Teach Your Child to Read

I'm going to start an occasional habit of mentioning some of the resources we are using or hoping to use around here, and posting personal reviews. I write some formal ones occasionally for this site, but the ones on here can be more targeted to how they are working for us and how we use them or plan to use them.

First is my all time stand-by primary resource, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. If I could have only one curriculum book (as opposed to living, real books) to use during the early years, it would be this one. I do not think it's perfect. The stories are silly, though cute and harmless, and the distar orthography is a bit strange, and off-putting to some adults. However, the way it teaches blending the letter sounds is unparalleled. And the orthography, which uses visual tricks to show digraphs like "th" or "ea", is helpful for visual learners in particular, I think. The orthography normalizes into standard written script by lesson 73 or around there, and that is usually where we drop the book. Much of the rest of it is about reading upper case letters and learning the names of the letters, and this is usually something that's difficult to KEEP your child from learning; my four year old already has the upper case letters down and I haven't ever sat down to "teach" him.

Another advantage for me with the 100 Easy Lessons method is that it is simple. You need a chair to sit down on with the child, and maybe a pencil and paper, and the book itself. Simplicity and direct give and take are advantages for me, and my children generally learn fastest that way.

There are scripted words for the teacher or parent to read and say to the children. I don't use the scripting given anymore. I am on my fifth emergent reader (my oldest learned to read in school). With each child I've used the book less formally, and with Aidan, I am using some additional Montessori-type methods. Why am I doing this? For one thing, he needs more repetition in order to remember. We drop the book when he is getting stuck, and pick it up again later. For another thing, I the mom would like to get to try out some other approaches -- it gets boring to use the same thing 5 times over 12 years! For another thing, he particularly needs a multi-sensory approach. There is more to say about that but it is for another post.

When the child is through lesson 70 or so, we usually move on to some basal readers so that the children can reinforce the phonics learning and gain some fluency. More about that some other time.