Every Tuesday in January, we will be sharing information about a curriculum that didn’t work, or stopped working, for our families. Our intention is not to steer anyone away from these programs, but rather to be open and honest about our personal experience. Maybe the reason one program didn’t work for me might be the reason it DOES work for you!
‘Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons’
I know that there are legions of homeschool moms who swear by this book. I have seen this book recommended over, and over again. If you love this resource, more power to you! It just didn’t work for me. A few months ago, I decided to give it a try. My two older kids learned to read quite proficiently using minimal teaching and intervention. For the most part, we went through simple phonics (Leap Frog Letter Factory x1000!), and read simple books, increasing in difficulty, until they took off on their own.
My current kindergartner is taking a little longer to take off with reading than his older siblings, which is totally ok, I just thought I might try a different approach, and see if that made a difference for him personally. Because ‘Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons” seems to be the gold standard in the homeschool world, I bought a copy and set to work.
It is laid out for you, the teacher, word for word, which you will either love or hate. I hate it, so I tend to go off script a little bit, to make it feel less awkward. That having been said, my biggest issue with this method is that it introduces a new system that uses letters with symbols to represent sounds.
Perhaps if you were just starting out, this method may work, but personally, I felt it was only muddying the waters for my little guy. Bottom line – I do not want to introduce a system of reading that is different from all of the other reading material in our house. I like reading instruction to be simple, and in my opinion, this book takes a simple thing and complicates it.
For these reasons, ‘Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons’ gets the “It didn’t work for me” stamp.
Sowing In The Morning 