The Easiest Way To Teach Your Child To Read

I cannot imagine life without reading.

I grew up loving books and the library was one of my most favorite places to go. When I was a kid living in Philly, I would regularly walk to the public library after school by myself, take out the maximum allowance, go home, read, return, repeat!

But the art of teaching someone how to read was a baffling mystery to me. I had no idea how to do it or what it would take.

The last thing I wanted to do was mess up my kid’s reading abilities. I worried that if reading was taught incorrectly, it would permanently set them up for failure and problems. I have one friend who attended school in the 70s when the “whole word method” was used and he said he still struggles to read.

Learning how to teach reading was the first of a thousand battles I would fight when it came to curriculum choices.

It was also the first deal I made with my husband in getting him to agree to try homeschooling.

He and I agreed that if I could teach our daughter to read, I could homeschool her for K and 1st grade. I had looked into the public school curriculum in the district we lived in at the time and they did not expect entering kindergarteners to be reading.

So we figured that if she was reading, she would be on track so that when we put her in school, she wouldn’t be behind in any way.

Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons

On the advice of the first homeschool mom I met, she recommended I use the book Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons.

I was skeptical about its legitimacy because it was strange looking and seemed too simplistic for teaching a vital skill that is foundational to a person’s life!

But I figured I had nothing to lose. My kid was still young and if it didn’t work, I could just drop it and do something else, we still had time.

By my notes, she was 3 years and 9 months old when I started this book. We worked on one lesson a day, 5 days a week. And shockingly, she was reading by lesson 20.

100 Lessons is EXTREMELY easy to use. You need no additional materials and it scripts out what you (the parent/teacher) will say.

You just follow the directions, do the lessons diligently and your child will be reading! Approximately by lesson 30, my daughter was reading simple children’s books by herself. I supplemented the lessons with early readers like the BOB books.

Most children love spending time with their mom or dad, so it wasn’t difficult to get her to do the lessons with me.

The first lessons are quite easy so they will speed by.

Keep Going

As the lessons advanced, they grew more difficult, so I spread them out over a few days. I did 2 lessons each week and just read simple books with her the other days.

As the book progresses, the upper lessons have longer stories with a picture. I found that the picture would distract her and would give her too many hints as to what was written, so I covered up the picture with black construction paper.

She could lift and see the picture once she finished reading the story.

By around lesson 90, her reading took off  so we stopped and didn’t finish the book.

At this point, I was concerned that it had been too easy and felt like I should do something else for extra practice. So I bought a book called Phonics Pathways to practice more difficult words. She disliked it because it was just lists of words grouped by sounds. So we dropped that and I didn’t do any other formal reading practice.

Each of my kids learned to read using this book and all three are very strong readers. But they did progress at different rates.

Although my daughter was able to read, she didn’t want to read more advanced books by herself until she was about 6 years old. I think this was because I read to my kids every day so they preferred me to read to them.

But one day, our read-aloud was The Boxcar Children. My kids LOVED that book and didn’t want me to stop. When we finished the first book, I bought the sequels by the original author so that they could read it themselves. My daughter tore into those books and that began her own journey as a reader.

Different Experiences

With my sons, I taught them both using 100 Lessons and they were successful at different rates.

One son learned to read at an even faster speed than his sister. Some of it,  was because when his sister had her early lessons, he would always be trying to look over our shoulders to see what we were doing so I’m sure he picked up a lot that way.

My other son took a bit longer to go through his lessons. I spent about 6 months with him to finish the book and afterwards, I tried to go through Phonics Pathways with him. We did PP a couple of times a week for about 3-4 months, but he didn’t like it either. After that, he could read, but he just didn’t seem as interested in reading books by himself. He was also struggling with vision issues at the time so that certainly hindered him.

But by age 9, he must have had a development spurt because his reading just took off almost overnight and from there, he was always reading something and his comprehension was on level with his siblings.

Two of my younger sisters (one has 5 kids and the other has 4)  have also taught their children how to read with this same book. That is 12 kids in my family alone, all given the gift of literacy with a $13 book!

If that is not the best investment any parent can make, I don’t know what is!

The picture above is a picture of my own book and the newly printed version. I’ve compared mine to the new one and other than the cover, they are identical inside, down to the page numbers.

I wish you great success as you give your child the gift of reading!

Good Luck!!

p.s. it is important to obtain regular medical check-ups for your kids. Many times, cognitive development and academic growth is hindered because of unknown underlying medical issues.