Teach Your Child to Read in 10 minutes a day?

[warriormom]

Can you tell me about your experience with "Teach Your Child to read in 10 minutes a day"? Would you use it again? Any suggestions? Which age would this work for?

[dlpardo]

I used this for a short period of time with my son who was just four at the time. It did work well and he learned very quickly. The downside was he did not like the style and was not mature enough for any program. Also because there is so much practicing of the same word he would get frustrated "I read that already!" I think if the child is mature enough for 10 minute lessons daily then they are ready for the book. My son could handle the 10 minutes part but not daily and not reviewing the words he already knew. I don't think I would use it again because I much prefer OPGTR and think I am going to use that instead. Oh the book did have some cute ideas about incorporating stuffed animals in the reading lesson. My son really liked teaching Grover how to read.

[Ariston]

I used it with both my son and my daughter for a time. It worked well for my 5 year old son (for a while). It was really instrumental in getting him to be able to blend sounds together. Before using it, he knew the letter sounds, but could not blend them together. He just didn't get it at all, no matter how many times we tried showing him 'C' - 'A' - 'T'. So, I was quite amazed that the book actually got him from that stage to actually reading short sentences and somewhat long words very quickly. It seemed, frankly, like a miracle. Other phonics programs I had started seem to just jump from letter sounds to words like CAT, whereas 100 Easy Lessons actually breaks that process down and shows the child how to blend the sounds together.

 

However, about half way through the book it just got too hard for him. There was no way he could get through each lesson in a reasonable amount of time and we had to break them up into 2 or more days. Also, it seemed a little disorganized to me. My son is very logical and did better being told the rules for something explicitly (such as the silent e rule) whereas 100 Easy Lessons does not do that. So, we switched to Phonics Pathways and have been very happy with that.

 

For my daughter, things came much more easily. She was able to figure out how to blend things on her own an was reading CVC words on her own, so I tried 100 Easy Lessons for a while with her but then just switched to Phonics Pathways.

 

So, I am very greatful to 100 Easy Lessons for turning my son from a non-reader into a reader--but for a child who gets things a little more naturally, I prefer other phonics programs that are a little more logical. (However, I do not have experience bringing a child through the whole book, so take my review with a grain of salt!)

good luck,

Elena

[makagrin]

I have a friend who just used this and her daughter is reading but doesn't know the phonetic rules, and is a bit slow on reading overall. I think it depends on e. child, but if you can do something with phonetic rules it makes it a lot easier for them to progress steadily. My daughter was a bit slow to start as we covered every phonics rule, but is now reading 1-2 grade levels above (it all clicked half way through "first" grade, we did Phonics Museum.) And she LOVES reading, a very exciting development in the past 3 months. I've heard a lot of good things about Explode the Code too.