Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons: Revised and Updated Second Edition

I started going through this program with our daughter when she was 2 2/3 years old. She is more than a month away from 3 and we are now at lesson 50. What is the standard at that level? Here are 2 lines from lesson 49: "a man gave an old coat to an old goat". My daughter is sight reading that (not having to sound out the words), but most of the time will confuse "coat" with "goat" and will possibly say "give" instead of "gave". That will explain the 5 stars I'm giving the book, so if you need to make a purchasing decision go ahead and order the book already. The rest of this review will detail a bit more about our experiences and advice I have for other people purchasing this book. I think you'll find it valuable. IMO, the key to understanding early learning is to realize that pretty much any complex task can be reduced to a set of simple tasks and rules for determining the order of those tasks. The way you teach anyone, be it a toddler or a university student - is reducing what you want your student to accomplish to a set of tasks that your student can accomplish, assessing their ability at each task, and teaching the skills involved with those tasks. After you have successfully taught each sub-task in a task, teach the task (the integration of the sub-tasks) as a skill. That is why the author is a genius for putting this book together - he has identified each small skill involved in reading, and lays out a practical method to teach those skills in the order necessary. At the price that this book sells for, it is a steal. Buy it already. It will do infinitely more for your child's ability to read than spending 50 times the equivalent money on 50 glittery 10 page cardboard books with 3rd grade reading level that will do next to nothing to teach your child how to read. As an example, I started with the Bob Books . Which are good of course, but you soon learn that when your child can sound out the words, "saying it fast" as the next stage is a separate skill that needs to be taught and your child doesn't know what you mean. So you have to teach that skill. And there are a host of separate skills that are not obvious to anyone who has not tried to teach a toddler how to read. This book covers each of those skills! Looking at the other comments, I realize that there are very few other parents who have tried to go through this with a child my daughter's age. It did not happen in a vacuum. We went through starfall (google it) from since before she was two, and then taught her how to use the computer sufficient to navigate through starfall by herself when she was maybe 2 1/3 or so. She would spend an hour a day or so by herself, of her own volition, navigating through the letters at first and then everything else on the site. In this way she was laying down the connections between neurons in the skills of understanding of the letters and what their sounds were, and in recognizing patterns. As stated, we had already started with the Bob books a week prior to TYCTR. And prior to that we had practised each of the sounds of the alphabet, so that she was ready to sound out words by the time the book arrived. To be honest, we could have started on this book well before we did. However, the time preceding was by no means wasted. I would have chosen to do things differently though, especially the actual sounds of the words. So, buy this book before your child is ready for it is good advice - it will teach you other skills that are useful for your child, and prevent her having to unlearn your previous amateurish teaching. What ended up happening is that we ended up coasting through the early lessons until we hit a wall. And while the vernacular is to "hit a wall", what she really hit was not a wall but a ramp that was a bit too steep for her - the natural rate of her ability to learn, as determined by the state her brain is growing at, coupled with its prior training. We hit this ramp at about lesson 43 or so. She was protesting it, and not enjoying the process any more. (I would well recommend buying the author's other book, Give Your Child A Superior Mind as mentioned on the front cover - as it will explain the learning adaptations that your child is going through that you interpret as "mistakes". Note to the author/publisher - get thas book reprinted, please! So be patient.) I also suspect that the "wall of text" the stories at the end became a bit intimidating for her, especially at the end of a lesson. Note that it's actually no more words than a typical Bob book, which she will munch through happily. That's not a knock on the book at all. The author can't control the pace at which your child can learn. So, what did we do? We went back 10 lessons and started again from there. And rather than be constrained by the arbitrary "lesson" format of the book, we did half a lesson at a time. Sometimes finishing it in a day. My daughter was enjoying it again! Teaching your child to read in this way is as much an education for the parent as it is for the child. Here is my advice: -You will get the book and look at the 30! page intro and the orthography, and think "Whoa!". But have faith, the author knows what he's talking about. Boy, does he know what he's talking about. -Get feedback from your child (pay attention to their ability to concentrate etc.) You will have far better progress at the start of the day than at the end of the day, when their brains are tired. This should ideally be a morning activity. Also, don't be too hard. If they are struggling to concentrate, often they are coming down with a cold or flu. Be gentle. -Use bribery and blackmail. ;) The holy trinity of a sticker on a calendar, a lolly (jube) and a movie will move mountains. I don't have a problem with this - consider how addictive television is. That's what you have to compete with. 100 years ago when all kids had to play with was cardboard boxes, maybe little of this bribery would have been necessary. -Do it every day. It becomes a nice ritual for you, a great way to bond with your child. It also teaches your child that a little bit of effort applied regularly can achieve great things. -Dispense with the writing until they (want to) learn to hold a pen properly. When they are ready, go back through this book with the writing parts (I think we are about to start that now.) Reading is an easier skill to learn than writing. Which leads me to... -The maximum mental ability at a given age in a given toddler is genetically governed. You can't exceed this limit, but you can reach a level you otherwise wouldn't - by providing a nurturing environment. Note also that there will be genetically defined times that a mental ability "comes online". The corollary to that is that if your child is not ready for something, don't force it! Look at what your child IS ready for, and teach that instead. Gauge, gauge, gauge. -From that perspective, attempt to do things the author's way, but don't force things and don't feel that you need to say word for word what the author recommends. Achieving success with a child at the youngest level requires a knack for seeing what the child CAN accomplish, and teaching that. The younger your child is (developmentally speaking), the more you will have to ad-lib, in order to maintain the child's attention. Going too fast is an error, and going too slowly is also an error. And sometimes your child will be stubborn and want to do it her way, and look at what she is doing. Maybe she knows better than you do? For example, my daughter has decided from lesson 45 or so that she wants to sight read everything she can, including the story at the end. I let her. The book says to sound everything out first, but now we just sound out the difficult words. -Another thing I notice is that I think she is starting to sound out the difficult words in her head rather than verbally. Rather than enforce that she sound everything out, I'm letting her try it her way. -A great exercise, and one my child loves, is "find the words". The book starts this some time early in the piece, and stops well before lesson 50. However, we do this every single time because my daughter loves this so much, and we have inadvertently found that it is probably the most effective way to teach sight reading. We find every single word, not just in the paragraphs at the end but through the word lists. Now we break the paragraphs at the end (ironically, using a Bob book as the block) into two sections so that finding the words is manageable. (Note that we do this AFTER we have read the words in question). -I think that you need to get excited about some aspect of it. During a time when my daughter's patience waned, I had to use a trick from someone else here, and have her stuffed animal read the story. It worked. But "find the words" (said in an excited, salesman-like tone) is the game that she likes to keep coming back to. Whatever your child likes in the lesson, remember it, tell her she's good at it, that she loves to do it, praise her, tell her that you're proud of her. She will identify that and you can use it to provide motivation. -We read each word "Lesson XX", e.g. "Lesson 45". It's a great way to teach counting in the double digits, she has picked up the pattern already, though the exception of not saying "forty zero" for "40" confounds her sense of logic. But remember that you should be teaching basic maths concepts (e.g. counting) at the same stage you are teaching the reading. Numeracy is as important as literacy. -Don't be surprised if your child improves her spoken sentence formation as a result of seeing grammatically correct sentences laid out for her. It will improve more than just her reading. That's probably enough for now. I hope this helps someone. And to those reviewers who say that this book is boring - well, maybe it is. But it is effective, and it can be spiced up. And it is probably the quickest way you can get your child to read books that are sufficiently complex that they ARE interesting. The end goal here is to be able to get your child to the stage where they are good enough at reading to allow an addiction to reading to develop, and at that stage you can just select interesting books for them to read. If they are reading for a few hours a day because they love to read, think how much faster they are going to learn (many things, not just reading) than reading for twenty minutes a day on your lap.

I am using this with our daughter, who is 3 3/4; I started with her at 3 1/2. The book starts slowly, and "I can't!" seems to be her favorite phrase anyways (telling me she can't read because her legs are tired, or her arms won't work), so we took our time and I had to get creative to motivate her to keep going and look forward to "school time". The most effective method for her, by far, was to have her draw a squiggly line on a piece of construction paper (she got to pick the paper and crayon colors), I would then turn the squiggly line into a road with squares on it, number each square (the finished "road" would resemble a Candy Land path) to correspond to the number of tasks in the reading lesson selected for the day (sometimes we would embellish our "treasure map" with trees and such along the way). Here's the clencher, for her...we put 2 Fruit Loops on each square, so, when she finished a task, she got to eat her Fruit Loops, then on to the next task. This method slowly evolved into having her place her two Fruit Loops into a tiny cup or bowl, to save to eat when she got to the end of the lesson. If she was getting bored or excessively frustrated, we would leave it for the next day, and mark where she would stop; the next time she was ready, we would set things up wherever she stopped, and she would work her way through to the end. Her reading treats were special, and not doled out for any other occasion (and usually contained ingredients I would never have otherwise let her have); considering she never got more than about 20 Fruit Loops, it was a happy compromise for us. I don't really know when, maybe around Lesson 13, when they introduce a full story-reading with a corresponding illustration; she stopped needing the edible incentives. She didn't ask, I didn't offer, and one day I just realized I couldn't remember the last sugary cereal "map" we had used. Now she breezes through a lesson; loves to read her stories for Nana and Papa and friends who come over. The amazing thing is not that she is reading "words", it's that the method has truly taught comprehension. When she reads a new story (she is at Lesson 37, and her stories are about 20 words long, right now), first she goes through and sounds out each word, "caaaaattttt," and I ask, after each word, "what word?" then I get an enthusiastic reply, "CAT!" Then, I go through with her again, and have her read a whole sentence before asking a question about the sentence, "where was the cat?" and the answers tell me if she comprehends what she is reading. Eventually, she started to anticipate the sequence, so now her first reading has her sounding out a word, then shouting out the word before I can ask, "what word?" On her second reading through, many times, I won't get a question out before she is giggling and telling me something about the SENTENCE she just read. She is really GETTING it! Her brother is 2 years older, and I used several different methods to teach him how to read and he can read Level 3 of the BOB book sets, but I am noticing his sister, at 2 years younger, and only at Lesson 37 has surpassed him in her abilities to sound out new words (with the sounds she has covered, so far), and her reading comprehension blows him away. I decided to start him at the beginning of the book, so he can overcome his areas of weakness; the beginning is ridiculously easy for him, but he is learning the essential skills the other methods didn't teach him. It may feel a little funny to read a teaching "script," but their phrasing makes sense and becomes a consistent cue; it helps them to anticipate what they are supposed to do, and, soon enough, to beat you to the punchline. Stick with it, invite toy "guests" when your kid is having a tough time; our toy guests repeatedly ask the child "what sound does that letter make?" or shout out, "ooh! ooh! ooh! I know, I know, I know!" and get all the answers wrong (my kids love when they know more than the toy guest, so they can "teach" them the right sounds). Most importantly, BE EXCITED! I have to really crank it up, and act like a Disney Store employee, dripping with sweetness and overflowing with enthusiasm for the whole lesson...when I'm done, I can go in another room to let my inner Tom Servo loose, but during the lesson, I have to counteract their frustration with positivity. For my kids, this book/method has really clicked. I have stuck strictly to the script, which seems to be why it worked.

I am amazed at the results of this book with my five year old daughter. She turned five in the spring, so she's not in Kindergarten yet, and she can already read full sentences and at least a hundred words. At the time of this review we are on lesson 61! I am a High School English teacher so I am more familiar than most with reading instruction, but I do not have the expertise of say an Elementary School teacher, so I needed a book that took the work out of reading instruction, and this book is it. Follow the directions closely, make it fun, do it every day, and you WILL see results! That being said, there are a few caveats I would suggest to parents looking at this book (the last one is the most important!). First, I really think this book is best for kids who are at least five years old. A child should have the names of all the letters in the alphabet mastered and most of the consonant sounds already learned. More than this, a child needs to be able to sit still and focus. A good way to prepare for this book is just to read books TO your child every day for fun, so they get used to sitting calmly and reading a story and have a positive view of reading. Do this for at least a month before you start the formal reading instruction. The second caveat is that most of the lessons take longer than 15 minutes. I would say it's closer to 30 minutes on average. My daughter's personality is pretty calm, and even she wants to be silly, or chat, during the lesson. She requires a few gentle reminders every lesson to refocus on the task, which wastes time and makes the sessions longer. Furthermore, some lessons are harder than others, as new concepts are introduced, and my daughter takes longer on those activities, which I imagine would be the same for most kids. The third caveat is that the lessons start almost shockingly easy for the first 10-15 lessons, but then steadily increase in complexity and length. This is a good indicator of if your child is ready for the program. If they struggle with the first ten lessons, maybe you will need to wait awhile and pick it up again later, or work only as long as you are both comfortable, and then stop. The fourth caveat is that the commitment is real! The program in the book is restricted to ONE lesson a DAY, which at first seems silly, but in the later lessons, is obviously important as they become harder. I think many people might not realize how LONG 100 days is! That's more than three months that you will have to sit down with your child, every day, and work on reading. We've skipped a few days due to holidays or illness, and once we got to the harder lessons, my daughter actually had to go back and repeat the prior lesson before we could continue. The final caveat is the most important, and kind of incorporates all of the others: KEEP IT FUN (POSITIVE)! Avoid losing your temper, raising your voice, or scolding your child at all costs! This comes from my experience as a teacher as well as with this book. This is why it's also important to continue to read for fun before, during, and after the program if complete. If your child starts to view reading as work, or worse, as something that makes mom/dad angry with them, they will shut down completely and it could even harm their education at school! When my daughter loses focus, acts silly, or distracted, I gently remind her to refocus back to the reading book, and then simply wait for her to pay attention again. If it's really bad I will say we need to be done for now, and will finish the lesson later the same day. I pair this with a reward system, where my daughter gets screen time or game time every day she completes her reading lesson. Since the reward is so motivating, I have never actually had to end a reading session early, because she wants to get her reward for the day, so she calms herself down and we finish working. All these caveats considered, this is an amazing reading instruction book!

This book starts painfully slowly, but my advice is "hold on." At first, I couldn't stand the agonizingly plodding pace. And it wasn't just impatient me. My three year old didn't see the point of saying the list of words as slowly. But we gave it a chance anyway, after all the good Amazon reviews and marketing hype on the book itself. By a quarter of the way through, we began to look forward to reading time. One small addition I made to the scripted course was to invite in stuffed animal guest teachers (see suggestion 1 below). It worked like a charm. I love the way the parent's part is scripted. The script turns anyone who can read into a patient, supportive master teacher! I love the way all sorts of short activities make up each lesson - very balanced. Best of all is the way this book's lessons touch all the bases. They connect letter sounds with words with stories with writing and finally, with reading comprehension, the point of the whole exercise. I really appreciate the short stories and the picture from the story with discussion questions. Now that I've talked to some teachers, this balanced, comprehensive approach is a perfect way to start a child reading. It doesn't lack any aspect that they will use later, or emphasize one to the exclusion of the others. I didn't expect the writing, but I am very happy that it's in there. I bought the book for my three year old, but I am putting my 5 year old through it too, because it is so complete and methodical. When I first saw the phonetic alphabet, I thought it was a little strange. But my child has no trouble recognizing the joined "sh" symbol as an "s" and an "h." And the "sh" is a single sound in his mind, as are "s" and "h." The notation caused us no problem at all, and I only mention it because another reviewer found it problematic. We did not. Likewise, I wasn't disturbed by short e not being mentioned sooner. Who cares? The order presented was gradual, and as logical as any other.(Although it led to a lot of stories about ants.) I would also offer a few suggestions: 1. If your child loves his or her stuffed animals (or Power Rangers, etc.), then you can use them to be "guest teachers." When I started with this book, I hadn't yet come up with this diversionary tactic, and sometimes working through a lesson was harder than it needed to be. With a beanie baby teaching, my three year old is far more interested in the lessons. My boy picks which animals will help each night, and then he listens intently to them. They help sound out words, rhyme, and watch him write. They are much more interesting than old Daddy, as they are allowed to have excessive personality! When it is time to find certain words in the story, my son doesn't like to just point to the requested word. He prefers to race the beanie-baby guest teacher to the words. (The beanie baby invariably loses.) When it is time to write letters, the beanie baby counts them in Spanish. And so on. 2. Check out some of the "We Both Read" books to supplement toward the end of this book. The "We Both Read" series has a complicated left page for the adult, and a simple right page for the child. You take turns reading, and continue the "reading together" experience beyond the 100 easy lessons. So after a slow and frustrating start, which in retrospect was absolutely necessary, we both look forward to our daily reading time. We brought in the beanie babies to inject the missing element of fun. I know Matthew will have a solid foundation in all the parts of written communication, and Matthew likes the fact that his favorite stuffed animals are teaching him to read. Five stars. Awaiting "Human Relationships in 100 Easy Lessons."

This book came highly recommended! Just started teaching my daughter to read with it & it’s going well! A lot of information & the lessons are not too long so kids don’t get bored or frustrated.

I like the no frills learn to read style of this book. My son went to TK and every week they’d learn a new letter by singing about it, doing worksheets over and over which were pretty much just coloring pictures. It seemed like they were trying too hard to make everything fun. The problem with that is that at the end of 26 weeks, you now know the alphabet, some sight words and that’s about it. For some kids, mine included its very unmotivating to see such little progress while learning. This book very quickly gets your child to the point where they can read small words and then shortly after that they can read short stories and there is always a fun picture to go with it. For my son, this was key to get him excited to read, because he could see the progress every day. The rhyming at the beginning, while repetitive was perfect for making things click about blending. The different ways of writing the letters also made the introduction of how letters sound different in different scenarios easy to navigate. I would definitely recommend!

This book, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, has been absolutely amazing. It’s super easy to read, well-structured, and very easy to teach, even if you don’t have any teaching experience. The lessons are clear, short, and laid out in a way that makes it simple to follow step by step. My child stayed engaged, and I could see real progress quickly. The instructions tell you exactly what to say and do, which takes all the guesswork out of teaching reading at home. It truly builds confidence for both the parent and the child. The price was very reasonable for the value you get, especially compared to tutoring or other programs. This is a practical, effective tool that delivers real results. If you’re looking for an easy-to-follow, affordable, and proven reading program, this book is a fantastic choice. I’m very happy with this purchase and would definitely recommend it to other parents.

This book is an effective introduction to reading. Both of my children built confidence with letter sounds and learned to read using this program. It’s simple, easy to follow, and works well as a foundation. That said, I found it lacking in engagement. The black-and-white format with no color illustrations made it feel repetitive at times, and my children occasionally lost interest. I also found that we needed a more comprehensive phonics curriculum afterward to continue building decoding skills. My biggest complaint is the binding. I purchased this book twice, and both copies had the same problem. Around the later lessons (in the 70s and beyond), the pages began pulling out of the binding. With my first copy, the book eventually fell apart and had to be thrown away. Now my second copy is doing the same thing, and several pages have already come loose. That’s very frustrating for a workbook that’s meant to be used daily. I would have rated this much higher if the binding were more durable, but after having the same issue with two separate copies, I can’t overlook the quality problem.

My 4 year old wanted to learn to read so I bought this thinking I'd be doing a couple lessons and putting it away until he was older. Turns out he loves it and won't let me forget to do it every day. He learned so fast and I'm so impressed with his reading ability already. We are just over half way through. He's also reading beyond the sounds that have been introduced and really seems to understand phonetic structure. Couple things to note. Yes it can be boring but its possible to make it fun. If you want this to be fun at all you need to read the introduction and make little challenges for your child. Some of the lessons have exercises that seem redundant and pointless but the farther in you get the more sense those inital exercises make. They aren't kidding when they say to not skip anything. Also this is a phonetic program, not a sight words program. Its designed to teach kids to read any words they come across, not just ones they recognize. That's what makes it so strong. I highly recommend this!

I did half of the book with twins in about half a year. Easy, low stress. 10-15m per kid. Before the first grade. Ehh, now they speak English amongst themselves. Advice - don’t overdo it 😅 Ah, and give them a sweat treat immediately after a lesson. That helps, in my experience 😁

I am teaching my 4 year old daughter to read with this book. We are up to lesson 60. In two months she went from reading single letters to reading paragraphs. This book is extraordinary, and easily delivers on its promise. I don't know how I would have approached this huge task otherwise. Many heartfelt thanks to these authors. Best $20 a parent will ever spend.

We have personally become big fans of Siegfried Engelmann because of this book. Based on Direct Instruction system: meaning teaching in very small incremental steps. If you are not able to teach your child how to read through this book, then there can be 99.9% two reasons only... 1. Your child is too young, so you need to try after a couple of months, OR 2. You are not following the book instructions properly, so read again the instruction part and focus on what are you missing out.

A veces los niños que entienden inglés pero su lengua principal es otro idioma, tienen problemas para leer en el cole porque cuando leen utilizan los fonemas de su lengua principal, estos no encajan con lo que tienen aprendido del inglés en la cabeza. Ha sido una gran ayuda, paso por paso, y ahora lee y entiende sin problemas.