The Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons (1) (The Reading Lesson series)

I started this book with my son when he was 3 years 2 months old. After just a month with this book, he is able to sound out and read words and simple stories, and we are only on Lesson 6. So, I am now pretty convinced that young children CAN learn to read as long as they are given the right instruction (this book!). As a special educator who has seen tons of reading programs, costing from hundreds to thousands of dollars, I feel that none of them compare to this $18 book. UPDATE (4/15/16): We have now finished all 20 lessons last week, and I am blown away by how much progress he has made. It took us 4 months to finish, and last night he read me Dr. Seuss' "A Fish Out of Water", which is 68 pages long! Here is what I have learned: It is a great curriculum but it IS hard work for both parent and child. Please do not assume that it will be a breeze. 1. Make sure your child knows letters/sounds, can rhyme, and has a 10 min attention span before you start this book. Otherwise, work on those first. 2. Set a time every day and commit to it 100%. I even took it on vacation with us and he almost never had a day off. K quickly accepted reading lessons as his new routine. 3. The authors recommend 1 page a day for under age 5, but with 400 pages, I realized that this would take me over a year!! (And I don't have patience for that) Because of my work schedule and not getting home till 5pm every day, I eventually settled on 2 pages a day on weekdays, and 2 pages twice a day on weekends and holidays. This enabled us to finish in four months. It usually took us less than 10 minutes to do 2 pages. 4. In retrospect, this pace was rather fast and resulted in him not learning some sounds (especially vowel combinations) as well as he should because we rushed through them. 5. I sometimes took videos of him reading and he absolutely loved to watch himself read. He was so proud of himself, and it was a great confidence booster. Plus I could show it off to friends and family, who told him how good his reading was, another confidence booster. 6. The journey was not always easy or smooth sailing, so mentally prepare yourself for frustration and even tears. K hit his first roadblock around Lesson 4, and he kept saying "I can't do it, it's too hard!" As the authors say, this is perfectly normal and do NOT quit. Persevere!!! 7. Nothing wrong with using a little bribery to get through the difficult pages. For K it was usually in the form of: after you finish you can have a Popsicle, play on the iPad, go to the park, etc. 8. As we neared the end (around Lesson 15) I started telling him he was going to be an awesome reader and would be able to read books by the time we finished the reading lessons. The power of suggestion worked, and sure enough he really did start picking up books and reading them!! 9. Even after we finished all 20 lessons, I continued to have him read aloud at least one book to me every day. There have been some occasions (increasingly more) that I find him in his room reading to himself! These moments have been AMAZING, and made all the time and effort I put in all worthwhile. 10. It has been such an amazing, rewarding journey and I am SO glad I decided to teach him to read myself! He has learned not only to read, but to persevere through challenging tasks. Good luck!

This reading program is very intuitive, well laid out and straightforward. After listening to the podcast Sold and Story and looking into research on the Science of Reading, I decided to try to teach my daughter how to read phonetically BEFORE starting Kindergarten. I checked out the book "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons" from my local library. While it was very informative, the heavy scripting was overwhelming and the pages looked too busy to appeal to my child. After watching a YouTube review comparing 100 easy lessons to The Reading Lesson, I decided to purchase this book. Great decision! My daughter just turned 5 and we are enjoying this book. She loves coloring the pictures after reading the pages. We also put a sticker on each completed page. I will say that my daughter already knew all 26 basic alphabet letter sounds and how to blend CVC words BEFORE starting this program. I highly recommend that first otherwise, this program may move too fast for your kid and cause frustration. They are reading short sentences by the end of lesson 1! As of this initial review we are on lesson 13, so over half way through. Here are some additional tips that I have so far: Supplement with Bob books for additional reading practice. They are inexpensive on Amazon and can be checked out at most libraries. Get some magnetic letter tiles and a small white board. It will help you get through the pages with no pictures. I write one sentence on the white board at a time so it's not overwhelming for my child to look at. The small white board is also an inexpensive way to have your little one practice their handwriting. Have them copy one or two sentences from the lesson. The magnetic tiles are great for pages with word families. Dictate (sound out) the word and have the child spell it with the magnetic letters. The reading lesson introduces the MOST common letter sounds combinations first, this helps get your kid reading real books faster. After lesson 11, I added in the revised Mcguffey primer for additional reading practice and we were both pleasantly surprised that she could decode most of the words in the Mcguffey primer lessons because of what she had already learned from the reading lesson. As of lesson 13 she can also read Green Eggs and Ham and other easy reader Dr. Suess books. You can find the Mcguffey primer for free online and Dr. Suess books can be checked out at your local library. She was very excited to be able to read REAL books! Reward systems: I printed off the lesson progress chart from their website and out it on ourrefrigerator. My daughter enjoys putting a sticker on the chart after completing each lesson. I also implemented prizes for completing lessons 5, 10 etc. We will likely take a break after lesson 15 and just focus on Bob books and reading real books. This book takes kids to a 2nd grade reading level and my kid just turned 5 so there's no rush.

The Reading Lesson is the single best program for teaching children to read I have found to date and I have seen many. I first came accross it while trying to find materials to help my daughter learn to read. My daughter is extremely smart. She is also dyslexic and the way reading is taught in early elementary just did not work for her. As a teacher, I have learned about different ways of teaching, learning and ways to differentiate instruction and I could not understand why no one knew how to work with a child whose brain processed information differently as is the case with people who have dyslexia. I spoke with several colleagues who are SPED teachers and specialists in our school district and was informed that there was no training given to them in how to work with children who had specific reading disabilities such as dyslexia. I decided to find a way. After looking and trying a wide variety of programs, I found the Reading Lesson. It worked. Not only was it simple enough for anyone to use, but the program is built on solid phonics and whole language principles give the best results in the shortest amount of time. The pages are simple and have plenty of white space. This helps simplify reading for children who are unable to see spaces between words and who see letters out of order or inverted. They use phonetic markings but not excessively, and slowly wean the children off of them as the book progresses. Sounds are introduced slowly and in a way that not only makes sense but allows them to begin reading simple sentences from the first lesson. This provides the children with a feeling of success that you simply cannot get any other way. The program also includes a large number of Dolche sight words. The mixture of phonics and whole language is key to achieving fluency and comprehension. It also allows children to move at their own pace, which is extremely important. Years after teaching my daughter to read, I came accross a student who somehow reached third grade without learning how to read despite having had to repeat grades before. The student's self esteem had been severely affected to the point where there was serious danger of psychological damage due to depression. Although I was not the child's reading teacher at the time, I decided to give the program a try. I was not sure which concepts the child had managed to learn through the years and what was missing, so we started the book from lesson one. We worked every day before school for 30 to 45 minutes using the Reading Lesson as our primer and supplementing with other reading material to practice reading from books, as well as the free materials found on the Starfall website. While I was working with the student to re-build the foundation of phonics and sight words found in the Reading Lesson, the reading teacher worked on third grade skills regarding reading analysis using texts appropriate for the student's reading level. In a month the student had made significant progress and had gone from not knowing letters and sounds (pre primer) to beginning to read first grade level texts. The change was also apparent in that the student was participating in class, talking to classmates more and seemed much happier on a daily basis. The student also went from writing complete gibberish when asked to answer questions on paper, to beginning to write actual words with invented spelling based on the phonics the student was learning in the program. The change in the short amount of time was simply amazing. The student continued to progress. While it took time for the student to progress, the foundation provided by the Reading Lesson was key in essentially rescuing a child who had fallen through the cracks and was headed for a very bad future. The Reading Lesson is effective, simple to use, and cost effective. You do not need to be a teacher to use this nor have any specialized knowledge in reading instruction. All you really need is this book to teach your child to read, although the company offers companion programs which are also good (their website has a lot of useful resources). There are also plenty of other resources out there that can be used to complement the Reading Lesson in order to maximize and enrich the learning experience. If you want to help get your child started in reading, or if you have a child who is struggling with reading (particularly decoding words), you may want to give this book a try. It really does work.

The reading lesson Don't buy the CD it is boring and poor quality. As for the book: Patience required - 1 year to finish It is very important before starting this book your child knows the sounds of most of their letters. Breaking the code (figuring out a word from indvidal sounds) does take time and this book is great if your child is on the verge of breaking it (for example - your child says c-a-t .. But hasn't quite blended it yet to say cat). I do recommend 100 easy lessons to start with if your child isn't familiar with letter sounds (you don't have to finish it but once your child is on the verge of breaking the code you can switch to the reading lesson). If you start reading education with this book you will find that the pace is too advanced for a true beginner. I recommend about 2-3 months with the 100 easy lessons than switch to the reading lesson which will take about a year (times will vary on your child but this is a rough estimate). The reading lesson: it says it's 20 easy lessons. They are not 20 lessons in the sense you can do one lesson a day - The lessons are about 19-21 pages long. The lesson starts out with the three new sounds that will be focused on throughout the lesson. The first 3-4 lessons I went through fairly quickly going 4 - 5 pages daily (took about 5-10 minutes a day). This is possible because in the beginning the font is large and the letters and "words" on each page are few. If your child breezes through, that's great, just keep in mind that the font does get smaller and each page will contain more material. Let your child set the pace, however, try and do at least one page each day (I definitely had days only doing 1/3 a page or half). One page a day is great - pick a time and do it around the same time everyday. It should take anywhere between 5-20 mins to complete- if you find the lessons going longer and your child struggling just stop and pick it up the next day. Do not take weekends off - make it somethings you both do everyday. The most important thing through all of this is : BE PATIENT. Never yell, never discourage, and always remain calm. It is not easy to learn to read and it's important to make it a positive experience as you are committing to at least a year of learning with this book. Also, after the lesson - read a kids book to your child - if you notice a word you just read in the lesson book - get excited and point it out. It is extremely important that while going through the lessons that if you or your child is frustrated or cries - take a break and try again tomorrow. It needs to be a positive experience and it is hard work. Relax. This is not a race. If you need to repeat a unit or units - do it! Each unit builds on the previous. I never strived for 100% accuracy on each page - anywhere from 60%-80% was common and I would proceed to the next page. If I found that after a few units there was still a struggle on a previous blend - I would go back and redo that whole lesson. Another tip: If your child is struggling to read a word - wait and see if they can do it - if not, say the sound and let them try the word again - if they still can't do it, just tell them the word and move on. By chapter 14 a lot of the smaller words were quickly recalled without actually decoding (sight words now) but the fluency level remained word to word. Do not expect immediate fluency or comprehension - that comes with lots and lots of practice and eventually the child will read by sight and not sounding out/decoding each word. This book also uses symbols to help the child remember certain sounds and as the book goes on those symbols disappear without the child even noticing. After completing all 20 units I recommend going through the book again and just skipping to the pages with passages on them and have your child re-read them to work on fluency skills. We finished this book and I see a long journey ahead with fluency and new combinations/ longer words. This was a great start and we successful broke the code. I recommend this book, but understand its not comprehensive and other sources will be needed to give more practice and learn new sound combinations. If you are reading through all the reviews avoid the ones where the reviewer did not complete this book or boasts about finishing the first 3-4 chapters in 2 weeks. This is a journey and it takes an enormous amount of time, love, and patience. I am giving 4 stars as this is not a true beginner book and the pace is not seamless, sometimes it gets incredibly harder without a natural build up. The book also leaves out many important blends that would have been easy to include. Also, the final unit wasn't cohesive as it added more filler passages without fully teaching the new sounds that were introduced in the beginning of the unit.

Used this with my 4-year-old, and she learned to read by the time she was 5 years, 2 months old. Now she is 6 years, 2 months old, and can read chapter books and comprehends them well (e.g., Little House on the Prairie, Fairy books from Scholastic, American Girl chapter books). I just find her, reading books, and very happy; on long car trips, she reads--and she hasn't even started first grade yet. Amazing! She did not use the computer program that went with this since I decided to save the money. Now I am using this with my 4-year-old son, and he's on chapter 13, learning very well! The book we ordered for my son came with the CD, and it does help reinforce him in learning the chapters, too. We homeschool and this is great. Just commit to working on it for about 5-15 minutes every night, and your kids will make steady progress and retain what they learn. It is totally worth the commitment; it's such a gift to teach your child to read. If your kids go to public school, this will definitely get them off to a good start for reading. As a parent, read through the few pages of introduction on why this works (whole language and phonics approach combined), and for tips on how to help your child through the lessons. It's really amazing. I am also a speech-language pathologist; I know that reading is key to future success at school and learning. BTW, if your kids don't know any of their letters and corresponding sounds, I would recommend first buying a different product--The Letter Factory from Leap Frog. Have them watch it about 15 times (not in a row--just over time!) and they'll learn those sounds. Then progress to The Reading Lesson (and the Reading Lesson will teach even more sounds). That's how my kids did it, but that's just my advice! I cannot recommend this enough. The Reading Lesson is supposed to be designed for kids who have reading difficulties, too. Just 10-15 minutes of it per night can make a huge difference. You can try the first few chapters for free from their website, too. We love printing off the certificates free from the website when a chapter is mastered; then we post it in a prominent spot. I give this ten stars!

Buy this!!!!I love love love this as a resource for teaching my girls to read. I used it for my oldest. She has been 2 grades ahead for reading since first grade. She is in the 5 grade now and doing great. With my youngest, she is in the first grade and struggled at first. I've been more consistent with everyday lessons and repeating lessons if needed and now she is reading confidently! I had to come back and leave a review, even though it's been about 5 years since my very first purchase and 3 years since my second. I'm going to look into their math books as well.i love the focus on phonics instead of sight word rehearsal. My youngest still struggles with remembering sight words but instantly reads the phonics. The stories in the book are interesting to her, but can't be completely decoded by pictures like the beginner book sets are. Or overly repeatitive . It's affordable as well!

I'd been looking for the right learn to read program for awhile. This one fits the bill perfectly in many ways. First, it starts out and uses primarily lower case letters which is a huge plus. I've never understood teaching kids the upper case first. Something like 99% of all the letters that we read are lower case so it makes sense to start with and focus on those. The sounds are presented usually 3 at a time and start with the most common letters so that kids can start "reading" right away. In the first lessons the text is quite large and gets slightly smaller with each lesson or so which is a good transition for kids. Pictures on the page are very simple and kept to a minimum so as not to be distracting. I got this a few weeks before my daughter turned 4. She's known her letters and sounds for quite awhile and was ready to move on. The first 2-3 lessons we whizzed through 6-8 pages at a time. After that we slowed to 4 pages per day which takes us about 10 mins at a leisurely pace. We've just gotten to lesson 6 and this still seems to be a good pace for her. We may need to slow a bit as the lessons get more complicated but I'll have to follow her lead. At the rate we're going we'd finish the book in about 3 mos which would be amazing. The lessons at the end are probably at the Step 2-3 reader stage so if she was doing that by 4-1/2 yrs old I'd be thrilled! So far, my daughter is really enjoying the program and its working for us. We do the book at night before she goes to bed because she's nice and calm then. I can see how for some kids they might be too tired at that time of day but for us it works. Amazingly, she often brings me the book in the morning when she wakes up and asks to do a page from her lesson book so, like I said, she's enjoying it. Yeah! I'd highly recommend this book! **EDITED**We're now just finishing chapter 18 of the book and I continue to be absolutely amazed at my daughter's progress! We slowed down to 3 or sometimes even 2 pages per day. At this rate we complete a lesson a week. As you near the end of the book there are a few places where several concepts are introduced very quickly. For instance, they do a page (yes a single page) where they introduce three endings -ful, -ness, and -less as in "helpful", "sadness" and "helpless". I thought it might be really difficult actually its gone well although I do think that breaking it down a bit and maybe having there be 25 lessons rather than 20 would have been helpful. Here's what we do for most of the pages: 1. I introduce the concept to my daughter by reading her the very short instruction at the top of the page. 2. I have her sound the words out and offer help if needed. 3. We do the page "together" which usually means me moving my finger along and having her read the words a bit faster. This process takes us about 10 mins per day. I've been supplementing with having her read a Step Reader Level 1 to me each evening which takes another 5-10 mins. The author suggests, and based on our experience I agree, that reading through each page more than twice is unnecessary. I've found that even though the concept might be a bit slippery to her if we are able to move onto the paragraph/stories she tends to pick it up more quickly. Great book, still highly recommend.

We bought this right before my son turned 4, and we are now about halfway through the book. I can’t say enough good things about it. The lessons are straightforward, short enough to keep his attention, and build skills in a way that really makes sense. He is already reading so well, and it’s amazing to watch his confidence grow each week. As a parent, I appreciate how easy it is to follow no prep, just open the book and go. My son looks forward to the lessons, which is a huge win at this age. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a gentle but effective way to teach their child to read. It has been a wonderful experience for us, and I’m glad we started early.