children need to know in daily lessons. When you and your child finish this book, your child can read. I used this to teach a 3-year-old to read. It worked great — when we were finished 128 days later, he could read all kinds of things, like the headlines of all the tabloids in the grocery checkout lane. Oops. Available from Amazon and booksellers.
Sing, Spell, Read, and Write: A popular program among homeschoolers, Sing, Spell, Read, and Write uses a raceway game, readers, and phonics songs to teach reading. After you learn these songs along with your children, you’ll never forget them. Years later, we still periodically break into rousing choruses of “a-a-apple, b-b-ball” for no apparent reason. Available from most homeschool suppliers.
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons: Based on the DISTAR reading approach that was popular in the 1970s, this book starts by teaching a modified alphabet that includes a symbol for each phonetic sound you hear. The student then learns to read with this alphabet, and it transitions into the normal alphabet by the end of the book. Many homeschoolers love this approach, and it works for them. Some children stress out about halfway through the book. Available from Amazon, homeschool suppliers, bookstores.
Ultimate Phonics Reading Program: This program promises phonics, and it delivers phonics. With no frills or added gimmicks, this Macintosh and Windows software (as well as an IOS and Android app option for mobile devices) teaches reading in 262 lessons. Pausing the mouse over a word or letter combination reads it aloud to the student. Includes ten-day free trial; purchase from the website (www.spencerlearning.com) or your favorite app store.
When the children were little, we instituted a 7:30 p.m. bedtime rule. Bedtime occurred at 7:30 p.m. with no arguments. The only exception was if the children wanted to read in bed. Then they still had to go to bed, but their lights-out time was extended to 8:30. This gave them a fair amount of time to immerse themselves in books, relax a little before trying to drop off to sleep, and pursue our goal of building good readers.
IS IT WORTH THE WAIT?
Children who learn to read the “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons” way cannot read anything else (such as library books) until they nearly complete it. DISTAR books are long out of print. When this method was first designed, it included storybooks rewritten using the DISTAR alphabet at several reading levels so the children could actually practice their reading with additional materials. Those materials are no longer available. The book is available through bookstores, and you can download additional printout materials from the Start Reading website.
Once your child can read, she can read. Reading does not require eight years’ worth of classroom readers to accomplish this seemingly awesome feat. Graded classroom readers are boring and they only introduce 200 to 300 new words per year on the average. Use your library card and practice reading for free.
Beyond the basics
Once the children learn to read, you need to incorporate language, literature, grammar, writing, and the rest of the language arts panorama. This can be as simple or as complicated, as seamless or as segmented, as you choose. Several good, solid language arts curricula exist to help you build from a strong foundation. Here are a few of them.
Brave Writer: (www.bravewriter.com) Homeschoolers who love this curriculum refer to “the Brave Writer lifestyle.” Tuesdays mean Poetry Tea, where everyone gathers around a table with a favorite poem, a snack, and a favorite drink, hot or cold. Wednesdays bring Movie Day, when a home movie viewing leads to conversation about plot, character development, and falling action. The Brave Writer family of products goes from kindergarten all the way through twelfth grade. Jot It Down, for ages 5 to 8, starts the ball rolling with ten month-long projects (writing a fairy tale, designing a poster, writing letters). If you want in-depth literature study, that comes in the form of monthly reading guides: You select a book guide, or subscribe to a year’s worth of titles, and they lead you through teaching literary conventions, grammar, dictation, and more. The main guiding text, The Writer’s Jungle, guides you in teaching the art of writing. While not for everyone, my youngest nonwriter has bloomed with this method and he sets his weekly calendar by our Poetry Teatime.
Core Knowledge: (www.coreknowledge.org) This language arts curriculum draws on material from history, science, and literature. Most of the materials are available for free download from the website; be sure to download the sequence document that explains what each grade level learns in language arts (and in all other areas of the Core Knowledge curriculum). Covers K through grade 8.
Essentials In Writing: (www.essentialsinwriting.com) If English really isn’t your thing, this curriculum comes to your rescue. Each level teaches writing and grammar skills via a DVD or Internet streaming. Your student also gets a workbook where she practices everything she learns. These lessons are short, but they’re designed that way so that the students learn in small increments. Covers grades K through 12. A literature course is available for grades 7 through 12 as well.
Going on to the heavy hitters
After your child learns to read, an entire vista of possibilities opens to her. She can pursue a topic that she loves, whether it’s ballet, bonsai, or Bangkok. And even more delightfully, she now does it without you reading each article in Bangkok Today aloud to her. Isn’t life wonderful?
On the other hand, he really can go beyond Curious George when he’s ready. Here are some authors who write kid-friendly novels in advanced language:
Lloyd Alexander: Known for his medieval-themed fantasies, Alexander’s The Black
