Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons - The Reading Lesson

I am using this book to homeschool my kindergartener. When we started she had no reading experience other than knowing what sound each letter makes. This book is amazing. It is such an easy and simple approach, yet it does the job wonderfully. The child learns to read without being bogged down with rules; only a few rules are mentioned. This book is great for kids who still have trouble with handwriting because it is almost entirely oral. I only gave 4 stars simply because I disagree with a few small pronunciation points (as in not pronouncing the 'l' in "talk"), but it's easy to change this. Overall, totally recommend for teaching a child how to read!

This superb resource arrived earlier than expected and expertly shipped. I'm just getting my niece started on it, and she has really not enjoyed reading until now, but is taking a great interest in this approach. I'm thrilled and would recommend it for anyone with a child who's struggling to learn to read!

This is an awesome supplement to "The Reading Lesson" book....would also be an excellent supplement to any other beginner reading curriculum. My kids loved the simple animations and earning a trophy when completing each lesson. The still ask to "play giggle bunny" on the computer!

An excellent teaching aid for Dad and Mom to teach their children to read and open a new world to their children. Then teach them Noah Webster's Advice to the Young and Moral Catechism. Both are needed training for children.

It's a great tool. My biggest issue however is the letter A. It is in a typical print font when educational research says that it should always be presented to young readers the same way they will be writing it, it is confusing. It has been a hang up in success for my daughter. Other than that it is great and the pacing is amazing as well.

My daughter is 5 and getting ready to start kindergarden in the fall. She already knew some sight words by recognition, but after a few lessons in this book she could truly sound out the words rather than just memorizing. She can now sound out full sentences. My only regret is that I wish I had started it sooner with her. There are also some activities where she can draw lines to match letters to items so it keeps her interest and she looks forward to her nightly lesson.

I haven't been too pleased with this program. I think you'd be better to go with 100 Easy lessons. This does not provide a structured methodical program that really teaches how to decode the words. It seems like they jump too quickly through the lessons and I think rely too greatly on site reading. My son did not enjoy the lessons and groaned when I brought the book out. Some of the work pages were fine but overall the program is lacking.

First off I only gave the book a 3 star because I wanted to catch attention to the review. While I do think there is a better book I think it does deserve better than a 3 star.
Because I have both books and read reviews before purchasing both, I hope this can be helpful to some. My two year old was at lesson 23 in TEACH YOUR CHILD TO READ IN 100 EASY LESSONS before we moved. He was enjoying it but after moving he had a hard time transitioning back to it. I then bought The Reading Lessons thinking a change would help. I am very structured and liked the daily break up in 100 EASY LESSONS. I have a hard time finding a pace for the 20 LESSONS. He is continuing it but I feel like he learned more with less effort on his part with the first book. It was more effort on my part, I would have to read through the lesson and prepare before working with him daily and do not have to with the 20 Lessons. But I feel like The 100 Lessons most important chapters are the beginning ones about the approach and ways to encourage a discouraged child, something the 20 Lessons did cover briefly but not nearly as in depth as the 100 Lessons. I do believe both are good choices, I just feel like if your child can handle 10-15 minuted a day and you are willing to lay down some time the 100 lessons will help you to build a love for reading in your child with all of its hints.

I was really excited when I read the reviews because I thought by the time we finished this book, my 5 year old daughter would be able to read and enjoy reading. Nearly a year and numerous tears later, I know that this is not so.
Each "lesson" is 20 pages and from about lesson 7 each page is the length of an early reader book. Not a big confidence builder when your child struggles through 20 minutes and then has read 1 page. My daughter now hates reading and anything labled "school."
I liked the way it was set out, a 2 or 3 sounds at a time with the occasional sight word. However mid-lesson occasionally a word like "said" would be thrown in with no prior introduction. Also there were no rules or reasons given for some sounds (for example with "y" at the end of a word the child was told to sound it out with both sounds to see if the word should end in an "E" sound like "baby" or "I" sound like "my".
We finally decided that we would read only the pages we wanted to and so are reading about 6 a lesson and are nearly done. If I could go back and pick another program for her, I would.
This may work well for some people but we were very unsatisfied.

As for those who thought I meant we tried to go through a whole lesson in a day, we didn't. We would do a page or 1/2 a page a day. We much prefered the Bob Books because there is such a feeling of accomplishment when getting through a book.

I bought this CD to go with the book because the reviewers said the CD made everything so much more fun. Well, it looks like the software was written a decade ago, and it doesn't work on today's computers. I tried it on my iMac (purchased one year ago), and it wouldn't even start--it said classic applications are no longer supported. On my Windows 7 PC, it would start, but was horribly unresponsive. It was unusable. It took many minutes just to start, and once it started, it would take 1-3 minutes (really, I counted) to respond to a single click. I tried reducing my screen resolution because it would only open in a tiny window, but that didn't help either. They either need to update their software or remove it from sale.

I could not get this CD to download. The item I received appeared to have been opened, and after several hours of attempting to get it to download (it was not a plug and play--click an install/download button and it just installed and was ready for my child to use, there were several files and perhaps patches(?) to download and ultimately I just got repeat error messages and it never would install. I am very dissatisfied as I really wanted a companion for the book.

Marketing claims that it correlates with SRA's DISTAR program. It does not! The phonetic sounds are old school at best. The interactive CD should not be considered a finished product. I was very disappointed in this product. As a certified teacher, I would highly recommend that you invest in proven curriculum.

For a used book it was in decent shape. There were food smudges and marker on the front cover- that wiped clean with a baby wipe. Pages were a little dog eared, but that is to be expected. No torn pages, but a few pages with work actives were drawn in. Over all I am pleased the book will fit our needs and I didn't have to pay full price.

I knew that I was buying a used product, but the cover on the front and back had quite a lot more wear and tear then I had wanted. The inside pages are well taken care of though, and from what I can tell as I flipped through, there is no writing on them which is good.

Despite the glowing reviews that convinced me to buy the book for my 3 year old daughter, I wouldn't recommend this. There are 3 areas that it fails:

1. On a practical level the binding is poor quality - within a few days the pages were falling out; and for weighty tome such as this, getting pages out of order makes the book pretty hard going. (And it is a large, heavy book - again not suitable for small children, or for an adult to comfortably share).
2. On a design level, the choice of typefaces and general layout is weak.
3. Most significantly, however, is the fundamental icon set used to convey the letters/phonetics. It is an odd, inconsistent mix of nouns and verbs, and some of them are confusing. For instance, in session 1... working on 'A' for Alligator - my daughter was convinced it's a crocodile. And it went downhill from there.

So I'm pleased it worked for some people, but it's not the miracle book some claim it to be. There are some nice ideas, but poorly implemented.

I have not been able to get this software interface to work. I emailed the company directly and received no response. Also, this CD does NOT include a copy of the book. It is not user friendly and simply downloads a bunch of unidentifiable files to your computer.
I would not recommend this purchase.

I am giving this book 4 stars because it does work. My daughter did learn to read with this program. It is clear and logical and based on phonics. However, and this is a big however, it is incredibly tedious. Every lesson includes sentences that are completely random and not part of any story or narrative. The authors are adamant that these be read and not skipped over, but they are booooooring. Boring for the student and the teacher. I also was not a fan of the way that the book used (or didn't use) capitalization and punctuation, but that could be part of some learn to read theory that has merit. We used this book along with the Usborne phonics readers. Like I said, my daughter reads well now, however it is not as joyful for her as it is her older brother who was taught to read via the Montessori system. I will be going back to Montessori with my younger children.

this book is SHOCKINGLY BAD;
maybe we didn't understand the teaching system, but it has great long texts with little or incomprehensible punctuation.
it seems that the texts are written by someone who barely speaks english.
how can a child learn from reading idiotic paragraphs in baby-talk, with no capital letters, no commas, no inverted commas?
THIS BOOK IS GOING STRAIGHT INTO THE FIREWOOD BASKET;LOOK FORWARD TO BURNING IT!
my 7 year old daughter and 11 year old son at least had a good laugh reading this nonsense;

an excerpt:
Everyone says that Ping can sing.
Sing us a song,Ping,we asked,a beautiful song.

This was my first homeschool curriculum type purchase. I had checked out several different options at our local library. The overwhelming recommendation is the similarly titled one with 100 lessons. However, I found it to be overwhelming, busy and distracting. THIS book, however, is wonderful! It’s simple, easy and makes clear, logical progression through phonetical learning. I started with my son, just for short sessions (maybe 2 minutes) at 5 years old. He is now 7 and in first grade and reading at a 4.4 grade level. I attribute much of that to this fantastic foundation building book. I recommend it to everyone who asks. I am starting my second child on this book and she’s making great progress as well. Definitely give this book heavy consideration. I suggest checking what books you’re considering out from the library so you can get a good feel for what it will be like. I placed a high value of importance on this material since it’s laying the foundation for a lifetime of
reading and I was very impressed and happy with my results. Sometimes it makes sense to go against the grain and do something different than the popular opinion.

I am using this as our reading curriculum for my 5-year-old daughter in kindergarten. She started the kindergarten year with several speech problems. Most people outside our family needed myself or my husband to "interpret" what our daughter was saying. This school year, my daughter has practiced 1-4 pages (depending on how difficult the pages are), 4 days a week. We just finished Lesson 18 (out of 20), and she is reading like a champ! Not only that, but her speech has improved dramatically, due to the daily practice of letter sounds. While this would probably be true of the consistent practice of any reading program, I am just thrilled that it has helped her so tremendously.

The only reason I'm docking it one star is because The Reading Lesson uses its own symbols and codes to remind readers of different sounds (e.g. a long 'e' has an angled line over it, like a party hat). While The Reading Lesson's symbols are certainly helpful in distinguishing between the different sounds a letter can make, the grammarian in me wishes they would use the standard grammatical signs for long and short sounds (e.g. a straight line over long vowel sounds & a curved line over short vowel sounds) for the sake of consistency with the rest of the world.

That said, I can't disagree that it HAS taught my 5-year-old how to read! I plan on using it again with the rest of my children.

I started out teaching my daughter to read with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 easy lessons. My daughter did learn from that book, but quickly started to hate that book. It is very scripted and more regimented. It was effective, but by about lesson 80, it was a huge fight to convince her to do the reading lesson. She hated it.

We decided to shelve it and we replaced the book with the Reading Lesson. We started at the beginning and just reinforced what she already learned. We found that the pages were more child friendly and less intimidating to her. We go at our own pace and she has even stopped hating reading (that part took time, she really hated the other book). In the beginning we kind of moved fast through the pages as she already knew the information. Now we have slowed it down and we even repeat each page once, to reinforce the ideas. I have seen her reading improve significantly over the last month. Highly recommended!! I would just say, don't be afraid to go at your child's pace. If they need to go slow go for it and if they are highly motivated speed up some.

The lessons are not something you get through in one day. They are more like 20 easy units.

I am a homeschooling mom, and I can honestly say The Reading Lesson is a wonderful book for teaching your child how to read. It is easy to follow, parent instructions are at the beginning of each lesson, and the book is actually fun!
I have recently used another book, Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and we gave up after 31 lessons. I should have shelved it much sooner. With Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, we found the pages much too cluttered and busy, making it too distracting and difficult for my child to concentrate on what was being taught. and the actual stories were all about being mad, bad, sad. The illustrations were very poor, and sometimes scary. My child hated this book. I hated this book.
Then I discovered The Reading Lesson. What a wonderful book. I can't praise it enough. It is colorful and bright, with it's clean pages with only the bare minimum needed for the child. The pictures are cute and fun. The tone of The Reading Lesson seems to be more relaxed, and with more white space on the page so my child can easily focus on the letters and words he is learning. He actually enjoys it when we do The Reading Lesson! I would recommend this book to anyone with a child that is ready to learn to read.

We have a just turned 3 year old that knows his colors, numbers and letters and were looking to give him something more challenging. I started this book with him doing the "1 page a day method" and he loves it! He can already recognize words and has a great reading foundation. I'm absolutely amazed at how quickly this works. This has been a blessing in this house and has become our after dinner routine. I started seeing results in just a few days, and he seems to pick it up faster and faster as he goes through it. I have no idea how they could figure out this system that works so well, it's way beyond my intelligence level but I'm glad they did!

My 2 youngest kids (3 total) have used this book to learn to read. We got it from a parent that was done with it and she said it was great. It sat in the back of my car for 6 months and we never opened it. One day my son found it during the summer after he finished kindergarten. He just opened it and started going through it one lesson at a time without telling me. (He is very bright and I would imagine most kids would need guidance to get started) When he got to about to lesson 10 he showed me what he was doing and I was amazed. We then worked together and finished the book before 1st grade. At the time my youngest was 4 years old going to start kindergarten. We started the book with her but it was a struggle. It took a whole month just to get through the first couple lessons. We probably got as far as lesson 3 or 4 and gave up. When she was half way through kindergarten her teacher said she was a little behind the bench mark. We decided to try the book again and started over at lesson 1. Now she is flying through it. Reading about half a lesson per day and she loves it. She is 5 years old and is now on lesson 14 and picks up on the new sounds and concepts easily. I see some negative reviews from people that try this with their preschool kids and get frustrated. I would say don't give up. My oldest is in 2nd grade and I'm thinking of having him read the book as well just to reinforce his skills.

Love this book! My child is deaf and has always had trouble with reading. In fact, most reading lessons would cause near panic attacks. Not with this book. It is geared towards phonics- which is lost on my deaf child, but I am using it with the rote/ memorization method. Every lesson, we sign the letters and then the words and then the stories. The first lesson turned into a double lesson, because it was that enjoyable and unintimidating to my child. We breezed through 30+ pages, with almost no errors. The "stories" start off very small and grow slightly with each passing chapter. The letters and words taught in the previous lesson are incorporated in the next lesson, which is then incorporated in the next lesson...etc., thus building the reading vocabulary and leading to more sophisticated stories. If you have a child struggling with reading, I recommend this book. It flows easily, calmly building up to stress free reading.

I started out teaching my daughter to read with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 easy lessons. My daughter did learn from that book, but quickly started to hate that book. It is very scripted and more regimented. It was effective, but by about lesson 80, it was a huge fight to convince her to do the reading lesson. She hated it.

We decided to shelve it and we replaced the book with the Reading Lesson. We started at the beginning and just reinforced what she already learned. We found that the pages were more child friendly and less intimidating to her. We go at our own pace and she has even stopped hating reading (that part took time, she really hated the other book). In the beginning we kind of moved fast through the pages as she already knew the information. Now we have slowed it down and we even repeat each page once, to reinforce the ideas. I have seen her reading improve significantly over the last month. Highly recommended!! I would just say, don't be afraid to go at your child's pace. If they need to go slow go for it and if they are highly motivated speed up some.

The lessons are not something you get through in one day. They are more like 20 easy units.

I am a homeschooling mom, and I can honestly say The Reading Lesson is a wonderful book for teaching your child how to read. It is easy to follow, parent instructions are at the beginning of each lesson, and the book is actually fun!
I have recently used another book, Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and we gave up after 31 lessons. I should have shelved it much sooner. With Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, we found the pages much too cluttered and busy, making it too distracting and difficult for my child to concentrate on what was being taught. and the actual stories were all about being mad, bad, sad. The illustrations were very poor, and sometimes scary. My child hated this book. I hated this book.
Then I discovered The Reading Lesson. What a wonderful book. I can't praise it enough. It is colorful and bright, with it's clean pages with only the bare minimum needed for the child. The pictures are cute and fun. The tone of The Reading Lesson seems to be more relaxed, and with more white space on the page so my child can easily focus on the letters and words he is learning. He actually enjoys it when we do The Reading Lesson! I would recommend this book to anyone with a child that is ready to learn to read.

We have a just turned 3 year old that knows his colors, numbers and letters and were looking to give him something more challenging. I started this book with him doing the "1 page a day method" and he loves it! He can already recognize words and has a great reading foundation. I'm absolutely amazed at how quickly this works. This has been a blessing in this house and has become our after dinner routine. I started seeing results in just a few days, and he seems to pick it up faster and faster as he goes through it. I have no idea how they could figure out this system that works so well, it's way beyond my intelligence level but I'm glad they did!

My 2 youngest kids (3 total) have used this book to learn to read. We got it from a parent that was done with it and she said it was great. It sat in the back of my car for 6 months and we never opened it. One day my son found it during the summer after he finished kindergarten. He just opened it and started going through it one lesson at a time without telling me. (He is very bright and I would imagine most kids would need guidance to get started) When he got to about to lesson 10 he showed me what he was doing and I was amazed. We then worked together and finished the book before 1st grade. At the time my youngest was 4 years old going to start kindergarten. We started the book with her but it was a struggle. It took a whole month just to get through the first couple lessons. We probably got as far as lesson 3 or 4 and gave up. When she was half way through kindergarten her teacher said she was a little behind the bench mark. We decided to try the book again and started over at lesson 1. Now she is flying through it. Reading about half a lesson per day and she loves it. She is 5 years old and is now on lesson 14 and picks up on the new sounds and concepts easily. I see some negative reviews from people that try this with their preschool kids and get frustrated. I would say don't give up. My oldest is in 2nd grade and I'm thinking of having him read the book as well just to reinforce his skills.

Love this book! My child is deaf and has always had trouble with reading. In fact, most reading lessons would cause near panic attacks. Not with this book. It is geared towards phonics- which is lost on my deaf child, but I am using it with the rote/ memorization method. Every lesson, we sign the letters and then the words and then the stories. The first lesson turned into a double lesson, because it was that enjoyable and unintimidating to my child. We breezed through 30+ pages, with almost no errors. The "stories" start off very small and grow slightly with each passing chapter. The letters and words taught in the previous lesson are incorporated in the next lesson, which is then incorporated in the next lesson...etc., thus building the reading vocabulary and leading to more sophisticated stories. If you have a child struggling with reading, I recommend this book. It flows easily, calmly building up to stress free reading.

I used this for my preschool age son who was advanced in letter recognition and learning phonics already. I got half way through the book and life changes sent him to public school instead of the home schooling I planned on. He started Kindergarten ahead in reading, phonics, and writing because of the time I spent with him in this book. By the middle of his K year, he knew all of his K sight words and was at a 2nd grade reading level. We also used the computer program with it.
My son grew a little tired of the book when I tried to go back to it for extra practice during Kindergarten though. I wanted to keep using the computer program to try and get through the rest of the book to see if there was anything he was missing but changed computers and lost the program. I contacted the company and told them my story and they were very accomodating and sent me a new link to download the program so I am thankful for that! It worked for us.

I was trying to use "Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons" but found that the consumable nature of this book worked better for my kids. I purchased one each for my 5 and 6 year-olds and allowed them to color pages after they were done. The 6 year-old paced through it in about four months while the 5 year-old is still working on chapter 7. I anticipated that it will take the school year to complete with a younger reader and was correct. I would highly recommend this book over any other complicated series like "Hooked On Phonics" or if you're intimidated by "100 Easy Lessons".

My son is now 3 months away from being 3 years old, and we started this reading program a few months ago. Some of you may think that is quite early to begin reading, but due to some fabulous resources I found (which I will list later), he had already learned much of what a preschooler needs to know academically (numbers 1-10, shapes, colors, letters). Since he was enjoying learning, I thought if he was capable of learning more, I wanted to take advantage and reading seemed the next logical step. I figured that we would just do as many activities as we could until he no longer wanted to pay attention. No pressure for him to be a genius child at an early age or anything like that.

I checked The Reading Lesson out from my library to see how it differed from Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Lessons. I found that the processes of teaching to read are actually quite similar, but The Reading Lesson is, in my opinion, soooo much more child friendly. The pages are very simple and uncluttered, with just a few letters, words, or sentences on each page. Simple pictures, such as a cat, give visual clues that help them make inferences in their minds over straight memorization.

When my son saw this book, it seemed like a weight was lifted off of him. It is almost like cleaning an extremely cluttered room and feeling so glad when everything is finally organized. He actually wants to put his finger on the little bars under the letters now. The pages are so clear that I think he views them now not as, "oh look at all the words, that is a lot of work," to, "that doesn't seem like that much, I can sit here for a little while and learn this!"

While there are 20 lessons to learn the actual phonics, it isn't learning to read in 20 days. With each lesson there are several activities to be completed before moving on to the next lesson.

If you want to try out The Reading Lesson, this link gives you lessons 1 and 2 for free, along with several other additional, free, resources:
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[...] is also an EXCELLENT resource to help teach your child to read. I can't believe it is free, but I am so grateful it is. I use this in addition to The Reading Lesson and my son LOVES this site. I sit with him and before I click on a letter I say, "what sound does 'm' make?" Starfall is excellent with repetition without being overdone and he is very quickly learning all this letter sounds while having fun and "playing computer games." He doesn't even realize he's learning!

I hope you find all the resources I listed helpful. If you ever write a review for anything and have found another resource that is complimentary or more helpful (or have found them unhelpful), please remember, for my sake :0), to be specific and to list it!

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My children ages 3 1/2 and 5 are currently on Lesson 4 in The Reading Lesson and are doing extremely well with this book. Both are reading words and sentences with ease and confidence. I will homeschooling this year and this book was recommended by our Homeschool Curriculum Heart of Dakota, so I bought it a little early so we could get a headstart on the school year in reading. My children did know all their letters and sounds from watching The Leapfrog Letter Factory before we began this book but they did not know how to put the letter sounds together at all and do any kind of decoding. I first rented "Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons" from our local library since I had heard so much about that program, and I am so glad I did not buy it. My older son and I both HATED it! It is terrible with the cluttered pages and the repetition page after page in the first lessons before they even begin to read. My son would literally cry when I pulled it out! With "The Reading Lesson" the pages were uncluttered, words were big, and my children were reading the first week and enjoying it! I hadn't even planned on starting my 3 yr old with reading, but she sat beside me as I taught he older brother, and she just picked it up right along with him. I am so thankful for this curriculum as it has taken my biggest fear about homeschooling (teaching reading)completely away. I HIGHLY recommend this book.

First, let me just say that I am a Special Education/Resource teacher. It's amazing to think of the thousands of dollars public schools spend on curriculum, when anyone can buy this book and have their kids reading in a short amount of time. I use this book to teach my 5 1/2 year old pre-kindergarten child to read at home. I have been doing this for 6 months, 3-5 times a week, most weeks. We started with 1 or 2 pages a day, but we are now reading 4 pages a day. He is almost finished with the book, and very close to reading on a 2nd grade level. Here are some details of how this Reading Lesson works:

1) The 20 lessons are seperated into learning a couple of different sounds/rules. Each lesson averages about 20 pages of practicing these sounds/rules.
2) The lessons start with learning the sounds, practicing the sounds, practicing the sounds in words, practicing them in sentences, and then practicing the sounds in stories (paragraphs with pictures). My son and I really enjoy these stories, better than the Bob Books!
3) They have some paper pencil practice/game sheets. There are more of these in the first few chapters and they gradually lessen the amount as the book goes on. I like this, as when a child is first learning to blend sounds, it is very difficult. This really helps keep their attention when first learning to read, when they need it most.
4) There are helpful "crutches" that are gradually phased out towards the end. For example, putting a little dot inside the b because the majority of kids mix up b's and d's. These "crutches" are barely noticeable and they really help!
5) In the beginning, they only use lower case letters. This helps the child become more confident, only having to learn 1 set of sounds and letters at first instead of 2 sets (when there are hardly any capital letters in reading). As they become better at reading, the book gradually introduces capital letters.
6) The book teaches periods, question marks, and exclamation marks.
7) The book has a ton of sight words needed for reading.
8) The only thing that would really help make this book better is explaining the rules behind reading, however, I just do this on my own. It would be hard if you don't know all the rules, though. Generally, most people read without knowing all the rules behind it. For example: C and G make their soft sounds only when the signal vowels E, I, and Y follow them.
9) Go to the Reading Lesson website and print off the first 2 chapters for free. Try it with your child!

The authors just want you to take notice of the book, by saying 20 lessons. That is a crock.
However - the course is very well designed in a step wise fashion.

The stories teach good values.
Capital letters aren't introduced immediately. So the child can adapt to what the letters look like in 'little' form, and read some stories this way. Some children particularly get thrown when the word dog is written as Dog (esp very young children), so this book has that covered.
Stories use very short sentences. Well within a young childs concentration.
The stories are proceeded by practise at reading small phrases. These phrases then appear in the story
The course very well teaches children to read from left to right.

There are a few words that are thrown in which are not quite said the way the 'lesson' part says. For instance the word 'come' doesn't have the sound of a long o.

HOwever, on the whole, i would say this is a well designed program, that allows even very young children to read. And the authors have carefully thought about the way they introduce each concept.

I picked up this book in the library and tried with my 4 yo. It worked easily. First, whoever came up with the layout is genius or simply understood which colors and sizes easiest to grasp. It is all black and white with almost no pictures (just a few to help with the first sound of the word). I hate those busy books that have million pictures, colors that stress out the children's mind even though nobody realizes that. It also has a great advice on how to go about the lessons.
I will be buying their math lessons books and will be on the look out whatever else this author has. I wish they would have study books for adults and I am serious. I also love DK reference books on pretty much all subjects (I used to drag their travel guides all over for my travels although they all weigh a ton, they use high quality paper and you never need a tour guide when you have a DK book with you). Not related to this book but I thought I would share

I've used this book with my two daughters. Great results for both, but one completed the book in a month, the other took a full year. Both could read by the end of this book. I love how it starts slowly, but includes short stories for the child to read. I felt that the book helped build confidence. My girls like to look back to the start of the book, and can't believe how far they have come. I literally suggest this book to everyone I know with young children. I also feel that the price of the book can't be beat, especially if you plan to use for more than one child.

This book makes it almost too easy! I never write reviews, but this book was so effective, I had to share.
I knew my 3yo was read to start reading. His preschool was already teaching him letter sounds, and he was going around pointing out the letters he saw around the house and saying the sounds. I tried starting first with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and boy was that a big failure! The print was too tiny, he hated the lessons, and I almost gave it up til I came across this book. I used the Reading Lesson website and purchased the PDF so I could print out the pages. Part of the problem with the other reading books is that kids are discouraged and intimidated with having to get through "big books". With the PDF, I only printed out what I needed for that day's lesson.

This book is made for kids! Each page contains just enough reading material to master in under 5 minutes. My son loved the cute drawings throughout the book, and the little stories held his interest. I just worked on 1 page (back and front) with him each day, and he made immediate progress. I also supplemented the book with online lessons though websites like Starfall.com, which really helped reiterate many of the phonics lessons taught in Reading Lesson.

I love using the reading lesson. I tried teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons and my child got frustrated she pulled out her hair she whined & complained. I tried both and I was successful in teaching my oldest child to read at the age of 2 with The Reading Lesson it was a great lesson. In conclusion I would recommend the reading lesson to teach young children to read hands down. It is child friendly and fun. My daughter wants to finish easy lesson. Parents should choose the pace.

This is a great product. I am using it right now for my 4 year old and my five year old. It is perfect for what I wanted. I wanted to teach my children to read at home to better prepare them for school. I was quite intimidated by the prospect, but this book makes it so easy. You just start at the beginning and go from there. The instructions, if they are needed, are written at the top of the page. You can also go to their website and download the first couple of chapters for free to see if you like them. It took my boys a while to really catch on, but now they are reading by themselves with very little help from me. We are on lesson six, and both of my boys are doing great. We started with one page a day and now we do anywhere from 2 to 6 pages a day. My 5 year old is starting to learn to read at school but I am glad that we are doing it at home as well to suppliment his learning. The first time they read a full sentence was so great, and knowing that I taught them made it even more special. I absolutely recommend this product.

My fairly bright 4 year old wanted to learn to read. She knew all her letters and the sounds they make, so I thought this would be a cinch. I bought the first set of BOB books, but they start out with 3 letter words, which was an overwhelming start. She was frustrated and begged me, "please no more BOB books." But she still wanted to read, so I saw all the posative reviews on the Reading Lesson and thought it was worth a try. Right from the start, it only teaches a few sounds for each lesson. Each lesson starts with single sounds, then adds one more letter to read 2 letter "words" before going on to 3 letter words in the lesson. Once she learned how to blend the 2 letters together, stepping up to 3 letters wasn't so daunting. She was happily reading 2 and 3 letter words from day one. Every day she asks to do reading- she loves this book and proudly shows Dad and Grandma how she can read. Everyone is impressed with the progress she has made so quickly. I highly recommend this book!

As an ESL teacher, I highly recommend "The Reading Lesson" for both parents and ESL teachers. Before using this book, I have taught my primary school students how to pronounce all the English sounds, and they can pronounce them all and remember all the symbols which represent the English sounds. But phonic teaching was not included. Now I teach them with this book to help them combine consonants and vowels and learn the basics. And this book is quite a good start for them. Words are big. Cute illustrations for each lesson. Easy to understand. Moreover, there are many exercises students can do. "The Reading Lesson" is designed for children ages 4 to 8. Excellent for beginners. Although the book is not perfect, it is already very good. Actually, no program is perfect. All we have to do is to give students something else when it is necessary. Something I do not like is that pages fall off the book easily. Except for this drawback, everything is good.

I used this book to teach my five year old daughter to read (she is now 6 and reads on third grade level) and am now using it to teach my four year old son. It WORKS. My son doesn't even turn 4.5 for another month, and he is on Lesson 10 and enjoys it (and he is a very active kid). I have tried other methods including Teach Your Child in 100 Easy Lessons, which we all hated. The Reading Lesson works and the stories make my kids laugh.

This book has been wonderful for my 5 year old. We can go at whatever pace suits us, and the simple, clear instructions are easy to follow. She is already reading all the words introduced in lessons 1-3.

My daughter showed an early interest in reading, and although I knew how to teach her the sounds of letters and simple words, I wasn's sure how best to present the rest of the information, such as punctuation, words that don't follow the rules, etc. This book presented everything in a great way... and has them reading "stories" (by themselves!) immediately. Yes, as one reviewer pointed out, they start out simplisticly, but where else should they start? My daughter was excited that she was actually reading by herself, and wanted to continue in the book. We go in phases with it, and you certainly can't finish it in a week or so, but it does work, beautifully. My daughter was reading books on her own while she was still in preschool, and it has given her a huge start in kindergarten, both in ability and confidence. Highly recommended.

Just like they advertise, the most common sounds are introduced first, and more sounds are added at a nice pace. You don't need to be a teacher to teach a child to read, if you have this book! My son enjoyed it years ago, and since then has been an advanced reader. Four years later, my daughter picked this up and began to learn mostly on her own since I had less time to guide her through the book. My children always felt confident and successful with the simple lessons, and therefore wanted more at the end of each lesson - it's designed to be fun, after all! I highly recommend this book!

Great lessons! I tried using the book before. They do really work and make students read. However, some children find it boring. It also depends on how the teacher use the lessons. Teachers may want to incorporate some activities with the lessons to make them more interesting and make a schedule to meet with all students individually to practice and keep running record of students progress. Over all I think the program content does have what it takes to make produce successful readers and writer by building a strong phonological awareness.

Used a math book with my older grandchild from this company and now using this book with younger grandchild. Very nice book and very nice approach. Simple, I dont have to read a lot of instructions. My grandson love it. We have the Cd-ROM for PC and it works very well with the lessons in the book. It is cutely animated and had same clean page look as in the book. He loves the Giggle Bunny who is very entertaining. The lessons take us about a month, but he is young. I didn't try any other books but can't imagine anything can be better. It is just perfect for us. (I do have Bob's books but find that a hit or miss affair.)

The book starts with simple letters and adds to them slowly with each new lesson. There are little stories that are a perfect length for a young child. There are also words and phrases as well as word families. It is a fairly comprehensive course, but but not hard for young child as ours. Happy with my purchase.

If you are looking for a successful reading program that's affordable, easy, and fun to use, then The Reading Lesson is a must have!

I bought the complete Reading Lesson set for my four year old twin daughters. By age three, we'd managed to teach them the alphabet and letter sounds; however, I didn't know where to begin to teach them to read. I had read several other books on the subject, but they just weren't what I needed. Either I did not finish the book because it was too confusing or if I did manage to complete the book, I'd have no idea how to implement what I'd just read. With the Reading Lesson, getting started was literally as easy as opening the book to Lesson One. Everything I needed to know to teach my daughters to read was explained in a clear and concise way, with no additional prep work needed on my part. What a timesaver !!

In the beginning, I started out slowly using the book and the letter sounds VHS, which was just what we needed at the time. Since The Reading Lesson COMBINES phonics with sight words (which I love), I feel like my daughters are truly learning how to read and decipher words for themselves; they are not simply memorizing words, except for articles, irregularly spelled words, etc. Each lesson provides lots of review opportunities, as well as cute illustrations which my twins love to color after our lesson is completed. Now that we are a little further into the book, I adapted our lessons to include guided reading activities and writing activities using the Writing Lesson CD. Since Montcastle Company offers so many other products to supplement The Reading Program book, the possibilities are endless. With a little creativity , this program will be able to grow with my two daughters for many years.

The Reading Lesson is absolutely one of the best investments that I've made in my children's education. At age four and a half, they are able to sound out small words and read some leveled readers, but more importantly we are having fun as a family. This is our special time together, and we treasure it. The girls actually ASK for their reading lesson every day and are so disappointed on days when we are forced to miss it. They eagerly show everyone what the are learning and even use our manual to "teach" their stuffed animals how to read. Wathching my daughters have fun with learning and knowing that I'm instilling a love of reading in them at the same time is priceless.

I was looking for book to help me teach my son to read and find “The reading lesson”. This is a wonderful method that really work. We live in Russia and we tried many different books. But this is the best one! I’m very happy that I purchased this book and I recommend it to my friends. Now I want to buy CDs to make our lessons more fun and interesting. Thank you!!!

Homeschooling kindergarten this year and I'm amazed at how quickly my son is reading fluently. I should mention that he is behind on his language progression so I was concerned t how well he would pick up reading. He has done wonderfully!!! We are 3/4 through the book and I couldn't be more impressed.

Very effective program and easy to teach. My daughter has learned so much and in a short period of time. I would highly recommend this to anyone wanting to teach their child to read. The verbal math lesson is also wonderful. The writing lesson and storybook are helpful tools. Many worksheets can be printed off of the website for free [...]. The website also offers the first two reading lessons you can print off for free to see how the program works! Wonderful and Charan Langton is fantastic. Customer support is outstanding. These people genuinely care.

I am using "the Reading Lesson" TRL, with my son who is 6 and am thrilled with the results. He has 4 lessons left in the book and is able to read Dr. Seus book "Green Eggs and Ham" very fluently and is able to answer comprehension questions with no problem.
I like how it introduces the new sounds and blends with little symbols and slowly works them away as the lessons go on. I believe that using the CD-Rom with Giggle Bunny is key to having my son prepared to do his lessons. As soon as he is done, I will start with my 4 year old daughter.
I love the fact that we can snuggle up together on the couch and do our reading instruction in a fun yet very effective manner. After doing a very intense program last year, this is a fresh breath of air.

Added: 12-31-12

My 5 year old daughter can now read books that are 2nd grade level and quiet fluently from us using The Reading Lesson. She started as I mentioned above, at age 4. This program teaches phonics as you teach your child to read real stories. They are not bombarded with phonics rules.. It has also taught her to love to read.
Now that she is older and can read, we will teach her some phonics rules as a follow up for spelling in the future and to make sure she understands breaking up longer words into syllables!

When my son was two, he knew all of their letters and cooresponding sounds. We actually held back in teaching him to read at that point, worried that we would make him "wierd". When he was four, he was beginning to sound out some small words on his own. So, we bought this book. It was great! It didn't take excess planning and materials, and my son found it fun! By the end of 20 lessons, he was reading at about a second grade level! I would not recommend this book for a child who does not know his letters and their sounds up front, however, as the lessons move rather quickly. If your kiddo falls into this category you might consider Engleman's book "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons". Great book that gave our kiddo a head start and confidence in reading!

The Reading Lesson program is simply awesome!

Here's our story... My daughter, Alex, has loved books since she was a baby. I will skip all the "amazing baby" stuff that probably doesn't seem that amazing to anyone else! Suffice it to say that by the time she was two and a half, I knew she wanted to read, but didn't know what else to do or how to start.

Throughout the next year, I would casually ask friends how you help a child learn to read. One friend who is a kindergarten teacher told me about the phonics method and the sight word method. But each of these - as they are taught in school - sounded deficient in some way, and I couldn't see a clear way to combine them myself. I really was waiting for the answer to fall into my lap. Which it did when I came upon The Reading Lesson.

If I have only one thing to say about The Reading Lesson, it has to be "effortless." Not that you and your child don't have to work together, or that it's not a struggle to get your child to do it some days, but effortless in the sense that you don't have to think about how your child will learn to read anymore. It is so comprehensive a program that absolutely nothing is lacking - it makes perfect sense how it is structured, the methodology behind it, etc., that you do not need to compensate for anything with this program. All that's left for you to do is to be excited about the program so your child is also excited to do it. They even tell you when to anticipate problems and pitfalls along the way, and also tell you how to overcome them! I am so happy with this program that I recommend it to everyone I know!

So how did it actually go with Alex and me? We started in Oct of 2004 when she was a little more than three and a half, and we just finished on May 4, 2005, and she's 4 years and 3 months. We averaged 4 pages a day (she set the pace). The biggest hurdle for me was initially getting her to blend the sounds together. She was great at sounding out the individual letters, but it wasn't until lesson 3 that she started smoothly blending the sounds together to hear the word instantly (I mean the "cccaaaaaaatttt" kind of blending, as opposed to "CCC" - "AAA" - "TTT"). It was very frustrating to me - I didn't know what else to say to get the point across. But I kept doing it, and one day she did too. In fact, I think it was in lesson 6 that she started to sound new words out in her head silently and then just say the word when she got it! By lesson 12 she was reading regular books, and by lesson 13 she was reading the instructions on each page! I would just put the page in front of her, and she was reading! Every day, her progress was phenomenal to me! (And I do mean every day, from page one of lesson one to the last page of lesson 20.) And when she read something that had the word "combination" in it and she didn't even pause, I knew that she not only could read, but she understood enough of the language to decode new words on her own to get them right. She reads so many books now, it's still hard for me to believe that a year ago I was wondering what I was going to do about this!

By the way, I've read the other reviews, and while I did not have to bribe Alex (if she balked too much we just didn't do it - but that did not happen often), if that's what works then I think it is worth it for the end result. Knowing how to read prior to kindergarten will give your child such an advantage. Alex loved to color the pages when she was done, and that was her "reward." Also, the stories in the first lessons may seem "stupid" to an adult, but they are what can be written with the words that your child will master in those early lessons. If you haven't taught many letters yet, you can't make a whole lot into a story. But your child will see it's a story and delight that they are "reading stories" from the very beginning. You cannot replace the motivational value in that personal sense of accomplishment they give to themselves. I believe that that's the strongest value of this program. I would say that from lesson 12 on, Alex was telling me when it was time to do her Reading Lessons, that's how much she enjoyed them.

I cannot recommend The Reading Lesson enough. If you are ready to help your child learn to read, you should not hesitate in getting this book. By the time you finish, your child will be a Reader for Life!

We got this because it was recommened with our Hearts of Dakota Homeschool curriculum. We had tried 100 easy lessons but our 4 yr old son was frustrated and bored with soooo much repetition. We BOTH LOVE the Reading Lesson!! He 'got it' from day one and is reading other books now too. We were going rather quickly through the first chapters, but have since scaled back to just 2-4 pages a day. He is doing VERY well and our 3 year old son is learning to read too!! We just do part of a page a day with our younger son and do lots of repetition until he "knows" it and isn't guessing. THey both have fun and are excited to read! Our oldest is even reading new words in his Bible now!! HIGHLY recommend!!

I've tried them all...Your Baby Can Read, 100 Lessons etc. I found Reading Lessons at the library and brought it home, not expecting too much, as nothing else had really clicked with my kids. As soon as I opened the book, my 3 1/2 year old (who knows his letters) jumped up on the couch and asked me what the book was about. My two year old daughter wasn't too far behind. 20 minutes later we had completed lesson #1 and he was having a blast...circling and sounding out letters, matching letters to pictures, and, to my surprise, easily reading the words presented in the lesson. My 2 year old was correctly pointing to letters when we made the sounds, and using her finger to connect letters to pictures. We're now on lesson #5, and I'm going to the website to buy the book since the book is due back at the library. Better yet, I'm going to purchase the PDF version, as I've already gone through 75 photocopies because my kids love to play the word games so much.

This book is laid out perfectly for younger kids, beginning with easier and shorter lessons and gradually building towards more difficult skills and reading comprehension. Given my kids' enthusiasm and excitement whenever I open the book, I have no doubt they'll be reading at a level well beyond thier peers when they enter school next year.

A big kudos (and thank you) to the authors for a job well done!

I must say that the Reading Lesson is the best I've seen so far. After six months of looking for the right reading program for my five-year-old, I finally found the one that makes sense and works. What I liked the best is that it moves steadily from one set of sounds to the next without overwhelming my son with the whole alphabet soup. Most of the other books I've seen on the internet and in stores have pages filled with busy pictures, games, funny squeaking animals, and other irrelevant characters that are so distracting. Or they are utterly boring like Phonic pathways. Many programs teach phonics and forget about teaching reading. The reading Lesson is very easy to use. I also like instructions for parents before each lesson. The lessons, stories are just right for a young child. If you are looking for a super easy to follow program for a young child that has more just lists of words, then you should consider this program.
The best thing about this program is the CD-ROM. It is educational yet very entertaining. My son loves the Giggle bunny and wants to do the lessons just to play with the animations that are really cute. The CD-ROM covers the letters, shows and teaches blending and has quiz-like games that are fun and easy to do for a non-reader. There is also a little typing words sections. ... for a package that has a really good program and an excellent book is quite a bargain. I am giving 5 stars without reservations.

Update: We are on lesson 6. My daughter started good. I believe she is having attention difficulties now. I would like to add the suggestion of the "Teach Me Handwriting ebook". There are 20 lessons that follow The Reading Lesson to help them focus on the words & get writing practice. I printed the primary handwriting sample pages from the site (search "The Reading lesson"). She didn't like doing them but I believe it helped (especially when a reward/treat is involved).
I was excited to find The Reading Lesson website when looking for lessons to teach reading. They have the first two lessons, WordBook, and sample of handwriting available there in pdf for review.
My daughter is 7. She spelled her first grade spelling words last year with me giving her the letter sounds individually. She does well with sounds individually (vowels and complicated letter sounds take a few guess' sometimes). I thought she would soon be able to start reading by knowing the letter sounds. I will tell her when a letter is silent in a word and give her the sound so she knows the letter. She is getting better at knowing silent letters. I can now say a word and she can usually give me the beginning letter.
I was looking for something to use that would help her read and use the same words for spelling to keep everything connected with repetition. I believe I have found it! Word families are used in the lessons.
Check out the website yourself!

We are really enjoying this program. After using Learning to Read in 100 Easy Lessons for about 4 months, and not liking it, I find The Reading Lesson a refreshing change. I find The Reading Lesson is a much easier program to use,it is a nicer program, is laid out better, explains some of the reasons behind the phonics of the program and the stories are better. My son really likes the CD ROM that it comes with. I encourage him play with the CD ROM on the computer whenever he wants. It has definately helped him with some of the phonics, and because he often goes to later lessons, it helps to prepare him for what I am going to teach him. The CD Rom also helps with teaching some simple spelling, which I have not started to do with my son yet. The program also has a couple of fun activities with each lesson. Something else I like about the program is that everything is in one book. I have seen some programs where you are continually flipping from a phonics book, to a reading book to an activity book. But not here. Everything is together and everything you need for each lesson follows a nice natural sequence. Best of all, my son likes this program. (He did not like Learning to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and finally refused to do any more of it. And I could not blame him as I was frustrated with that program as well. That is when we saw that we had no choice but to change programs.) I would highly recommend this program for anyone interested in teaching their child phonics.

When my son was two, he knew all of their letters and cooresponding sounds. We actually held back in teaching him to read at that point, worried that we would make him "wierd". When he was four, he was beginning to sound out some small words on his own. So, we bought this book. It was great! It didn't take excess planning and materials, and my son found it fun! By the end of 20 lessons, he was reading at about a second grade level! I would not recommend this book for a child who does not know his letters and their sounds up front, however, as the lessons move rather quickly. If your kiddo falls into this category you might consider Engleman's book "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons". Great book that gave our kiddo a head start and confidence in reading!

The Reading Lesson program is simply awesome!

Here's our story... My daughter, Alex, has loved books since she was a baby. I will skip all the "amazing baby" stuff that probably doesn't seem that amazing to anyone else! Suffice it to say that by the time she was two and a half, I knew she wanted to read, but didn't know what else to do or how to start.

Throughout the next year, I would casually ask friends how you help a child learn to read. One friend who is a kindergarten teacher told me about the phonics method and the sight word method. But each of these - as they are taught in school - sounded deficient in some way, and I couldn't see a clear way to combine them myself. I really was waiting for the answer to fall into my lap. Which it did when I came upon The Reading Lesson.

If I have only one thing to say about The Reading Lesson, it has to be "effortless." Not that you and your child don't have to work together, or that it's not a struggle to get your child to do it some days, but effortless in the sense that you don't have to think about how your child will learn to read anymore. It is so comprehensive a program that absolutely nothing is lacking - it makes perfect sense how it is structured, the methodology behind it, etc., that you do not need to compensate for anything with this program. All that's left for you to do is to be excited about the program so your child is also excited to do it. They even tell you when to anticipate problems and pitfalls along the way, and also tell you how to overcome them! I am so happy with this program that I recommend it to everyone I know!

So how did it actually go with Alex and me? We started in Oct of 2004 when she was a little more than three and a half, and we just finished on May 4, 2005, and she's 4 years and 3 months. We averaged 4 pages a day (she set the pace). The biggest hurdle for me was initially getting her to blend the sounds together. She was great at sounding out the individual letters, but it wasn't until lesson 3 that she started smoothly blending the sounds together to hear the word instantly (I mean the "cccaaaaaaatttt" kind of blending, as opposed to "CCC" - "AAA" - "TTT"). It was very frustrating to me - I didn't know what else to say to get the point across. But I kept doing it, and one day she did too. In fact, I think it was in lesson 6 that she started to sound new words out in her head silently and then just say the word when she got it! By lesson 12 she was reading regular books, and by lesson 13 she was reading the instructions on each page! I would just put the page in front of her, and she was reading! Every day, her progress was phenomenal to me! (And I do mean every day, from page one of lesson one to the last page of lesson 20.) And when she read something that had the word "combination" in it and she didn't even pause, I knew that she not only could read, but she understood enough of the language to decode new words on her own to get them right. She reads so many books now, it's still hard for me to believe that a year ago I was wondering what I was going to do about this!

By the way, I've read the other reviews, and while I did not have to bribe Alex (if she balked too much we just didn't do it - but that did not happen often), if that's what works then I think it is worth it for the end result. Knowing how to read prior to kindergarten will give your child such an advantage. Alex loved to color the pages when she was done, and that was her "reward." Also, the stories in the first lessons may seem "stupid" to an adult, but they are what can be written with the words that your child will master in those early lessons. If you haven't taught many letters yet, you can't make a whole lot into a story. But your child will see it's a story and delight that they are "reading stories" from the very beginning. You cannot replace the motivational value in that personal sense of accomplishment they give to themselves. I believe that that's the strongest value of this program. I would say that from lesson 12 on, Alex was telling me when it was time to do her Reading Lessons, that's how much she enjoyed them.

I cannot recommend The Reading Lesson enough. If you are ready to help your child learn to read, you should not hesitate in getting this book. By the time you finish, your child will be a Reader for Life!

We got this because it was recommened with our Hearts of Dakota Homeschool curriculum. We had tried 100 easy lessons but our 4 yr old son was frustrated and bored with soooo much repetition. We BOTH LOVE the Reading Lesson!! He 'got it' from day one and is reading other books now too. We were going rather quickly through the first chapters, but have since scaled back to just 2-4 pages a day. He is doing VERY well and our 3 year old son is learning to read too!! We just do part of a page a day with our younger son and do lots of repetition until he "knows" it and isn't guessing. THey both have fun and are excited to read! Our oldest is even reading new words in his Bible now!! HIGHLY recommend!!

I've tried them all...Your Baby Can Read, 100 Lessons etc. I found Reading Lessons at the library and brought it home, not expecting too much, as nothing else had really clicked with my kids. As soon as I opened the book, my 3 1/2 year old (who knows his letters) jumped up on the couch and asked me what the book was about. My two year old daughter wasn't too far behind. 20 minutes later we had completed lesson #1 and he was having a blast...circling and sounding out letters, matching letters to pictures, and, to my surprise, easily reading the words presented in the lesson. My 2 year old was correctly pointing to letters when we made the sounds, and using her finger to connect letters to pictures. We're now on lesson #5, and I'm going to the website to buy the book since the book is due back at the library. Better yet, I'm going to purchase the PDF version, as I've already gone through 75 photocopies because my kids love to play the word games so much.

This book is laid out perfectly for younger kids, beginning with easier and shorter lessons and gradually building towards more difficult skills and reading comprehension. Given my kids' enthusiasm and excitement whenever I open the book, I have no doubt they'll be reading at a level well beyond thier peers when they enter school next year.

A big kudos (and thank you) to the authors for a job well done!

I must say that the Reading Lesson is the best I've seen so far. After six months of looking for the right reading program for my five-year-old, I finally found the one that makes sense and works. What I liked the best is that it moves steadily from one set of sounds to the next without overwhelming my son with the whole alphabet soup. Most of the other books I've seen on the internet and in stores have pages filled with busy pictures, games, funny squeaking animals, and other irrelevant characters that are so distracting. Or they are utterly boring like Phonic pathways. Many programs teach phonics and forget about teaching reading. The reading Lesson is very easy to use. I also like instructions for parents before each lesson. The lessons, stories are just right for a young child. If you are looking for a super easy to follow program for a young child that has more just lists of words, then you should consider this program.
The best thing about this program is the CD-ROM. It is educational yet very entertaining. My son loves the Giggle bunny and wants to do the lessons just to play with the animations that are really cute. The CD-ROM covers the letters, shows and teaches blending and has quiz-like games that are fun and easy to do for a non-reader. There is also a little typing words sections. ... for a package that has a really good program and an excellent book is quite a bargain. I am giving 5 stars without reservations.

Update: We are on lesson 6. My daughter started good. I believe she is having attention difficulties now. I would like to add the suggestion of the "Teach Me Handwriting ebook". There are 20 lessons that follow The Reading Lesson to help them focus on the words & get writing practice. I printed the primary handwriting sample pages from the site (search "The Reading lesson"). She didn't like doing them but I believe it helped (especially when a reward/treat is involved).
I was excited to find The Reading Lesson website when looking for lessons to teach reading. They have the first two lessons, WordBook, and sample of handwriting available there in pdf for review.
My daughter is 7. She spelled her first grade spelling words last year with me giving her the letter sounds individually. She does well with sounds individually (vowels and complicated letter sounds take a few guess' sometimes). I thought she would soon be able to start reading by knowing the letter sounds. I will tell her when a letter is silent in a word and give her the sound so she knows the letter. She is getting better at knowing silent letters. I can now say a word and she can usually give me the beginning letter.
I was looking for something to use that would help her read and use the same words for spelling to keep everything connected with repetition. I believe I have found it! Word families are used in the lessons.
Check out the website yourself!

We are really enjoying this program. After using Learning to Read in 100 Easy Lessons for about 4 months, and not liking it, I find The Reading Lesson a refreshing change. I find The Reading Lesson is a much easier program to use,it is a nicer program, is laid out better, explains some of the reasons behind the phonics of the program and the stories are better. My son really likes the CD ROM that it comes with. I encourage him play with the CD ROM on the computer whenever he wants. It has definately helped him with some of the phonics, and because he often goes to later lessons, it helps to prepare him for what I am going to teach him. The CD Rom also helps with teaching some simple spelling, which I have not started to do with my son yet. The program also has a couple of fun activities with each lesson. Something else I like about the program is that everything is in one book. I have seen some programs where you are continually flipping from a phonics book, to a reading book to an activity book. But not here. Everything is together and everything you need for each lesson follows a nice natural sequence. Best of all, my son likes this program. (He did not like Learning to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and finally refused to do any more of it. And I could not blame him as I was frustrated with that program as well. That is when we saw that we had no choice but to change programs.) I would highly recommend this program for anyone interested in teaching their child phonics.

I have two boys and started to go through this book with each of them when they were four years old. I appreciate that the method in this book is very simple and it works. I was amazed at what they learned by just spending 5-10 minutes a day with them on the lessons in this book. My boys were also excited to do the lessons each day. Both of my boys were reading by the time they entered kindergarten. I believe this book along with reading to your child each day is an excellent tool to teach your child to read and give them a love of reading. As a parent I greatly appreciated the simplicity of this book and the clear directions laid out by the authors. I highly recommend this book!

I purchased this book after doing a limited amount of research online for a tool to assist me in teaching my son how to read. He was just over 4 when we began using this amazing resource book and his response to the book was positive from the first day we used it. We had been using a variety of preschool workbooks to encourage letter awareness and focus, but I was unsure how to embark on teaching him to read. I read the reviews for The Reading Lesson and also visited their website. The feedback was overhwelmingly positive and it was so affordable I decided to give it a try. I realized that I was starting early, so did not feel any pressure to move through the book rapidly. I do see the benefits of using the book most everyday, as any newly acquired skill takes regular and repeated practice in order to stick. The format of this book is utterly simple and new ideas are introduced clearly and at time subtly (i.e. words at the start of sentences begin with a capital letter). I love the activites that are thrown in (i.e. choosing which sentence describes the picture provided) and the format is predictable without being boring. We are currently on Lesson 12 (began using the book in August) and my son can read a variety of begining reader books. I have recommended this book to serveral friends and they have all been pleased with the product and the fact that their kids are not opposed to sitting down and learning!

This book works well with both of my children (4yo is up to lesson 5, 6yo is up to lesson 19). I started off with the book 'Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons' when my daughter was four, and we both got really frustrated with it, so moved onto 'The Reading Lesson' after about six months. We never looked back. Going from the other book and the mmm, motorboat sounds (you'll understand if you've used that book!), to The Reading Lesson and having my daughter reading words from the very first lesson had her hooked. Get the related CD-rom's too, they're not high-tech but worthwhile. Children obviously have success with different ways of teaching, but each child is different and if you're not getting results, try something else!!! So glad we came accross this book. Now, what to use when we're finished the book...

Hi there,

I am currently mentoring a 9 year old from a residential children's home in a programme similar to "Big Brother, Big Sister." The child cannot read, is in Grade 4 and struggling at school. I decided to buy "The Reading Lesson" to assist me in teaching her how to read.

The book has been a great help to her. She has just completed the first lesson and her recognition of simple words, as well basic sentence construction is already starting to improve.

It's always a challenge with disadvantaged children and in South Africa, our schools sometimes have 50 children to a class, putting a lot of stress on the teacher. The Reading Lesson is helping me make a developmental impact on a young child's life.

Thank you.

MeliniThe Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons

My daughter is four years old and absolutely loves her daily "lesson" from The Reading Lesson. The combination of phonics and sight words, as well as the length and content of each day's page, keep my daughter interested and her retention is stellar. There is also a very successful marriage of repetition and introduction everyday to maintain progress without any frustration. Dabbling with a friends Hooked on Phonics seemed to "be all over the page' and the cost, in my opinion, is just too high. Relying soley on Dolch sight words worked for my daughter in the short term, but when she read the words she knew in a book, she was simply reciting the word she recognized; there was no application of that word as part of a sentence or story. I can not recommend this program enough as the perfect product to help your preschooler learn to read.

As a veteran children's librarian of 15+ years I have ordered many books on reading instruction. As a mother I have checked out most of them, including this one. Now I want my own copy.
Many reading instruction programs either overwhelm, require additional material, photocopying, workbooks, etc. This program is all-inclusive. It requires no extra games or gimmics and NO prior preparation on the part of the adult. Hooray!
As for the child, it is clear, well paced, and promotes confidence.
My youngest(now 6)is very active, very bright and very uninterested in reading. (We don't watch t.v. and do read hundreds of picture books each year--so live in a very literate environment). I don't feel that children should be rushed into reading, so rearranged my full-time work schedule to teach her at home this year--and thus take reading at HER pace. (She was tutored one-on-one for a half hour four days each week over the summer.) Having sat in on those sessions and replicated many of the "fun" activities at home I can say that if she had been instructed with THIS program she would not have needed the tutoring.
Happily, I can report that she is learning to read thanks to THIS book. And I can see that transition from this book to all the "easy readers" will be a snap. In fact, she may just skip the "easies" and move right into chapter books.

We started this book in May with my then four-year-old son. At the time of this review we only have one chapter left, and my kid can READ. I had to supplement the material pretty heavily (BOB books, level one readers, et cetera), because he got bored with the stories in the book which led to him not wanting to read at all. Once I found some other books he was interested in, however, that boredom stopped, and he is now excited about being able to not only read, but understand what he's reading.

The progression of each lesson was absolutely perfect, and the illustrations helped hold my child's interest in the beginning. The lessons could be easily adapted to fit any sort of learning style, I think.

My 4 year old works with the Reading Lesson every single morning, just after breakfast. He's very proud of how much he's learned in such a short time (and after some frustrating experiences with other methods, we're both relieved that it's been so easy). The drawings are simple, the progress is perfectly suited to his learning abilities, and I really think it would have been a year or two more of struggling if we hadn't found this fabulous book. My only complaint is that the pages aren't perforated, because I like to scan then in so that he can color the drawings in more than once. We also have the CD-ROM, which is made for both the child and parent to use together. It's very uncluttered and simply put together which helps him to focus on the actual words and letters. Highly recommended!

My niece used this to learn when she was 4, she is now 10 and one of the best/fastest readers in her class. I taught my daughter and she was able to read around 4.5 years old. She is 5 now and reading chapter books at 2/3 grade level. I now need a new book so that I can teach my other daughter who is 4. I just began homeschooling a year ago and this book made teaching to read fun and a breeze. We go for as long as she's interested. I don't believe in pushing to read at too early an age (more work for you and more frustration for the child). Teach them when they show interest and can pay attention (it makes everyone happier). You will not be disappointed!

I ordered this product for my daughter when she was 4 and this is actually an reorder for my son age 3 now. My daughter picked up on all the syllables and sounds when I went over this book with her. It really reinforced things she learned in kindergarten later and helped her to read from the start. Although I think my son is too young to go over 3 pages at a time now but it doesn't hurt to have him look at the book and go over the CD-ROM, so later he may catch on quicker when I go over each lesson in detail. It took my daughter about an year to finish this but I also was not regular with her as I was pregnant with my son at the time. But she remembered all the lessons even though we had to review it a couple of times, as there was too much gap in continuing the Reading Lesson at the time. I recommend a parent to go over the Reading Lesson with their child at their leisurely pace, and create interest in them so that when they are ready they catch on super fast. -Padma Muduli

My four year old daughter, is on her 17th lesson of the Reading lesson. She basically completes 2-3 pages a day.We started in early February, 2011 and we're hoping she'll finish the 20th lesson come September when she starts Kindergarten. We are very excited to see her reading books from the library and able to read the instructions from work sheets as well as know all her sight words. She's able to sound out longer words all on her own. I can't thank your product enough and have already made a point of recommending it to all of my friends who have 2-3 year olds. We also have the primary writing skills work sheets which have helped her tremendously on her writing skills. Her writing is far from sloppy and is neat and readable.Again, I can't thank you enough. My only regret is I didn't have the products around when my eight year old son was 3 years old.

i haven't gotten through the entire book yet, however my 5 and 1/2 year old son is doing very well. he is learning to read very nicely and is enjoying the book. i researched other books and found this one to be the best. it is clear, well spaced, interesting and very user friendly. my only complaint is that sometimes the book introduces something new without explaining it thoroughly.

I have been looking for a book that would help me teach my 4 1/2 year old daughter how to read. I'm glad I bought it because this book is it! I am very pleased with the book. The pictures are cute which helps my daughter who is quite a visual learner. My daughter was so happy because she was able to read from lesson 1.
I ordered the book from the website and was pleasantly surprised to find that the Reading Lesson CD rom was included, free. My daughter really likes the CD rom. She gets so excited when it's time to do her reading lesson. We do 1 a day and her favorite part is getting the gold trophy at the end of each lesson. She's even able to totally go through each lesson at her own pace since she's in control of the mouse. I sit with her so that I can hear her reading the words. Even my 3 year old son, who is speech delayed, was interested in the lesson. He pronounced the letter sounds.
Overall, I am very pleased with the Reading Lesson. It is probably the best investment I have made because my daughter is so thrilled at the fact that she can actually read other books as well.

I am teaching my son to read with this book. The book has twenty lessons each about 20 pages. We are on lesson seven and he is showing real progress now. This book is all a good reading program should be. You can open it on any page and you know exactly what to do. It is reasonably priced for the quality, which is very high indeed.
What is so different about this book is that is not a "how can I teach my kid to read" book. Instead it is really a course with lessons that are goal-oriented. At the same time, it is not boring for the child. The pages are beautiful to look at and the drawings on every page are very cute. My son likes to color the pictures. We do about 3to 4 pages a day and that can take about 20 minutes. Sometimes the going is slow but everything is clearly expalined in a few words at the start of the lesson without making it too complicated or rigid. Little symbols under the letters and combinations such as "sh", "th" and "ea" help him to remember the sounds which are taught at the begining of the lesson.
The book covers phonics and sightwords. Each lesson has key words that child need to know. The stories are just 4 to 6 lines which is just exactly right for a six year old.
All in all, I am glad I found this lovely book. It one of those rare books that is actually better than it seems from its description. Dr. Levin and his wife have done a good job and I am sure you will feel the same way.

I really loved the approach of this book. I have used it with both of my children quite sucessfully. We took it nice and slow, one or two pages a day, and it was a joy. The combination of whole language, sightwords, and phonics was the key to my children's sucess. Plus the simple illustrations were enchanting, not distracting. My 5 year old daughter hated to sit for lessons before I introduced this book and now she is reading as well as her older sister. Just as a side note, before we started to homeschool, my older daughter enrolled in public school Kindergarden within a week of finishing this book. The Kindergarden teacher was so impressed with her reading skills, he had her tested for an Advanced Reading program. As a five year old Kindergardner she tested at the END of 2nd grade reading....Just from this book! Buy it, you will not be dissapointed.

I first purchased this book in 2001 for my 4 year old. The reading lesson web site offers a free download and print option of the first 2 lessons to see how your child will respond. I thought that was really great. My daughter was reading fairly well on her own after the 16th lesson, in fact she wouldn't let me help her with the last 4 chapters. She was moved to the first grade 1/2 way through kindergarten because she had mastered reading. She's in the 2nd grade now and reading at nearly 5th grade level. (The math lesson is also good.)

Now, I have just ordered for my 4 year old twins. Nothing against pre-school for 4 year olds but I think I've gotten better results teaching my girls at home with this book than most people I know who pay hundreds of dollars a month to send their kids to P.S. I will also be looking into the writing lesson and math lessons again.

I started this curriculum with my 5yo kindergartener who didn't know how to read. This book made each lesson very simple, and well put together. My son eased into learning how to read. He is now finishing the school year and is a reading champ! I am so thankful we purchased this book!!

I just finished this book with my 11th child. I have used other books to teach my children to read, but systematically this was by far the best. The presentation and sound review helped my daughter to learn and remember her sounds, blends, and sight words. The stories were simple and fun. Black and white pencil cartoon drawings were cute, not distracting, and gave simple contextual clues while reading. I highly recommend this book to anyone who doesn't think they can teach their child to read! With this book you can!

I wish I had known about this book before I plunked down my money elsewhere... I've used Hooked on Phonics ($$$$$) and a number of other well-reputed resources that claim to teach young children to read, but nothing comes remotely close to what this book can offer! This book leads at a pace that any youngster can follow (of course, a parent would know where to stop) and addresses the challenges (confusion between lower case letters b and d, for example) very nicely. Just can't say enough good things about the contents, the drills, and the fun illustrations (clear enough for youngsters to follow but not too distracting). Ms. Langton (co-author) is very personal and quick in responding to questions. Also check out their math lessons site... which offers same type of drills for math lessons that are FREE!!!

My son just turned 5 in December so he is not in Kindergarten yet, however, I started The Reading Lesson with him and we are on Lesson 5. We take it slowly, doing only 1-3 "new" pages a day, and reviewing the previous pages each day as well. I let him write his name on the bottom the first time he completes a page, then a smiley face when he "masters it". His reading and ability to pick out words has increased exponentially over the last few months. I'm very excited about this material and will recommend it to friends of mine who I know would like for their kids to get a head start on reading. Thanks so much for putting this material together in such an easy format...for both of us! We also made a "book" for him out of the story pages so that he can go back and read the stories to us!

Excellent Excellent teaching and on-going reference book. I began this book when my son was about 4yr 2mo. I found this book after realizing that Bob Books were not enough. Bob Books were a good start - we went through Set A1, A2, B1 between age 3 1/2 and 4. I also used flash cards for sight words, which is the only way a child can learn these words. But I felt there was not adequate coverage of the phonics being introduced in Bob Books and the stories were lacking. After some research, I came across THE READING LESSON and WHAT A FIND! The book marries phonics, sight words and other common words. It introduces the material in a manner that is logical and easy to digest. I recommend tabbing the pages for reference if your child forgets a sound. My son finished the book in 4-5 months since the work with Bob Books allowed us to breeze through the first 6 chapters quickly. We did about 3-5 pages per day, at least 5 days per week. By the end, he was the only solid reader in his pre-K class. During and after The Reading Lesson, we transitioned to 'An I Can Read' Books, which further boosted his skill level and provided more interesting material. He is currently in Kindergarten. At the 5yr 9mo point, he tested at a 4th grade reading level !! While it takes many things to achieve this type of result, I tell everyone I can about THE READING LESSON. I also keep it on hand if he forgets any of the phonics sounds when sounding out 'ad-ver-tise-ment'. It's the best $ you'll spend. Reading is the skill of all skills and will set your child up for success in school.

This book is good for practice and has some helpful information for parents as we help our kids get through it. However, this is not the only source needed to teach a kid to learn to read. Still a good book though!

I used the Reading Lesson with some kids that I tutor, and I love it! The book is very easy to use, and has a great step-by-step formula for teaching children to read. The pages are clean and easy to read, and kids think of the book as a fun activity. The pages are also in black in white, which means they can color once they are done with the lesson for that day. This is a really good program, and definitely worth the money. If you have young children at home and are looking for a useful and cheap program to teach them to read, then definitely buy the Reading Lesson!

I've never written a review for the store but this book has been so great I am compelled to. Since my son got this book for Christmas he has gone from knowing only a few words like 'cat' and 'dog' to being able to read full sentences and sound out an astonishing number of words. The book works because of its simplicity and repetition, once my son had confidence that he could figure out new words and sounds he actually looked forward to our nightly reading lessons. His pre-k teacher actually asked us what we were doing as they had noticed his incredible progress. Nothing short of amazing for our son!

I purchased this book in order to teach my four year old to read. He has a VERY short attention span and each page can be reviewed and mastered in under ten minutes. We do just one page per day and he retains the material very well. The lessons are very easy to do with your child and my son was able to read after completing the first lesson. It is important that your kid know the alphabet and have some character recognition.

I've been doing this with my 4 year old daughter for about a month now. We are almost on lesson 6 already and she is reading a ton of words. I try to keep it to 15 minutes a day 4-5 times a week, but she begs and begs for more. I also have the writing sheets, so when I finally can convince her to quit reading, she asks to do some of the writing sheets. I am surprised at how easy it is for her to learn. The flow of the lessons is great. The exceptions to the rules like "come", "of" and "gone" are introduced at the right times. This book works and works fast. 5 stars isn't enough.

I bought this book to preview before starting our kindergarten homeschool program. My 3 yr old ds was so interested that I showed him the first page and went over the instructions. I didn't think he'd be too interested at this point. Boy was I wrong :) He loves his reading lesson everyday and though it has only been a few weeks, he is already sounding out simple words with ease. This book is well organized and simple without being boring. You can go as fast or slow as your child needs. I can't recommend it enough.

I am a homeschooling mom and have used this program for my son's kindergarten year and for 2 months into his first grade year. We just finished the book today and I am happy to say that I have a great reader! I chose to only do 2 pages a day for the first year and 3-4 for this year. My son really enjoyed the reading; many of the stories are silly and 6 yo boys love silliness.

My son did have a good grasp of letter sounds prior to starting the book, thanks to leapfrog videos and fridge phonics. We also supplemented with blends flashcards on occasion and added early readers (Frog and Toad books, etc) to our school day this year. If I had to guess, I would say that my child is reading at a second grade level (at least) and may be closer to reading at a third grade level.

I am very thankful to have found this inexpensive product! It has been a gentle, yet thorough reading program. I can't wait to use it for my younger children.

The Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons

I teach English in Japan. With students from 2 to seventy something years old. Learning to read is such an important part of learning a language, in my opinion.

I recommend this book to all of my younger students parents, and help the ones that bought the book, and now are reading in English. I have a 5 year old student who is doing incredibly well.
My own children, their native language is Japanese(better than mine), are now learning and enjoying The Reading Lesson.

Thanks!

We love this book. We homeschool and have found this is the best reading program for us to use both from the parent (planning time and involvement) perspective and from the kids perspective of learning in fun and hands on "reading" lessons. They are also learning writing skills and grammer with the lessons.

My kids both have improved their reading skills within the first few lessons. They enjoy the short lessons, the pictures and the easy to understand codes for each sound. I enjoy the ability to move through a lesson at their pace yet still to be seeing progress. I also like the CD with the activities and fun things for them to do while reinforcing what they are learning in each lesson.

I think this is the best book one can buy for a small child. It is very simple to follow and needs no learning time for a parent.

I got this when my son was less than 3 and half yrs old. He finished this in less than 4 months. A few months before he turned 4, he read books such as Cat in the Hat with ease. By the age of 4 he was reading level 2 books. Now he is 5, reading Cam Jansen, Charlottes Web etc., thanks to The Reading Lesson. I would recommend this to any parent who wants to get their child started with reading.

I must have enough material in my house to open a small kindergarten - after despairing that my daughter refused to learn the alphabet and read. I tried every kind of material from videos to audio tapes to books to bingo to card games you name it I tried it. Finally a bit of bribing to sit down with me ten minutes a day and the READING LESSON. I got 5 and a half year old daughter reading basic sentences with confidence in two months. We did the first five chapters in 8 weeks and since then it is smooth sailing. I can't reccomend it enough. It will be the best investment you will ever make if you want your child to read.

Hello. I am a second grade teacher and I would like to share my experience with this reading program, The Reading Lesson. The Reading Lesson is an excellent way to supplement any primary grade reading program. It carefully covers all necessary phonics, thus guiding the beginning student in phenomic awareness and reinforcing the letter-sound relationships to remedial readers. Because it is easy for first and second graders to use and they enjoy it (The children in my class love this program) they can work on it independently, I use it during center time. I like the way the program uses a finger to help the student "read through" the words. I do this in my guided reading groups so the reinforcement in a computer program is very helpful. Even if there are no computers in your classroom the workbooks are well thought out, organized by sounds, and the letters are big. Another great part about this program is that it contains almost all of the sight words we teach in the primary grades, so even students who know sounds can use it to practice their sight words. Basically, I am very pleased with this product and it has added a lot to my reading program. I have seen big improvments in my student's reading and know The Reading Program is the reason for some of this success.

Excellent book, taught my first child to read at 2 1/2, now at 7 she reads at a fifth grade level. Now using this book to teach my autistic 4 year old to read. After only 3 lessons he is reading simple words.

I started using this book when my now 7 year old daughter was 4 years old. She is now reading on the 4th grade reading level. The book kept her interest and she absolutely loved getting to the stories. She couldn't wait for her father to get home so she could read them to him. I am now using it for my second child (4 year old daughter) who is so excited to be using the same book her sister did. I believe this is one of the best books for teaching reading, but remember each child is different and what may be good for one family will not work for another. Just keep trying to find what works for you and yours. This book works well for our family.

We love it. I ordered it as part of the Hearts of Dakota curriculum for my son, and it was going so well that I started doing it with my 3 year old and even she has caught on! I love that we can snuggle while we do the lessons. I also love how much pride my 5 year old has in himself when he reads one of the stories to his Daddy! I would highly recommend this!

I am home-schooling my 4 year old. This book is excellent. I found it after trying many other ones that I didn't find to be consistent or simple, but effective enough for a young child. My daughter is reading all the words from the lessons we've covered and so happy that she can read words from other books. even my 10 year old picks up "The reading lesson" and can teach her, so anyone can do it. I also have a baby who's almost 2, he stands next to us and loves to repeat the letter sound with his sister, I will surely start this method with him very soon.

This is an excellent tool for teaching reading to young children. My four and a half year old loves doing her reading lessons and comes and asks me to do it with her if I forget. At just half way through the book, she is sounding out everything in sight and doing remarkably well. The Reading Lesson makes so much more sense in the systematic way it teaches a child to read than the public school Kindergarten reading program. It takes commitment on the parent's part, but you can go as quickly or as slowly as is needed. I highly recommend the book.

The Reading lesson has turned out to be one of the most effective learning lessons I have ever used. I run a preschool-preK and this program has proven to be successful and enjoyable. My youngest reader is 2.5 years old, and yes, they can read. I recommend this program and book to every parent who wishes to give the gift of reading to their child. Its simple and easy.. and your child will love it. All my kids wait for Giggle Bunny every day.
Great awesome product,..worth every dime and more !!!
Rennu Dhillon, Founder Genius Kids/Fremont, Safari Kid/Newark
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I am now teaching my fourth child to read. I used the "100 Lesson" book with the first one, the "Phonics Pathways" with the second one and "the Reading Lesson" with last two. If you are reading this to try to decide on which book to purchase, this one - The Reading Lesson - in my opinion is right on the mark for younger children. The lessons are teeny-tiny and easy for younger child. The CD-ROM really helps because it is so wonderfully entertaining for the child but very goal-oriented.
Phonics Pathways book should be used only for an older child or one who had difficulties learning to read. It is just too much for a young child. It uses a lot of rhyming pharases and that in my opinion in not the best way to learn to read. Words in reading do not often rhyme. Rhyming also encouraes guessing. The pages of Phonics Pathways are jam packed with words and "stuff". On one page I counted over 200 words! All of these words new to the child. No wonder my son hated looking at this book. Definitely not for a younger child.
The 100 Lessons book is good BUT this book - The Reading Lesson - is better. One of the complaints I had with "100 Lessons" book is that when you look at a page, it is 80% instructions for the parent and only just a few words for the child to read, except when reading stories when there is too much on the page for the child to read. The "100 Lessons" book lacks balance in my opinion. I noticed that one of the reviewers said that they liked the "100 Lesson" book, however this reviewer from what she says never saw the this book, only the web site. How can you give a book 3 stars after just seeing the website! Strange!!! I think if you see how the Reading Lesson book is arranged, you won't want to buy the 100 Lessons book. (I bought the book at Borders never having read any of these reviews!)
This book is a gem. Easy to use, and a pleasure and hands down best of the lot of books designed to teach children to read.

My parents taught me to read with another book (100 Easy Lessons - book). It worked well and I was always at the top of my class (I attribute it to learning to read early and often). However, I am teaching my daughter with this newer book. It is updated and much easier for parents and kids and my daughter loves to read the stories with the cute pictures. Go at your child's pace, too. If you only bought one book for your kids it should be this one. Invaluable!

I started my daughter on this program on her 4th birthday. I was already teaching her using the same approach, but I did not have a companion text. The Reading Lesson met the need perfectly. She progressed rapidly and can read several children's books already, eventhough we have only finished the first 5 lessons!
The success is in the approach. The instructions to the teacher are very clear and logical. I will use this text with my youngest daughter as well. I highly recommend this text.

I have taught three children to read trying various methods at different stages in their development.

After researching & almost one thousand dollars on reading programs I finally settled on "Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons" for my two year old son. My research has led me to several conclusions, among which are:

* Different types of reading programs may work better at different stages in your child's development. For example, "How to Teach Your Baby to Read" by Glenn & Janet Doman, works best for children under two.
* If your child is approximately 4 years or older and DOES NOT HAVE ANY LETTER RECOGNITION, then a program like "Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons" may work best.
* Hooked on phonics may work well for children over the age of six who already have some reading skills, but are having problems.
* Bob First (Scholastic) books are good for kids 4 and up. Younger kids may have problems with the Bob First books because the print is too small.
* Do NOT teach the alphabet to kids under 3 years old. They will learn to read more easily if instead, starting with lower case letters, you first teach the sounds a letter makes. They can easily pick up the names of the letters once they are well into their reading program.

The first lesson in the 20 Easy Lessons book starts by introducing your child to the sounds made by five of the most commonly used letters in the 500 most commonly used words of the English language. Whereas the book recommends spending up to 5 minutes on one page, I only spent about 15 seconds per session and two sessions per day, for a total of 30 seconds per day. Just long enough to point out the letters and say the sounds. The first couple of times (I introduce any new concept) I do not ask my child to repeat anything. The next couple of sessions, I asked my child to repeat after me while I pointed to the letters. After another couple of sessions, your child will be saying the letter sounds as you point to the letters. After a few days, we were going through half a page a day, and repeating each page two or three times. After a month of this, you will be able to cover one page at a time (instead of half pages).

Every so often, the book has a worksheet that may not be developmentally appropriate for your child (e.g., matching letter sounds to a picture of an animal that starts with the same sound). Skip these worksheets if your child is too young.

My child is on lesson 7 and can easily read sentences like "Pam got a fish in the pet shop. The cat wants the fish, but the cat can not swim." He is able to read words that he doesn't know by sounding them out.

I few more tips to consider.
* Do not teach your child if either of you are in a bad mood, hungry, or distracted in any way.
* Get rid of all distractions during a lesson (e.g., T.V., radio, ringing phones, talking people, etc.)
* Teach your child every day, including weekends.
* Make the lessons short. Start with 10 to 15 seconds per session. At 2 years 8 months old, my son's sessions are now about 1 minute long, once or twice per day.
* If your child is reluctant, try the following. "Would you like to go outside and play after your reading lesson?" or "Lets play with the Play-Dough after our reading lesson".
* Sometimes you can use hand puppets to help with the reading lesson.
* I have a Rubbermaid container that I call the Treasure Chest. It is filled with many little toys I purchased at the 99 cent store. Sometimes I use this by saying, "Let's have a reading lesson and then you can pick a treasure from the treasure chest."
* Do not force your child. If he or she doesn't want to do the reading lesson, take a day off and try a different tactic the following day.
* Read books to your child on a regular basis.
* When out and about, point out words to your child that he or she already knows.
* If your child makes a reading mistake during a session, do not say "No" or "That's not correct". Sometimes you can just let it slide. Other times you can help them by telling them the answer.
* Try not to pressure your child to show off his or her reading skills to other people.

I have many more ideas and opinions, but not enough space.

I think that kids 2 years to 5 years old will get the most benefit out of this book.

Our 3 1/2 year old is addicted to the CD-ROM. She would rather play with the CD than watch a kid show on TV. It is interactive and helps her to learn to read and spell without her becoming frustrated. She is also becoming educated on how to use the keyboard and computer. Because she recognizes the characters in the book from the CD-ROM she has begun to be involved in writing and using the book. It is fun and interactive and I highly recommend the book for any toddler learning to read.

I have been trying to get my 5-year-old ready for kindergarten and I have found your lesson to be very helpful. He is very stubborn and doesn't always want to sit still to learn but with your lessons it seems to have helped him recognize his letters and the sounds. We are still new at it and working towards to get him to read soon. It seems to have caught his attention and I have been very pleased with your methods.

Hi -- I'm a homeschool mom and I'm so glad I found this reading program! I've been struggling through other reading/phonics programs with my kindergartner and only getting more frustrated. "THE READING LESSON" series is so much more user friendly! I knew after reading the intro letter and instructions that this was the program for us! Now instead of frustration, my daughter and I are excited about the progress we are making. Thank you for putting us on the right road! Many thanks.

I tried so many different ways to get me daughter interested in learning to read. This was the only one that worked. The repetition really allows the ideas to sink in and the short stories are cute and funny. I would definetly recommend this book to any mom looking for a little help!

My parents taught me to read with another book (100 Easy Lessons - book). It worked well and I was always at the top of my class (I attribute it to learning to read early and often). However, I am teaching my daughter with this newer book. It is updated and much easier for parents and kids and my daughter loves to read the stories with the cute pictures. Go at your child's pace, too. If you only bought one book for your kids it should be this one. Invaluable!

I started my daughter on this program on her 4th birthday. I was already teaching her using the same approach, but I did not have a companion text. The Reading Lesson met the need perfectly. She progressed rapidly and can read several children's books already, eventhough we have only finished the first 5 lessons!
The success is in the approach. The instructions to the teacher are very clear and logical. I will use this text with my youngest daughter as well. I highly recommend this text.

I have taught three children to read trying various methods at different stages in their development.

After researching & almost one thousand dollars on reading programs I finally settled on "Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons" for my two year old son. My research has led me to several conclusions, among which are:

* Different types of reading programs may work better at different stages in your child's development. For example, "How to Teach Your Baby to Read" by Glenn & Janet Doman, works best for children under two.
* If your child is approximately 4 years or older and DOES NOT HAVE ANY LETTER RECOGNITION, then a program like "Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons" may work best.
* Hooked on phonics may work well for children over the age of six who already have some reading skills, but are having problems.
* Bob First (Scholastic) books are good for kids 4 and up. Younger kids may have problems with the Bob First books because the print is too small.
* Do NOT teach the alphabet to kids under 3 years old. They will learn to read more easily if instead, starting with lower case letters, you first teach the sounds a letter makes. They can easily pick up the names of the letters once they are well into their reading program.

The first lesson in the 20 Easy Lessons book starts by introducing your child to the sounds made by five of the most commonly used letters in the 500 most commonly used words of the English language. Whereas the book recommends spending up to 5 minutes on one page, I only spent about 15 seconds per session and two sessions per day, for a total of 30 seconds per day. Just long enough to point out the letters and say the sounds. The first couple of times (I introduce any new concept) I do not ask my child to repeat anything. The next couple of sessions, I asked my child to repeat after me while I pointed to the letters. After another couple of sessions, your child will be saying the letter sounds as you point to the letters. After a few days, we were going through half a page a day, and repeating each page two or three times. After a month of this, you will be able to cover one page at a time (instead of half pages).

Every so often, the book has a worksheet that may not be developmentally appropriate for your child (e.g., matching letter sounds to a picture of an animal that starts with the same sound). Skip these worksheets if your child is too young.

My child is on lesson 7 and can easily read sentences like "Pam got a fish in the pet shop. The cat wants the fish, but the cat can not swim." He is able to read words that he doesn't know by sounding them out.

I few more tips to consider.
* Do not teach your child if either of you are in a bad mood, hungry, or distracted in any way.
* Get rid of all distractions during a lesson (e.g., T.V., radio, ringing phones, talking people, etc.)
* Teach your child every day, including weekends.
* Make the lessons short. Start with 10 to 15 seconds per session. At 2 years 8 months old, my son's sessions are now about 1 minute long, once or twice per day.
* If your child is reluctant, try the following. "Would you like to go outside and play after your reading lesson?" or "Lets play with the Play-Dough after our reading lesson".
* Sometimes you can use hand puppets to help with the reading lesson.
* I have a Rubbermaid container that I call the Treasure Chest. It is filled with many little toys I purchased at the 99 cent store. Sometimes I use this by saying, "Let's have a reading lesson and then you can pick a treasure from the treasure chest."
* Do not force your child. If he or she doesn't want to do the reading lesson, take a day off and try a different tactic the following day.
* Read books to your child on a regular basis.
* When out and about, point out words to your child that he or she already knows.
* If your child makes a reading mistake during a session, do not say "No" or "That's not correct". Sometimes you can just let it slide. Other times you can help them by telling them the answer.
* Try not to pressure your child to show off his or her reading skills to other people.

I have many more ideas and opinions, but not enough space.

I think that kids 2 years to 5 years old will get the most benefit out of this book.

Our 3 1/2 year old is addicted to the CD-ROM. She would rather play with the CD than watch a kid show on TV. It is interactive and helps her to learn to read and spell without her becoming frustrated. She is also becoming educated on how to use the keyboard and computer. Because she recognizes the characters in the book from the CD-ROM she has begun to be involved in writing and using the book. It is fun and interactive and I highly recommend the book for any toddler learning to read.

I have been trying to get my 5-year-old ready for kindergarten and I have found your lesson to be very helpful. He is very stubborn and doesn't always want to sit still to learn but with your lessons it seems to have helped him recognize his letters and the sounds. We are still new at it and working towards to get him to read soon. It seems to have caught his attention and I have been very pleased with your methods.

Hi -- I'm a homeschool mom and I'm so glad I found this reading program! I've been struggling through other reading/phonics programs with my kindergartner and only getting more frustrated. "THE READING LESSON" series is so much more user friendly! I knew after reading the intro letter and instructions that this was the program for us! Now instead of frustration, my daughter and I are excited about the progress we are making. Thank you for putting us on the right road! Many thanks.

I tried so many different ways to get me daughter interested in learning to read. This was the only one that worked. The repetition really allows the ideas to sink in and the short stories are cute and funny. I would definetly recommend this book to any mom looking for a little help!

I am a home schooling mother of 4. I was having a hard time getting my 2nd grader to read but after purchasing this program reading is coming completly natural. My 2 & 4 year olds even love the program. It is a great way to teach them their letters and to read at the same time. I also use the writing lessons as a reinforsment of the reading lessons. If you have a child that is bored with reading this is a great way to make it fun.

I bought the book and also a cd with online program that have the twenty lessons with animation. My kids worked through the lessons twice. My five year old daughter can read now. they love the giggle bunny.

My oldest son entered Kindergarten knowing how to read and is a great reader because of using this book. I love that it is a mixture of phonics and site reading. It is the kind of book you can spend 10-15 minutes a day on and stop and start without "losing" where you are at in your teaching. We simply sit down after lunch each day and do a few pages and within a few months, they know how to read.

I bought this for my daughter when she was 3 and we read (learned) a few pages at a time as directed. She's now 6 and is the best reader and speller in her 2nd grade class (she even skipped the 1st grade)! I would recommend this book to anyone over any other product, and you can't beat the price!
Thanks so much "Giggle Bunny"!!!

The beginning of this book was much like every other phonics program...going over short vowels, etc. Then when you get to the child reading sentences there are NO real sentences. There are no capital letters beginning the sentence and most of them are only fragments. This is a very confusing book. Silly and confusing.

This book is easy to follow and I am seeing amazing results with my three year old and my five year old! I am very pleased with this program. In about 5 minutes a day I am teaching my children to read and they are loving it!!!

After reviewing the website at reading lesson dot com, I can say without equivocation that Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is a better way to go. The first lesson attempts to teach five new sounds and to use them in words and pretends that the first time reader will be able to do each lesson in twenty minutes. Impossible! 100 Easy Lessons builds in a reasonable manner that increases the challenge as the student progresses. The lessons rarely take more than twenty minutes and my son enjoys it.

The Reading Lesson was the AMAZING key to teaching our 5 1/2 year-old son to read the summer before first grade. We did a few pages per day and by the book's end HE WAS A READING MACHINE! We are so proud of him and greatful to the authors for this outstanding book. We used nothing but this book and it worked like magic. Highly recommeded:)

my son is 5, and he is loving learning to read with this book. I am amazed at how easy it is. we've spent about 30 minutes total so far on the first 2 lessons, and he is now reading about 10 to 12 words, not guessing, but really reading them. we're both really excited about it. can't recommend this book enough.

This book is so easy to use. If you are teaching your child to read I recommend this book. My 5 year old already knew her phonics but didn't know how to read. She is reading very well half way threw the book. The lessons are a little too long for her age, so I try to take out parts that she already knows.

Hi,

In a nutshell, if you have a visual learner who likes colour, or one who struggles to blend this book is not for you. My four year old was totally turned off by this so instead, we purchased the online Headsprout programme and now he is a really confident reader in a short time. My advice is to go for a different book but if your budget allows, buy Headsprout because it is brilliant and it works. My son loves reading because of that programme.

Hope that helps you.

Faye

This book is great. I started doing the lessons with my son when he was 4. He looks foward to the lesson each day and has learned so much. I love the kid friendly format. I highly recommend this book.

I sort of hate to be a debbie downer here but this just didn't do anything for my daughter. She knew the letters and sounds of the letters but she totally resisted doing anything in this book. It seems to be the short words and repetition of those words, for instance if the word was "cat"..she'd make a face and say fat cat rat blat blat blat. (my interpretation is "I'm not a moron so stop forcing this gibberish on me")

What has worked for her, and beautifully so is the McGuffey eclectic readers.

Also, it is probably more respectful to the human being who is your child to allow them their childhood and not begin lessons until they are ready.

I bought this book because it was so highly recommended. Sorry, I didn't like it. I didn't like the way that several different sounds for one letter had to be learned before getting down to words. I find the word family way easier, where, for example, you teach "at" then "cat," "hat" "bat" and so on before saying the letter "a" can make other sounds.

ZERO STARS!!!! Please, please, PLEASE do not buy this book!!! It is AWFUL! It is so degrading to children's learning abilities. (If you're looking for a program for the learning disabled, please try the Ball-Stick-Bird program by Renee Fuller - read about the stories and the method at the website ballstickbird.com.) Please do not support the Reading Lesson and it's author's by wasting your money on it! Children are too valuable to be given the impression that they are so inept at any learning ability that we must stoop to this type of nonsense in order to "teach them to read." Here is an example of two sentences the book teaches (with no capitalization): sat at. tom sad. Here is an example of a story: tom sad. dad mad at tom. (What a happy story to read by the way!) Yes, children could be "taught to read" using this book (but, according to other reviews, they must be bribed in order to do so). But, at what "dumbed-down" level of intelligence do we want our children's reading level to be? Please don't take pride in "teaching" children to read at their expense. Any child that would come away from this program of reading with any pride in their reading ability or any desire to read for enjoyment is virtually impossible for me to imagine.

One further gripe: the book's title is misrepresentative, the majority of the "Twenty" Lessons must each be broken down into several lessons. If there were ANY quality in the program, wouldn't it be able to stand on it's own without needing a sensationalized title to lie for it?

I just got this book from the store today. I was excited to use it with my 5 year old. I opened it right away and began reading the introduction. They say to use the "token game" with kids and say if the child gets a word wrong to pinch them. This is wrong on so many levels. I will be tearing that page out of the book and donating it. I'm not happy.

My now 23 month old son learned to read at 15 months old using the preschoolprep dvds and flashcards/books along with the leapfrog dvds. This book reinforced and improved his reading skills. However, "pinching" your child when he makes a mistake is unnecessary. Make it a fun reading!

I used this book with two of my children. They both did well with it. Very simple to use, easy to follow and no distractions. Picture are minimal and all black and white. As the "teacher" directions we're clear and easy. Kids stay focused on the lessons. Take as slow or quick as you need. Takes the student from kindergarten to nearly 2nd grade level.

Loving this book. Home school mom of 6. Using this in addition to 100 easy lessons at this time is working great. We do one lesson in 100 EL first. 2 (sides) pages of this and 2 (sides) pages of explode the code a day. She has been doing great. 5 year old, grade K.