Book Description from Publisher:
Is your child halfway through first grade and still unable to read? Is your preschooler bored with coloring and ready for reading? Do you want to help your child read, but are afraid you'll do something wrong?
SRAs DISTAR® is the most successful beginning reading program available to schools across the country. Research has proven that children taught by the DISTAR® method outperform their peers who receive instruction from other programs. Now for the first time, this program has been adapted for parent and child to use at home. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is a complete, step-by-step program that shows patents simply and clearly how to teach their children to read.
Twenty minutes a day is all you need, and within 100 teaching days your child will be reading on a solid second-grade reading level. It's a sensible, easy-to-follow, and enjoyable way to help your child gain the essential skills of reading. Everything you need is here -- no paste, no scissors, no flash cards, no complicated directions -- just you and your child learning together. One hundred lessons, fully illustrated and color-coded for clarity, give your child the basic and more advanced skills needed to become a good reader.
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons will bring you and your child closer together, while giving your child the reading skills needed now, for a better chance at tomorrow.
My Thoughts:
This book is a one-stop shop for learning to read. There's writing, sounds, rhyming, blending, comprehension. There's no need for any supplemental material, if you use it as written.
I find that this book works great on the "20 minutes a day" schedule it advertises for Lessons 1-20. This will cover ALL the reading, writing, grammar and language work a parent could want.
I find that this book works great on the "20 minutes a day" schedule it advertises for Lessons 1-20. This will cover ALL the reading, writing, grammar and language work a parent could want.
However, for lessons 20-100, I will repeat what another homeschool mom said about it: The lessons aren't 20 minutes, they aren't "easy", and there's way more than 100 of them.
The text doesn't change at that point, rather, the child starts really having to work. Sentences are longer by that point, there's enough sounds to review that this takes some effort, and generally, my kids start to HATE it.
That being said...I highly recommend it. This program is effective, efficient, and cuts out all of the fat. I would have a terrible time strong arming my kid into doing busywork, but there is NO busywork in this program. It gets the job done! Just be forewarned that if your child doesn't like to work hard (like most kids), you will need a backbone after Lesson 20 to make this happen.
MODG's Kindergarten and First Grade lesson plans have you do about one Lesson per week (not per day as the book advertises).
I have found that we breeze ahead in the syllabus for Lessons 1-20, but slow down to that "one Lesson a week" rate from then on. Rather than doing 1-2 tasks a day, as it recommends in the syllabus (there are 9-10 tasks per Lesson), we find that we can do half a lesson in a sitting, twice a week. (There's a tantrum when the book comes out, and I can only work myself up to that a couple of times a week, so I get out of them what I can in each sitting before they go boneless and refuse to work.)
Now, because of this slower pace (whether that happens at Lesson 1 or Lesson 20 for your family), they aren't getting the level of writing practice (and possibly sound review) that they need to keep from backsliding. Once a week writing isn't enough. So, MODG uses a separate writing curriculum Writing Can Help Series, Book A: A Creative Alphabet (Marie Picard).
My Recommendations:
The MODG syllabus has you follow the internal order of the writing curriculum. If you are going to follow that plan, I would not require the child to actually WRITE on the "sound writing" task in the text. If he hasn't practiced making those letters yet, this will be REALLY frustrating. So, on those weeks that we didn't practice those letters in writing, I let them finger-trace sandpaper letters instead.
Another alternative is to not follow the internal order of the writing book and instead practice all week on the pages in that book containing the letters from the "sound writing" task in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. For example, if you're working on Lesson 29 this week, practice ALL WEEK writing on the N and U pages in the writing workbook, since that's what they'll be asked to "sound write" at the end of the week. I don't make them say the sound as they write until we reach that task in the reading text, unless they quickly master making the letters.
You may be a tougher mom than me and get those kids to do that recommended couple of tasks a day, but if you're like me and only force them to do the text twice a week, half a Lesson at a time, then they aren't seeing the sounds DAILY. I, therefore, supplement with made up sound review activities. On our off days, we read Bob Books, or play "build a nonsense word" game with the known sounds from our Alphabet rocks, or practice sorting objects by letter sound under the correct sandpaper letter. This is totally unnecessary if you follow the lesson plans, as they will see the sounds daily.
I have found that we breeze ahead in the syllabus for Lessons 1-20, but slow down to that "one Lesson a week" rate from then on. Rather than doing 1-2 tasks a day, as it recommends in the syllabus (there are 9-10 tasks per Lesson), we find that we can do half a lesson in a sitting, twice a week. (There's a tantrum when the book comes out, and I can only work myself up to that a couple of times a week, so I get out of them what I can in each sitting before they go boneless and refuse to work.)
Now, because of this slower pace (whether that happens at Lesson 1 or Lesson 20 for your family), they aren't getting the level of writing practice (and possibly sound review) that they need to keep from backsliding. Once a week writing isn't enough. So, MODG uses a separate writing curriculum Writing Can Help Series, Book A: A Creative Alphabet (Marie Picard).
My Recommendations:
The MODG syllabus has you follow the internal order of the writing curriculum. If you are going to follow that plan, I would not require the child to actually WRITE on the "sound writing" task in the text. If he hasn't practiced making those letters yet, this will be REALLY frustrating. So, on those weeks that we didn't practice those letters in writing, I let them finger-trace sandpaper letters instead.
Another alternative is to not follow the internal order of the writing book and instead practice all week on the pages in that book containing the letters from the "sound writing" task in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. For example, if you're working on Lesson 29 this week, practice ALL WEEK writing on the N and U pages in the writing workbook, since that's what they'll be asked to "sound write" at the end of the week. I don't make them say the sound as they write until we reach that task in the reading text, unless they quickly master making the letters.
You may be a tougher mom than me and get those kids to do that recommended couple of tasks a day, but if you're like me and only force them to do the text twice a week, half a Lesson at a time, then they aren't seeing the sounds DAILY. I, therefore, supplement with made up sound review activities. On our off days, we read Bob Books, or play "build a nonsense word" game with the known sounds from our Alphabet rocks, or practice sorting objects by letter sound under the correct sandpaper letter. This is totally unnecessary if you follow the lesson plans, as they will see the sounds daily.
Conclusion:
This is a great language text. It's a one-stop shop for all your reading, writing needs. However if you, like me, find that after Lesson 20 you are going much slower than the text recommends, you will need to make up the writing and possibly sound practice to get enough repetition each week.
This is a great language text. It's a one-stop shop for all your reading, writing needs. However if you, like me, find that after Lesson 20 you are going much slower than the text recommends, you will need to make up the writing and possibly sound practice to get enough repetition each week.
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