Customer Reviews

Teach Your Child to Read in Ten Minutes a Day

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The program presented in this book is pure phonics just like in the perennial favorite "Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons" and it works. The backbone of the program is a fun little game called blocks that motivates kids to get through the early stages of learning to read. The author chooses to start with fun words like up, cup, and cat whereas most programs start with am, sam, and see. Phonics is nothing new, but the reason this book is so useful is the wealth of knowledge it gives parents on the science of teaching a child to read. After reading the book, all you need in order to sit down and teach your child to read is the list of 32 steps to remind you what order to proceed in and a little creativity about how to make it fun. There are not day to day lesson plans, because for a young child that isn't the most effective teaching method. Essentially the child needs to practice word blending, letter sound association, and left-to-right decoding. Ledson explains how to make these activities part of your daily routine. Lots of examples are given on how to make learning to read into games which you could copy directly, or even better if you are creative, you can make up the games as you go along to fit your child's unique interests. In addition to games, the author suggests using puppets as fellow learners to help motivate and captivate children and that worked really well for us. A puppet can encourage a child to try again ten times as often as a parent and the kids still giggle. In our public school, kindergartners are asked to memorize 100 sight words all about 3 letters long. That is a lot of hard miserable work, my child was in tears when she got the list the last month of preschool. The next week we started this program and it was easy and fun, no more tears. She only had to memorize 54 sounds, mostly one letter long and they were part of a game! Then she was able to start reading real books and enjoy it.

How fast does it work?

My daughter completed steps 1-32 (kindergarten) in 3 weeks at age 5 1/2, spending an hour a day playing games with me(she knew half the alphabet when she started). In three more months she completed the next level (first grade) spending 20 minutes a day. In two more months she had read her first 100 books. I never taught her sight words, but about half way through the second level she started kindergarten. She passed off the entire list of 100 sight words on the first day of school using phonics--only, struggling on "been" and "said". I had a friend who teaches at another school say she heard teachers talking about my daughter's amazing reading ability.

My son, age 4, needed lots of practice decoding left to right. We did about 5 minutes a day several times a week for over a year and he still was unsure, it was just games though, so he didn't get frustrated or feel dumb. Left to right was never destined to be easy for him, the games we played served as therapy to rewire his brain. He would certainly have been labeled dyslexic (like three generations of my family before him) if not taught to read by the phonic reading method. My son took about a year to finish the first 32 steps. His kindergarten teacher commented that although he wasn't "reading" like a few of her other students that he showed amazing confidence in sounding out new words, better than the students who were reading. Also, he was writing up a storm! (another fringe benefit of phonic reading instruction.)

I started my third child at age 2 on the 32 steps. She went through the first 32 steps in the course of a school year. She learned left to right reading automatically with no problem! We would spend time working on it for about 5 minutes at a time once a week and the rest of the learning was just conversations, refrigerator magnets, playdough letters, letters on cereal boxes, etc.

Pros of this method

*Don't have to memorize a single sight word (my kids can't/won't do that).

*Kids never think of learning to read as any more difficult than learning the alphabet song.

*Kids don't develop dyslexia (disordered reading). I come from a family where about half of the people in three generations suffer from an intense difficulty in learning how to read (aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, nieces, nephews, and so on). As a child, four of the five children in my family received intensive phonic reading therapy after learning to read proved unsuccessful. Then we moved to a new state where they didn't do this for struggling readers. The fifth child was labeled dyslexic and put in special education. (I taught him to read in the eighth grade and he is now a history major at a prestigious university, a very reading intensive field of study.)

*This method helped me spot reading problems that had been invisible with my daughter while she tried whole word method unsuccessfully and tearfully in the last several months of preschool.

*When kids graduate from this program they don't have to read boring repetitive books that insult their intelligence. Repetitive books are whole-word method, my kids can really read and aren't limited to books with 30 or less words.

*I've noticed that this method of reading instruction makes WRITING easier for kids. My kids write all the time, they don't think about it, it is just second nature because if they know how a word SOUNDS, they can write it and if they have read it a few times in a book, they spell it correctly too. This puts them miles ahead in school.

Cons of this method

*this method requires a lot of thought and preparation from parents.

*you use treats and candy to get them started, which have to be weaned away eventually.

*because it is easy, it is SOOOO tempting to rush a child through the program too fast, keep telling yourself "easy and fun, don't push too fast". The first 6-7 steps should take much, much, much longer than the rest.

*the program doesn't have lesson plans. That is because you don't need one, you just say "U" makes this sound "UUUUU" an play games to reinforce it, after reading the book, you know what to incorporate into the games to be successful, however some people see this as a negative.

The second level of this program is sentences. Since my kids were reading so well by then, rather than games, I typed up the sentences in the book and printed them out 6 per page to make a reader. The kids read each "page" in the reader 3 times before moving to the next. This level was very easy to teach and I believe this is what could be expected for most kids. The first 32 steps take more effort, time, and creativity, but are more memorable. My kids still talk about how much fun it was.

This book is full of good information, but I was looking for something more in the lesson plan style, rather then just prose. It makes a good compliment to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann, which I purchased at the same time and have found very effective with my children. Engelmann's book is more pre-structered, where this book gives more of basic guidelines and turns you loose. Great together, if you're just looking for one, I'd suggest choosing based on which way you feel comfortable teaching.

This book was great for its clear directions, great ideas and good advice. I was amazed by the complete acuracy of how the suggested activities would take place. Not only will you learn how to teach phonics, but how to instill the fun of learning. On cue, my three year old responded to the "lessons" with giggles, laughter and begged for more. This book is great for anyone that wants to see the joy and delight of any child as they learn to read. The challenge will be to keeping it to only ten minutes a day.

I bought this book after checking it out from our library. My son is 5 and I am teaching him how to read using the methods described in this book. What I liked about it was that it uses the phonics system and is very systematic and logical in its approach, so that even the youngest preschooler can start to learn to read. For example, it starts with teaching the letter U, then P, then how to put them together to make UP. It builds gradually from there until eventually the child is reading sentences. It has lots of suggestions on games and activities to make it fun and motivating for the child who may be resistant to learning to read. It can be used for older children as well who may be struggling with reading. My son picked it up very quickly and made it through the first 100 words quite easily. It gets progressively more challenging with the sentences, so for my son, it is taking him longer to progress through those, and he gets frustrated at times, so I have to back off and give him more review time so he feels more successful. He is in an advanced reading group in his class in kindergarten and I feel like this book has made all the difference. Early literacy is such an important skill. I'm very glad I found this book. My only disappointment is that I was led to believe that by working with your child just 10 mins a day, they would be reading in 45 days. Well, after 45 days, my son is reading basic sentences, but has only made it about 1/2 way through the book. I think it really varies with each child and it is still a very good method to use.

If you want a fancy program with alot of pretty colored pictures this may not be for you. If you want to educate yourself and give your children the correct foundation to open their eyes to a life long love of reading this is it!! I am now teaching my 4th child to read using this book and I am here reordering another copy because my first copy is wearing out after using it with the others! My 4th and 5th grade boys are sitting in the living room each reading a 400 page novel as I write this. I have found this solid program has kept us from the pitfalls of "sight words" and has helped them both with speech and spelling. I only used the games the book suggested if my child was either very young or was a little stubborn and needed encouragement! Check this out at your library, read it and you will find it makes sense!

I haven't read this exact book but I have read other Ledson books. Sidney taught me to read at the age of three. I highly recommend his methods to everyone. I was able to read at a grade twelve level by grade four as a result of his phonetic teachings. I was spelling at the eighth grade level (the highest level measured) by grade five. In fact, as a result of learning to read by this method I got only one spelling word wrong in my entire school career. I believe that this method had a great deal of effect on my reading comprehension as my sister, who has a higher IQ than me and was taught to read in school had much more difficulty with reading and spelling throughout primary school. Her reading is as good as mine now, but she still can't spell. Phonetic reading techniques also work wonders for foreign language learning. By just learning what sounds letter combinations make in various foreign languages I can read in Africaans, Danish, French and some German. Please use this book and give your child all of the advantages of learning to read the Sidney Ledson way, like my parents did me. They will thank you later.

I am only 1/3 of the way through the lessons, but already my 3 and 5 year old children are starting to read words. Every day they ask to play the games, especially the "Block Game". Never before have I had my children ask to learn. Highly recommended!

My daughter's name is Ada Cirlia, and I am writing about this book because Ada attended "The Sidney Ledson Institute" in Toronto for 4 years.
She learned to read using this method in less than 6 months through a part time program; and the most amazing thing is that she was only 4 years old!
Even today we still talk about the school- how good our choice was at that time and how kind and amazing the principal Mr. Sidney Ledson was.
As of today, Ada is a brilliant student among her peers- she is a very fast reader, can absorb a lot of information, and she can read up to 700 pages a day if she really likes the book! She proved this when reading, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" in less than a day. Because of such a love for reading, she now has a very good memory, fine grammar, and she is a great writer with an excellent vocabulary!
Ada is now in 7th grade and she was awarded "Student of the Year" for overall achievements from "The North Hills School", which was ranked the 12th best collage-prep school in the U.S.A.
We think that after seeing Ada's performance, that it's worth trying to teach your child using this book. It will change their life!

I cannot wait to teach my children to read using this method. My friend taught her daughter to read using this book when she was four years old, and now as a seven-year-old, she's at the top of her class and excels in learning everything thrown at her. The ideas that the author has for gaining the attention of your little one are fun and rewarding. I also like the fact that you are not teaching your children how to say each letter, but how each letter sounds. She gives a day by day lesson plan and sample stories for your child to read. I highly recommend this book.

I got this book for some ideas of how to teach my 4yo daughter and 3yo son (who doesn't speak apart from some vague sounds and grunts). What I liked about the process is that it is a game, and it has rewards, which is the incentive my children needed. And before you disapprove of rewards, it doesn't have to be sweets. Stickers, berries, popcorn, unsalted peanuts are all things that work really well. How does it work? you ask.

The main game is a board game (which you make) where you move along the cards. Each time you move the card, you say the sound or word written on it, then get the reward. Then you move again. Simple to make and play, and fast enough for them to do without getting bored. My children want to play over and over again. This is only the 'main' game. The book has chapters aimed for teaching preschoolers, for babysitters, daycare centers, kinders and for teaching school aged children. Each of these chapters are full of ideas that you can implement, even if you aren't a babysitter or teach at a kindergarten. I tried a few different of the ideas they suggested, and even a few of my own, until we found a routine and game that suited us. While the author recommended to dramatize the process to make it fun, I skipped that. Not my style. But we made charts of words they could read, and would hang them in the loungeroom, and show off to daddy the words they could read. So I found I didn't do everything they suggested, but felt I had plenty of options to choose from to help me find what worked for us.

This book will start with capital letters only to avoid the child from using visual cues, and therefore avoid guessing. I really liked this because I started with the Bob Books with my daughter, but then discovered she looked at the pictures and guessed the sentences. That's not reading, although she was very good at pretending! But this system will introduce lower case letters and sentences eventually, so that by the time you finish, your child can read quite a good level, and actually read, not guess. The book also includes three short stories for them to read.

One thing I didn't like was the introduction of words my daughter didn't recognize because they are words we don't use (like STUNT, COP, HOG, GAG, GAP). It just meant that we had to have some explanation time, so she would know that what she was reading was an actual word.

Even though it mentions in the book to use this with children who are talking, I started with my (then) 2 1/2 year old son who wasn't talking. I live in remote Mexico, with no access to Speech Pathology, so I gave this method a chance, simply to see if I could encourage him to at least make some more sounds. And it worked! I wont say that this method cured him, because he still talks like a 2 year old, but I noticed a huge difference, in that he is making more sounds, ending words properly (like CUP, instead of CU), and using more words. So I have kept it up with him, modifying it so that he can still get his reward.

Overall, I am pleased with this because it is flexible, it is fun, full of ideas, and leaves me room to do it the way that suits us. Having said that, I also liked using a few other resources, such as the starfall website (which is very interactive for the kids) [...] and other games I already had, like letter bingo. And the best part of it: it actually works!