"Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" Book Review

Our kindergartener has loved books since she was itty bitty. As a one year old she used to sit still for a crazy amount of time while I read to her. And after each book was read, she would reply, "more." So when she started begging me to teach her to read at three years old, my initial thought was sort of sadness. I knew she knew there was more to just looking at the pictures, but developmentally there was just no way she could accomplish this task. However, about 6 months later, on the recommendation of my sister, I ordered this book.

If anything terrified me about teaching my kids, this was it. This right here. I'm sorry, but have you looked at a phonics program since you learned to read yourself? I basically wanted to stress eat over how confusing it is. So many rules, and none of them seem all that consistent. So when this book showed up in the mail I seriously questioned how in world I thought I was going to teach her how to read.

Let me preface the rest of this post by saying that I'm a big believer in not rushing your kids into learning. I really want my kids to LOVE learning, so I never want to push too much and too soon. That said, Ivy was very interested in learning to read, so I thought I would take advantage of her eagerness and start. I knew she was ready to start figuring out this concept herself. I left our lessons completely up to her. If she wanted to do one, we did. If she wasn't into it, we skipped it. There were weeks where we never opened this book. And a year later...we finished it!

So with a big drumroll, here's what I loved and didn't love about this book:

What I LOVED about "How To Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons":

• The lessons are short. -- who wants to spend more than 20 minutes learning the ins and outs of phonics? Not me. And neither did my daughter. Because the lessons were short, we could fit it in at pretty much any time of the day. I didn't have to plan out when we would sit down and do it. If we were waiting for pasta to boil, we had time to do a lesson! Super convenient!

• Lots of repetition is used. -- while initially this drove me a little crazy, it really only took me about five or six lessons to see the benefit of this to little ones. Because the lessons were broken down into the same activities each day, it allowed my daughter to anticipate what she needed to do, which really seemed to resonate with her.

• Nothing extra was needed. -- This book and a piece of paper was all we needed to do a lesson. I didn't have to buy workbooks, or flashcards, or anything else!

• The phonics method is used. -- this was an important one for me. I wanted something that would teach them how to sound out words correctly if I wasn't there to help, so the whole sight word situation wasn't something I was interested in.

What I DIDN'T LOVE about "How To Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons":

• This is a no frills program. -- Which I guess isn't really something I personally didn't love about it, but I can see how it could be a turn off for someone when looking at the different programs out there. It's basic, black and white print, with a hokey illustration for each lesson. Ivy never seemed to really mind, but if you're looking for brightly colored and enticing curriculum, this is not your jam.

• "Second Reading" -- There is a story to read at the end of each lesson. In the beginning lessons those stories consisted of only a few words and then as you get farther into the curriculum they turn into a few short sentences, and then at the end, several paragraphs. One of the tasks of each lesson is a "first reading" of the story. After they read it, the next task is a "second reading," where they go through and read the exact same story again. I really came to dread this part. For us, towards the end, it made our lessons longer than 20 minutes because Ivy would drag her feet with reading it a second time. I felt like I was fighting her to focus, so about 2/3 of the way through we stopped doing the second reading. I'm sure there is a good reason for having that second reading. Maybe it's just the extra practice? However we found it to be more of an annoyance so we just stopped.

I liked this book! It was concise and easy to teach from and just made sense to me. If you end up choosing to use this book, I'll throw out this little tip for you. Look up a YouTube video of someone actually teaching from this book and watch how they do it. For awhile I wondered if I was doing it right, or if there was a better way to be doing it, and I just found it helpful to watch someone else teach it first.

You guys, I taught my daughter how to read! I seriously feel like a super star.

#teach #homeschool #reading #bookreview #kindergarten #phonics