Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

Sometime this last spring our little girl, E, told us she wanted to learn how to read. This has been an on-going theme in our house for probably 6 months. I would tell her it's time for bed and she would ask for one more book. I would tell her that she could look through the book herself and then the, "I don't know how to read" statement would come out. 

I know most of you are aghast that I wouldn't read one more book to her. Here's the thing...in two years we read over 5000 books. I know the exactly number since we participated in a 1000 books before Kindergarten program. Which she finished in three months.So turning down one last book at night was to save us, trying to get her to go to sleep, knowing that we already ready 10 books that day.

So, when the request came from her to learn how to read, my husband first sat down and tried sounding out words in her books. You could just see the frustration coming from her at this technique. After some research, I found this book at the library...Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Of course I ordered it in and decided to give it a try.

Within 10 lessons I had returned the library book and ordered my own because it was working so well. At first we just worked on sounds. Say "a" the short way, the long way, etc. Then we added words and sentences. Her favorite part? At the end of each lesson the child gets to write out letters. She loves the writing part. 

We're now at lesson 81 and E is reading full stories with titles, sentences, and paragraphs. She's spelling words out on her own. When we had our Kindergarten conference before school started, they handed us a sheet with sight words she had to know by the end of the year. On the sheet, she knew 3/4 of the words and could sound out the rest. For that reason alone I thought I would post about this great book.

Our daughter now feels comfortable sounding out words. Now, when I cuddle with her at night for bedtime, she tries to read my books and will point out words like, "the" or "that" or "and". No more steamy novels for me while she's reading over my shoulder! Ha. Ha.