Kirsi Ide

I did this book with my last child. For two children before we used The Good and the Beautiful pre-school language arts book (kangaroo on it). I loved that. Then we moved on to the Kindergarten book. Those books have arts and crafts that go with them. Very welcoming. But K-level it just keeps missing some phonics introductions. Then a friend gave us "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons." I had heard of multiple homeschool families teach from this book. And my friend who gave it to me has children far ahead on the bell curve. We tried it. It has no fancy bells or whistles. No arts and craft. No color. And we came in with background knowledge. However, I have stopped using G&B and am only using this book. Each day we have a little lesson. If she is in a good mood, it goes fast. (I don't feel the need to read each thing as I know what it's trying to tell me to teach her... but I have many years on teaching reading now). We quickly go thru the new and review phonemes/words. I love how everything builds on itself. It's interesting how they teach a child to disregard a letter (silent) by making the letter tiny. I was curious if that would work. It seems to very effectively. (I also add side tricks to help memory of new sounds.). It was also curious how there are no uppercase letters in the beginning. I like how sounds made of two letters are touching. It reminds the child that is one sound. We are now at a place in the book where there aren't dots all over the place. I got the purpose but it was overwhelming to the eye. My daughter does wear out on the reading. But she is young. I know only a handful of children her age that read as much text on a page as she does now. I like that you hide the picture so there is a surprise at the end. It also encourages not guessing words from the picture. It doesn't have the bells and whistles, so you need to add them yourself with some creativity. But I LOVE this book and wish I had it for all my kids. My child is so far ahead in school. She is not as super excited about the lessons anymore. So I bribe her to get through the readings. But at certain points, they are reading an entire page of text - no pictures. Literally paragraphs at a time. And she's in kindergarten. I know kids start this earlier. We are half way through. But I know following through with this book will keep her on track on her level. I'm so grateful for it. As an FYI, the book has a disclaimer. It is not for remedial teaching of reading. I thought that was interesting. It doesn't explain why certain sounds are made. All About Spelling (and probably All About Reading) do that beautifully. So I take the knowledge from the one and cross them over. This is definitely a book that I will keep or rebuy if I ever am in a position again to help a toddler how to read. BTW, I do like too how they end with writing lessons.... and they review the different letters and letter pairs after giving them a break. Brilliant!