Please has anyone used ‘Teach your child to read in 20 easy lessons?’ with a very young child? If yes, did you find it effective?
I want to start introducing some phonics to an 11 month old. I intend to use the book as it looks quite uncluttered compared to other phonic primers such as ‘Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons’ and 'Phonics Pathways’. Here are some sample pages (the 1st two lessons in the book) found on their website:
My intention is to read few pages of the book as part of our daily read-aloud sessions - a way of introducing the child to letters, their sounds, and their word families. And I’ve learnt that the book contains stories as well, so I intend to use it as a storybook too.
I’ve been using LR, we’ve completed the 2 semesters twice, and we’re now on the 3rd round. My intention is to keep that going, but find a way of incorporating some phonics too. Dr Jones has been emphasizing the letter-sound, number-digit priority, and I want to take that seriously.
My major concern with most books had been a large-enough font size plus less cluttering on the pages, especially for a very young child. But this book seems not to have these problems (at least for the sample pages above. I do not know for subsequent pages). Would anyone recommend the book? Thank you for your responses.
I much prefer this book to the 100 easy lessons book. We have almost finished the 2 free lessons I downloaded, using the iPad and zoom makes them very very baby friendly. My son had no trouble actually doing these lessons but he is older. He really enjoys them and the pictures being consistent really help his memory. I will buy it soon. My son is older so we are working through it on a move along only when confident with those current sounds basis. Repetition is key for phonics.
I think teaching my toddlers may have it…someone does! But not many brillkids parents seem to have experience with it. Will be good if you get a response about the rest of the book.
Thank you so much for your response. I’m very grateful.
I saw this photo comparing the book with 100 Easy Lessons and Phonic Pathways. Please click the 2nd photo under customer images at http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/0913063029/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_2?ie=UTF8&index=2 .
Roll the button over the image to see the notes. The book on the top of the page is Phonics Pathways, the book on the bottom left is 20 Easy Lessons, and book on the bottom right is 100 Easy Lessons.
And the 3rd photo under customer images still on that web page compares 100 Easy Lessons with 20 Easy Lessons.
I wanted to get 20 Easy Lessons as it looks very baby-friendly. And when we have finished with it, we could move to Phonics Pathways, Remedial Reading Drills by Kirk-Hegge, or the Flesch word list. For now, I need a book with large-enough font size for a very young child, and this book seems to do the job. But please would anyone else recommend it? Thank you for your responses.
have you done tha little reader twice? and the baby is not reading yet?.. I had the hope that after goign trough the program they would be reading…
well for phonics I found in this forum this web: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/alphablocks/games/alphablocks-games/
I haven´t tried it on the baby but my 3 and 20 months kids love it!!! and are in fact piking it up really well, they have only been a week with the program and 6 months with little reader…I´m a lete mom in early learning
Couldn’t let this go without commenting. In that case, try speeding it up! Choose the “Sound It Out Quickly” or “Let Me Sound It Out” setting. And try the quiz (different every time you open it up) if he thinks he has a certain rule mastered. If he does, then go ahead, move on!
I understand that different things will appeal to different people, but I just wanted to make sure that this free resource is not being passed over due to a failure to understand how it works.
He recognises words from the program. And he’s less than a year old, so is not speaking a lot yet. I wish he could, so I could gauge how much he’s absorbed.
My desire to start some phonics was because Dr Jones keeps emphasizing the letter-sound, number-digit priority, and his logic makes a lot of sense to me. In fact his early reading program, Threshold to Reading, focuses on teaching babies how to map sounds to letters. He says that once a child can do that, reading becomes easy, as most words in English are mostly phonetic.
So in addition to LR, I want to add some phonics, as I have learnt that not all babies are able to intuit phonics naturally even after seeing lots of sight words. Most do, but maybe not all. I don’t know for my son yet as he’s not even saying a lot of words yet, so I wanted to cover all my bases by adding phonics.
We’ve had good success with readingeggs with both of my kids.One of the moms on this site was showing a 50% off sale this week on her blog. That makes it only 30 something USD for the year.
Thank you so much DadDude. We’ll try Reading Bear with ‘Sound It Out Quickly’ settings tomorrow.
But my question still remains - would you recommend the book in question (as least based on the sample pages above)? I want to use as part of our daily read-aloud sessions and at the same time use it to reinforce the phonics he will learn from Reading Bear. Do you think it will help?
Anyone else who has used the book, please did you find it useful? Was it worth the purchase? Thank for your responses.
Thank you for suggesting Reading Eggs. How old were your kids when you used it? Do you think a child of less than a year would find it engaging? He’s quite used to rapid flashing on LR, so I don’t know…
There is this FREE excellent phonics primer –Remedial Reading Drill by Hegge and Kirk, (http://www.donpotter.net/pdf/remedial_reading_drills.pdf) which would be my first choice book in teaching phonics, but the print is quite small for a very young child. Hence my question about the book ’Teach your child to read in 20 Easy Lessons.’
For reading eggs I would say sometime after 2. Before 2 we did lots of LR, preschool prep company DVDs, Leap frog’s The letter factory and Talking word factory, Readingbear.org and Starfall.com.
The book we found that worked well was “The Ordinary Parent’s guide to teaching reading”. It has short scripted lessons that advance you from the very beginnings of reading to third grade level. We always just skip the first half of the book that teaches letter sounds.
Happy to make you laugh!!! it is hard to write in English for me, and you have add the little hands all over the mouse… makes it really challenging. My kids still aren´t reading anything fom little reader… I have started the baby as well, but…I´m losing hope…
The FREE book ‘Remedial Reading Drills’ by Hegge and Kirk (link in my post above) provides a very solid set of phonetically grouped words. It is a very good book, and was the book used by Rudolf Flesch to teach his Johnny, as he explained in his best-seller ‘Why Johnny Can’t Read, and What You Can Do About It’. He said on page 24 of why ‘Johnny Can’t Read’:
``Fortunately Dr. Harris hit upon a phonics book that was enough in most cases to bring those unhappy children up to par in their reading. (The Hegge-Kirk drills are what I finally used with Johnny. I’ll come back to that book later on.)’’
So you’ll be using a tried and trusted book that worked with Flesch’s Johnny. And what’s more, it now free, thanks to Don Potter who retyped the book and put it on his Education Pages
Hi Linzy, thanks a lot for your suggestions. I am trying to reduce his overall screen time, hence my search for large-print books rather than software. At some point, we’ll still need to transtion fully to books anyway, and I want to make that transition as easy as possible.
I’ve seen previews of ‘Ordinary Parent’s Guide’, but it seemed it was more suited to older kids than very young children. And compared to 20 Easy Lessons or Phonics Pathways, reading font-size was not as large.
thanks a lot, I hope I can improve with that book, and I have given Reading bear a second chance and they seem to have liked it very much!!! thanks to the creator, they event read a couple of words before hearing them!!! I couldn´t belie it!!..may by I´m wrong to think that all the starfall, little reader and other stuff I have been trying does work…
We are definitely keeping up with phonics and all the rest…
Just when you are about to give up… :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: AREN´T THEY LITTLE ANGLES?
Thanks, Mandabplus3 for your response. I’ll get the book. And thanks for the idea about zooming the book on ipad. Currently, I’m creating powerpoint slides based on ‘Remedial Reading Drills’; each slide shows one large-print word, say ‘cat’, the other slide ‘mat’, and so on. Arrows move under the words, as in LR.
Msocorro, in addition to ‘Remedial Reading Drills’, Don Potter’s education pages (http://www.donpotter.net/education_pages/) contains loads of other free phonics books you could download and print. Click on the link, then go to ‘Reading Instruction: Theory & Practice’. You’ll find the books under ‘Download Free Phonics Programs’. For example, you’ll find:
it’s bound to be useful enough to warrant the price.