I get that this can seem like a daunting task. I am a certified trained teacher and this felt daunting to me since I had never taught kindergarten before. My students had always had the basics of how to read when they came to me. Because of this, when Hailey started kindergarten and was begging me to teach her to read, I knew I needed to figure this out!
I had seen this book recommended a few times and was able to talk to a few experienced homeschoolers who had used this book with great success.
When I was just beginning to homeschool and teach Hailey to read, I really wanted a very well laid out program that was “fool proof” and clear on what I had to do. I really enjoyed this book and found it had amazing results. By the end of the 100 lessons, Hailey was quite an avid reader! There are no bells and whistles to it, it is black and white and not overly exciting, but it does its job well!
I really liked how it has red print that tells you exactly what to say in each lesson.
The book begins at the very beginning of sounding out letters with lesson 1 looking like this:
The book is designed to begin before there is even a knowledge of letter sounds. It teaches the sounds of the letters as you go. One amazing thing about the way this book teaches reading is it teaches how to blend the sounds together to form a word, which is proper sounding out.
The lessons are so clearly laid out and easy to follow. They do not take much time at all. It is designed to take about 20 minutes a day but I found the early lessons took even less. As you get into reading sentences and short stories, there are comprehension questions built in. There is also a daily section on practicing writing the letters. In hindsight, I would add more printing practice to this, as I did find it to be lacking in that area. (with sophie this year I will be adding handwriting without tears).
There was a section about 3/4 of the way through where I didn’t like how they were teaching long vowel sounds so I skipped those aspects of the lesson and just taught it myself but carried on with the reading and comprehension part of the lesson.
A friend had told me there would come a time 1/2 or 3/4 way through when I would want to quit but to push through it and I would be glad. This was very true. I did reach a point where I had no idea how this could possibly work and how she could go from what she was reading at that time to what it said she would read at the end. But thankfully my friend had warned me, we stuck with it, and it worked! She is a fluent reader!
Here is lesson 100:
So if you are starting homeschooling or just have a child who is struggling with reading in school, this is a great resource. It moves so slowly but has amazing end results.
others books to supplement with this
As an add on to this book, we used BOB books, Penguin Readers, and Usborne books. I also read aloud daily. Even as your child is learning to read and is able to read, reading aloud is so important to foster their love of reading and so they can hear your reading comprehension strategies and what you do when you get to a word you don’t know. When selecting independent books for your new reader, be sure to select a book that will give them success. Books they will read on their own should build their confidence and enjoyment, not lend to frustration. So when she wanted books to read I looked through so many early reader books to find ones with the right letters and blends I knew she could handle independently. Slowly but surely I could add more books to her pile. And now at age 7 she can pick up and read pretty much anything. Reading is like anything else, the more you practice the better you get.
There are many great programs available out there to teach reading, this is just the one that worked well for us!
I hope this was helpful and please leave a comment or get in touch with me if you’d like more information or help on teaching a child to read!
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