Matthew likes the fact that his favorite stuffed animals are teaching him to read.

Five stars. Awaiting "Human Relationships in 100 Easy Lessons."

I had to write this after reading the rave reviews from parents of 3 year olds who taught their kids to read in 12 min. a night in less than 3 months. Don't buy this book if that is what you expect.

Don't get me wrong this is a GREAT book. I highly recommend it. But, it is NOT EASY (at least not for every child).

My nearly 5 begged "Please, please teach me to read Mommy". After about 20 lessons of this book she begged "Please, please I don't want to read". So we put it aside for a few months. When she asked to start again we started over at lesson 1 and went more slowly. We reviewed the previous lesson, did a new lesson, read a "Bob Book",played letter bingo. Some days we didn't do a new lesson - we just read a "Bob book" or reviewed an old lesson. YOU HAVE TO GO AT YOUR KIDS PACE. TAKE YOUR CUES FROM YOUR CHILD.

We're on lesson 94. I don't know if she reads at a 2nd grade level and I don't care. She is reading and excited about reading - and that's what it's all about.

I taught Kindergarten for three years before staying home with our first child. I wish that I had this book when teaching those eager five-year-olds! I am confident that all of my students would have been reading at a second grade level by the end of their Kindergarten year. I have been teaching our 3 1/2-year-old daughter how to read using this book and I am very impressed with the results. From teaching experience I can tell you that there isn't much better than this on the market. It is fun, easy for anyone to teach, and most of all, it works! Don't listen to those advocates of whole language reading--this curriculum uses phonics and teaches comprehension also, which is equally as important. This book will be all you need to turn your child into a successful reader. So, if your child is at a place where alphabet recognition and beginning phonics are boring, get this book! It is worth much more to me that the it costs to buy, and we will be using it to teach all of our children to read.

Overview: The book does what it says, pretty much. In just 100 lessons you child should learn to read on a first-grade level. Not just decode words, but read and understand. The lessons are generally easy. I wondered how the book would get across difficult concepts such as short and long vowels and letter sometimes having different sounds. These are worked into the lessons just like everything else-a little bit at a time and in the right order-and they were no problem. There are no big concepts to teach, facts to memorize, etc. Some parts of some lessons might be difficult, but the concepts are broken down into pieces and taught over several lessons, so there are no stumbling blocks. Just 10-15 minutes for a lesson each night.

Other Books: I can't compare this to other books. This was the only one I could find when I started to teach my children and so I've not seen any others to compare it against. I know one book has a title of 20 lessons. After my experiences, I don't think 20 lessons is enough to learn anything useful.

My Experience, Child 1: I started with my oldest when she was 5. I was learning about how to do this while she was learning how to read. She was (and is) strong-willed and got upset easily when she had a problem. With the book's method, when the child makes a mistake you just tell them what they should say and let them try again until they get it right-very little pressure. However, my oldest would get frustrated when she could not get it right the first time. She would get so frustrated we would had to stop in the middle of a lesson and start over in a day or two many, many times. We also did not have a lesson every day. When she started kindergarten, I stopped the lessons because of the problems we were having and the fact that she was learning phonics in school. However, what she did learn gave her a head start and helped her. My experiences with my other two children showed that her experience was an exception. I think the problem was my lack of experience and her strong-willed nature. If I had it to do over, I would have continued the lessons though kindergarten.

Child 2: I started child 2 when she was 5. I had learned a lot from my first attempt and we did just fine. I did not remember to give her a lesson every day so it took a while to finish. We were only at 50 when she started kindergarten but we continued anyway. Starting at about lesson 60 or so she really seemed to catch on and each lesson got easier. She is now reading on level 3.2 half-way through first grade.

Child 3: I just started child 3 when he was 4 1/2. We are at lesson 25 and he is doing even better than child 2. We are having lessons almost every day and he should be finished when he is 5.

Tips:

1. Skip the "Writing Sounds" section of each lesson. This is the last part of each lesson where the child writes the letters they are learning. My first child had a problem with the "Writing Sounds" part of each lesson. She spent more time on this that the rest of the lesson and got frustrated with it very easily. On the advice of an elementary teacher, I started skipping this. She did better after that. I skipped for my other two and they did just fine without it. It does help reinforce learning the sounds, but it is a lot of effort than can discourage the child for a small return in learning.

2. Be on the look out for typos. There are quite a few of them in the book. There were all in the words for the parent, so it's not too bad. Most of them are words in the wrong color-red verses black.

3. Don't be too literal with reading exactly the instructions the parent is supposed to read to the child. In particular, the phrase "Don't get fooled" appeared a lot. This got old very quick and didn't apply anyway so I started leaving it out.

4. The book teaches pronouncing "was" as "wuz." This is an acceptable pronunciation, but I believe that "woz" is more correct. (And I'm from Alabama.) I taught mine to say "woz". You might want to do this also. (This is one of the few words like "is" and "said" that can't just be sounded out.)

5. The hardest thing for my children to learn was the leap from saying the sounds in a word to saying the word-from s (pause) a (pause) m to sam. This is really the only hard thing in the book. If you child has a problem with this, work on this with them. Tell them to try to keep saying one sound until they start the next one. They will eventually get it right. It took my second from lesson 15 until about lesson 40 to get this right. With my third child I knew this going in and emphasized the "rhyming" and other parts in the first 20 lessons and he picked it up a lot quicker.

6. Before you start, read through a few lessons throughout the book to get a feel for how the lessons progress. This would have helped me a lot with the first child.

7. Don't get stressed. It really is 100 easy lessons. If your child has a problem, feel free to backup a few lessons.

8. Try very hard not to skip days. This was really a problem with my first two. I've been better about it with my third and it seems to help.

I have now purchased two copies of Teach Your Child .... The first I purchased 7 years ago to teach my daughter. The second I purchased a year ago to teach my now 4 1/2 year old boy.

The negatives associated with the book are minimal - yes, there are a few typos and the lessons are rather bland. But on the whole the books is beautifully layed out, with easy progression and ample repetition.

I cover 2 lessons a night with my boy. The first lesson is a review of last night's new lesson. The second lesson is the next lesson in sequence. We spend about 30 minutes reading.

My boy is on lesson 70 now and he is quite excited about his new ability to read words! He sounds out words on billboards or on the back of the cereal box and seems to get a big kick out of the process. Reading is opening up a new world for him and I know he enjoys it.

As for my daughter, she entered school knowing how to read because of this book. I don't think the teacher believed me when I said she could read but I figured the teacher would find out soon enough. She did and adapted appropriately.

Yes, being ahead of the game may have lead to some slow days at school for my daughter, but I'd FAR RATHER her to be ahead than behind! And you should feel this way, too!

Truly, I believe that teaching reading to your child is one of the best acts of love you can ever give. This book accomplishes everything I had hoped for.

After the lessons are over, you still need to find some easy readers for your child. There are few books around that are just right, but be persistent. Spend another six months with your child with easy readers and you'll find that your child will take off on his or her own after that.

The overall time it took me to teach my daughter using the book was about six months. I expect the same with my boy. With my daughter, we went through the 100 lessons and then went back again through 60-100 to reinforce the earlier work.

I think you can (and probably must) modify the lessons to suit your situation.

Good luck!

I taught my two boys to read with this program. The reading results were outstanding. In first grade, they both were reading on a 2nd to 3rd grade level or above. The only challenge I found later was that though this program teaches phonics (combined letter sounds, and multiple sounds for single vowels), it does not teach all the spelling rules. For instance, you teach that a silent e at the end of a word makes the vowel before it long, but there is never any mention in what e does in a word like "have" or "able." The e in "have" for those of you who don't know prevents the word from ending in v (no English words end in v), and in the word "able," it serves as the vowel for the second syllable "ble" (all syllables must have a vowel). The a in "able" is long because when a vowel ends the syllable as it does here being the only letter (one vowel can make up a syllable) it makes the long sound. My boys had trouble with spelling although they were good readers because they were not taught these rules along with the phonetic sounds. I am now using the Spaulding method which incorporates spelling with phonetics with my 6 year old daughter and she is not only reading well, but she understands the nuances of spelling. The Spaulding's book, "The Writing Road to Reading," (it may be under a new title) is put out by the Riggs Institute. I went back and taught these rules to my boys and they are now doing fine, but I believe I hampered them by not teaching them up front along with the phonetic sounds. (Wanda Sanseri, an expert on the Spaulding method, has a set of materials "Teaching REading at Home and School" in which she organizes the "The WRiting Road to Reading" in easily taught steps.)

I learned to read with 100 Easy Lessons, and have taught many children to read using this program (as a tutor.) 100 Easy Lessons works, but it is boring - for the parent AND the child. A new program has come out, by the same author that is 100 times better - called Funnix Beginning Reading. The program is on the computer. There is no script to read ( the computer does all the narration!) it is animated and has two levels. Plus, students start out reading with regular looking letters from the beginning.

Having used both programs extensively, I would try Funnix first!

I bought this book while my son was in first grade. The school he attended used phonics and whole language in an "integrated" approach. This sounded great at the outset... the best of both worlds. We quickly found, however, that this "integrated" approach meant a disorganized approach. After three quarters of first grade, my son still could not read basic words and ranked at the bottom of his class for reading. He was placed in a special reading group for children below grade level. Although my son received additional help, this special class was very hard on his self esteem and we eventually removed him from it and increased the time we spent tutoring him at home. We began using the book at the recommendation of a retired special education teacher. My son's reading progress was very slow at the beginning of the book and we became somewhat frustrated but continued on. After completing 70 lessons, things began to click. A foundation had been built. We completed the book and later bought several other books based on direct instruction methods. We have been enormously pleased with the results. My son was tested during the first quarter of second grade and placed in an advanced reading group of children reading at the third grade level. This progress occurred over six months!! If schools used this method it would markedly improve the literacy rate in the USA. Our 4 year old son is currently completing the book and now reads at a first grade level. Buy this book if your child is having difficulty with reading. For the price, it is a great investment!

Distar/SRA Cirriculum. Simple & easy to use. Very helpful for preventing decoding errors and for those with learning disabilities such as dyslexia.

I was introduced to this program in my undergraduate elementary education training. I used it successfully to remediate a large group of elementary-aged children who were illiterate. Within 5 weeks, they were all reading fluently, at the end of a 1st grade level. My colleagues used it successfully to teach 1st grade students to read, with the same success.

Fifteen years later, I was home schooling my own children, relying on it to un-do the "whole language" decoding reflex my children developed in the public school system. They were taught to memorize the way words looked, rather than to sound them out. I guess that might work, if we were studying Chinese!

This system is phonetically based (as is 85% of the English language!). It is simple and easy to use, with clear instructions for the instructor, giving precise pronunciation guidelines for you to model sounds accurately for your student. There is little if any preparation time involved. Furthermore, letters of the alphabet that are commonly reversed and confused, such as d and b are set in different type. This helps eliminate a lot of decoding confusion for the child. I highly recommend it!