Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons: Revised and Updated Second Edition

I first bought this book in 2004 when I had a rising 4-year-old. She was a very keen little learner anyway, knowing all her letters and sounds. Using this book, she was reading independently by the time we got to Lesson 33.Three children later, they've all stopped before Lesson 60, reading independently.I don't think that's entirely up to my brilliant children <smile>. I think it's due in large part to this book.Why does this deserve to be the top book for teaching a child to read? Well, I've seen a lot of styles of reading education: Montessori, whole book, phonics, etc., as I am a homeschool teacher as well as a trained secondary school teacher.This book is the best because: it teaches letter sounds phonetically; it teaches how to write them from Lesson 1, choosing two letters at a time; it teaches blending better than any other method I've ever seen (it isn't kuh-a-tuh, but cat); and because it introduces "b" a long time before it introduces "d", there doesn't seem to be the confusion between those two letters that other methods struggle with.The best thing about it is, that as a parent, it's completely foolproof. You simply read what it tells you to read, in the way it tells you to read it, and honestly, bob's your uncle!There are three things that I think are important to remember, though: first, you as the parent have to be consistent in working through the book (c'mon, it's only 15 minutes at the most, so fitting it in as daily routine shouldn't be impossible); second, your child has to be ready and willing, so you might have to try to start it on several different occasions (note: you might have to whiz through the first ten lessons if you're child is anxious to start -- I had one who kept wanting to do Lesson 55 from the beginning, and though she wasn't actually capable of doing it, I realised she wanted to start a bit further ahead in the book than Lesson 1); and finally, read aloud as much as you can of other books so the child can see the joy and pleasure in the whole experience and not think of it as yet another chore centred around homework.

Fantastic book.My 4-year-old daughter was reading fluently after 30 lessons only, we didn't get past that lesson because went on to read books. This book creates a fantastic foundation so once my daughter had that foundation, she just ran with it.I'm now using it with my 4-year-old son who again is benefitting so much, we're on lesson 17 now and he's reading the short sentences with ease. I don't think we'll finish the book with him either.

Great book easy to start to teach your child to read

Tonight my daughter (age 3 yrs 8 months) read her own bedtime stories - proper little tales, not just "cat sat on a mat". She has done about 80 of the 100 lessons, no more than 20 minutes a day and about 5 times a week. She's very bright but due to having an October birthday, won't start formal schooling for another year and I knew that she would be very frustrated without some intellectual challenges. She asked to learn to read and I had no idea how to teach her - how you you explain "read" and "red" and "read" and "reed" and so on?This book tells you - it is VERY proscriptive, you must say the words exactly as they tell you, even down to how to praise your child (but I slipped from that a little as we went on and grew in confidence). Other reviewers have criticised the strange symbols and the use of little letters etc, and I wondered how she would move from this strange almost-code to proper writing, but she just did. I can't explain how, but her mind coped with it with no problem at all.To start with, I found the programme daunting - pages of explanation before you get into it, and I worried I would set my daughter back by putting her off reading entirely. This was not the case at all.Good points:+ it really works+ you start to see results very soon+ the child gets a great sense of achievement+ the authors really know what they are talking about, even if you don't believe it at first - for example more than one lesson back to back is inadvisable, even if your child finished the first lesson eager for more.Bad points:- it is American, so one has to translate "sidewalk" and "mom" etc- there are far too many typing errors, missing the pronunciation marks off letters etc, we had to go through the book putting them in with black pen.- some of their pronunciation is bizarre: "for" to be pronounced rhyming with "mower" for example?! Is it the American accent, or is it just sloppy editing? We just ignored this after a while.For me it loses 2 stars for the sloppy editing, but as the programme still works so effectively, I've given it a bonus star to make up for taking off 2 - the programme is almost perfect, the publishers need to sharpen up their act!I will use it again for my son.PS (added later) she's now nearly 4 and on stage 2 of the reading scheme - her class mate have not started it yet!