When I mentioned several months ago that I was looking into homeschooling and at least going to start some educational curriculum with Jackson at home this year a friend of mine suggested doing "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" by Seigfried Englemann, Phyllis Haddox and Elaine Bruner.
I was able to get a copy to try out at my local library, but eventually bought my own copy when we decided we found it beneficial to us as a family.
Here's how the book generally works. Each lesson is broken down into several short "tasks." You can do all the tasks in one sitting or you can do a few at a time. Each lesson contains an average of 11 tasks. The tasks range from "sounds instructions" where new sounds are introduced, "say the sounds", etc. and the entire lesson takes only about 15 minutes. By the end of the 100 lessons the child is reading entire paragraphs without pictures.
Here are a few things I really like about the book:
1. The book even goes as far as writing the instructional narrative in red to aid me in my teaching and eliminating almost any need for lesson planning.
2. The authors have clearly thought through all of the skills a child needs in order to learn to read like; how to use their finger as a guide for reading from left to right, rhyming, memorization, etc.
3. As we are getting into more reading of words and away from just letter sounds (we're on lesson 27 by the way) the book incorporates reading comprehension through the use of pictures. It encourages the child to think of what the picture will look like before they actually see it. Then when they get to see the picture the lessons ask comprehensive questions about it as well as open ended questions to encourage them to be creative on their own.
4. It's SUPER redundant ... almost to a fault in the first dozen or so lessons, but there is definitely a rhyme and a reason for it. I found it built confidence right away and what Jackson has learned has REALLY stuck with him. The more confident he gets the more he's willing to try new sounds and write new letters and read new words not only during the lessons, but also in his everyday play time too.
Overall, I feel that this book was really well thought out (perhaps the benefit of having 3 authors). It's been simple enough that it's not too overwhelming, but at the same time it's been challenging enough that it doesn't feel as though we are not learning anything or wasting our time.
Of all of the tasks that the book does I think that Jackson struggled with the printing the most. It took him quite awhile to actually want to write. He's kind of a perfectionist and would get really down on himself when he couldn't write a letter correctly the first time.
Here are a few things that I think have helped him work through his hesitation in printing:
1. Prayer. We pray before every lesson that he would do his best and be proud of the work that he does whether or not it's perfect.
2. Talk. We've had A LOT ... and I mean A LOT of conversations about how mistakes are not "bad." That mistakes are a part of the learning process and everyone makes them. "Mommy and Daddy won't be disappointed if you make a mistake as long as you are doing your best. We will be disappointed if you don't try though." Boy have we said that A LOT!
3. Grace. If Jackson is particularly discouraged one day we just skip the printing. We don't make a big deal out of it, we just don't do it.
4. Praise. We encourage and praise him whenever he attempts to write ANYTHING! Once he began to show more confidence in his writing we allow him to pick which letters he feels he printed the best and put a smiley face next to them. Then I pick the ones I think he did the best on and put a star next to those. Jackson really thrives on words of affirmation.
5. We used the EXTRA wide ruled lined printing paper. Jackson does especially well with the "Smart Start Writing Paper" from Frog Street Press, which has the picture of a sun on the top line and the flower on the bottom line because it gives him really good points of reference for his printing.
6. Interestingly, he does better writing each letter in a column rather than a row. I know it's not ideal since it's not teaching him to print from left to right, but at this point I figure just getting him to print anything repeatedly is a good step.
