I heard great things about Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and thought if my kindergartener could begin reading in 100 days, that would be practically unbelievable and amazing!

And to my pleasant surprise, we had complete success!

TEACH YOUR CHILD TO READ IN 100 EASY LESSONS REVIEW

REVIEW SUMMARY: 4 out of 5 stars

• Grades Used: K and 1
• Pros: Effectively taught my child to read
• Cons: Somewhat dry, stories were uninteresting

WHY I CHOSE THIS PROGRAM

First of all, I didn’t choose this program based on my research. I instead chose it for two other reasons:

• My friend had success with her child
• Wanted an inexpensive program due to no funding for Kindergarten

That was it. And I thought, if I can even find Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons book through a used books website, that would be even better… and I did!

PREPARATION

The first thing I did when I got the book was read all the information at the front (21 pages worth). I needed to make sure my daughter was getting the best start to reading and I knew that was on me.

The book also suggests for you to do four things:

• Learn the sounds that are introduced in the program, particularly the first ten.
• Make up a teaching schedule.
• Practice some corrections.
• Practice presenting the first couple of lessons in the program.

THE DISTAR READING METHOD

This program is based on the Distar reading method suggesting that research done using Distar shows it has had dramatic effects with almost every kind of child, particularly with young children. 

Prereading skills are a great thing to have prior to this reading program, but not necessary.

A big component of Distar is that we teach the child to say letter sounds with one breath and held for a couple of seconds to show the sound is continuous. Such as the letter m. We don’t say m-m-m with breaks inbetween the sound to sound out the letter. Instead we say mmmmmm for a couple of seconds to sound it out. Another example is the word mat. A child learns to say it like this: mmmaaat with no breaks. We then encourage them to say it fast. “mat”.

Of course there are sounds that aren’t held for a long time and noncontinuous. Either these are pronounced very fast with no “uh” sound at the end of them, or they are unvoice or whispered like the sound of t. It is “t”, not “tuh”.

This program also contains Distar orthography.

Distar orthography is a typical alphabet, but adding in symbols or small letters to help identify different sounds the letters do or don’t make. An example of this is the vowels that make the long sound verses the short sound or silent e. Long sounded vowels have a line over top of the letter. Silent letters are extra small to show that they aren’t said.

At first I was intimiated by my child needing to know the Distar orthography at such a young age, but it turned out to be a fairly easy thing to grab onto.

CHILD’S LEARNING STYLE

What’s important to know (because in homeschooling we get to choose materials based on our child’s learning style), is that my daughter:

• has a visual learning style (but appreciates multi-sensory to keep things engaging)
• likes rules and boundaries
• is a perfectionist being hard on herself when she doesn’t get a concept immediately
• can sniff when you don’t know what you’re talking about
• likes to colour, so black and white is calming to her

Based on my daughter’s learning style, personality type and my preference in teaching, below is my detailed of Teaching Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.

DETAILED REVIEW

PROS:

• Scripted (it tells you, as the parent, what to say to your child in a red font colour.) I really love this! At first, the book seems daunting because of how thick it is and everything you’re supposed to say, but it’s so helpful in the beginning as you’re learning how to teach reading for your child’s success.
• Each lesson is broken down into tasks. This is helpful in digesting the lesson and your child feeling accomplished as you cheer them on.
• Combines phonics, reading, reading comprehension and writing. The focus is learning to read and adds elements that assist with reading, which is a tie-in.
• Lots of review. This helped with memory. I also skipped what I felt we didn’t need to do that day. When my child felt confident about a concept we began to do every other word or skipping sections.
• Reading comes quickly! My daughter was reading with ease in no time.

CONS:

• Lessons take longer than 20 minutes. The book says lessons do not take more than 15 minutes, or even 12 minutes, but suggests to block off 20 minutes. I found I always needed more than 20 minutes to complete a lesson.
• The stories were not enjoyed. They were odd to my daughter and unimaginable. We left the stories out shortly into the book and replaced with BOB Books Set 1.
• 100 days in a row was unreasonable for us. Our family perfers to leave days out of intentional school time that revolves around heavy topics like reading. We believe maturity is gained with time and growth, not just repetition.

OUR APPROACH

We started the book September 2016 and went up to Lesson 52, ending May 2016. We had breaks in-between with flashcards and reading BOB Books Set 1. I felt my daughter needed time to develop in maturity.

We started again September 2017 at Lesson 46, a place that I imagined would be comfortable and achievable for my daughter, and it certainly was. We faithfully did each lesson from there until Lesson 75. I must say we didn’t complete each lesson; we stopped each lesson when we got to the reading, comprehension and writing portion and replaced those areas with other books.

REVISED PRINTING of TEACH YOUR CHILD TO READ IN 100 EASY LESSONS

Although, I had the older version of the book, I found that I could work with it. The most recent printing of Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons has an updated cover.

CHANGING IT UP

In addition to the book, I created Letter Sound Flashcards to review what was learned and keep things fresh, while mixing things up (considering the dry nature of the book). I also created a Lesson Sticker Chart to give my daughter some sense of accomplishment and achievement when she completed the lesson.

Feel free to grab your freebie below! I printed the flashcards on cardstock and put them through using my laminator, (I love laminators). Then, I cut the flashcards using a simple cutter to keep straight lines and the cutting done in no time!

If you’re interested in my *new* and updated flashcards which include words, check them out here.

I NEED YOUR HELP!

We are done this book. Where do I go from here?! I have considered All About Reading and All About Spelling. Based on our success with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, is the All About program the most simliar helping to advance in phonics, reading and spelling? For me, I’d like to have something that teaches in a similar format to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons where it includes a script for me bringing phonics, reading and spelling altogether for my children.

I would sure appreciate and value your help! Please comment your suggestions below.

UPDATE

From Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, we went with All About Reading Level 2 and All About Spelling Level 1.

Anchored in Jesus,
Melanie