Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Elaine Bruner, Phyllis Haddox, Siegfried Engelmann (1983, Paperback)

My wife and I have nine children ages 23 down to six (writing this review in 2007). I am now on lesson #73 with the last two children. Over the last 18 years, I have had the privilege to teach every one of my children to read, using this simple yet profoundly efffective book. We wore out 3 copies! Each daily lesson takes about 10 minutes in the beginning, increasing to about 20 minutes per day at the end. After 100 lessons, each of my children were reading at least at a strong second/third grade level. Once you teach a child to love reading, you have given them the greatest educational gift possible. I know of no better way to instill a love for reading than to have mom or dad teach it. Your greatest challenge after this book will be to keep your child supplied with good books (check out sonlight.com for tons of great titles for all ages). You don't need any special skills to use 100 Easy Lessons, everything is completely scripted for you. I strongly recommend this book for anyone with a child ready to learn to read. There is no experience quite like watching the world of reading come alive for a child, especially your own.

My son is (...) very bright. He had letter recognition and understood most of the letter sounds before we started this book (since he was about [quite young]), so this method gave me a format to teach him. When he kept insisting to learn how to read and began sounding out words on his own, often incorrectly, I knew it was time to start a program.

Now he's so excited that he's learning how to read... he loves reading lesson time! For him, the pace is slow, and repeatative, but I'm able to modify. We're doing two to three lessons every day. I've caught him picking out letter sounds in every day life: a sign at the grocery store, a word on a magazine etc..

This is a perfect method for the child who is ready to launch into reading. After establishing the basics this book offers, then you can go onto more complex methods.

I strongly suggest simply reading to your child often. The method in this book will teach the fundamentals, but only enjoying stories will foster the love of reading.

This book was recommended to me book by a mom who taught her son to read the summer before he started Kindergarten. Her son went into Kindergarten reading at a 2nd grade level! I picked up this book for my son who was having difficulty with the reading lessons they taught at school. By the end of Kindergarten he still couldn't read. So over the summer before 1st grade, I did one lesson a day with him for 3 months. It works! He caught onto the the lessons and was reading at a 2nd grade level going into 1st grade. It is a little slow going at first, but I feel it's a necessary step. The repeating of sounds is important to retain what you learn and not forget. I highly recommend this book. I'm currently working with my youngest son now, and he's picking it up just as easily as my older son did years ago. I must also add that both my boys have had a language delay - and that hasn't hindered us one bit. In fact, I think it's significantly helped their language and comprehension skills. All you need is the book, a pencil and some paper - and your child will be reading before you know it.

This is a wonderful book for teaching beginning reading skills. The instructions for the parent are easy to follow and well thought out.

This book makes reading easy and fun. My 4 year old is learning to read and we are on Lesson 9! He looks forward to the lessons and I look forward to spending time with him. It is only about 15 minutes each day so your child does not get bored or frustrated!

This is a great way to teach a child to read. Easy lessons. I used this to teach my son to read. He needed a different approach and this book was just perfect.

My mom has now successfully taken her six children through this book. It does an excellent job in slowy but steadily increasing the difficulty level. It is so gradual, however, that it seems in the blink of an eye the child is reading full-blown stories and you didn't even realize how far he'd come! This is an easy, clear cirriculum. The stories and letters are all in large, clear print, and the child finds delight in reading each story so he can look at the concealed picture that goes with it! An excellent method for teaching your child to read!

I bought this book thinking it would help me with my five year old son who wants to learn how to read but does not have the stamina for a full phonics program. It is very little to none lesson planning and he gets so excited with each word he sounds out that we are so hugged up by the end of the lesson. It is great. He is really grasping the lessons well and they are spread out in about a 20 minut lesson a day, which is perfect. Also teaches them to write the sounds. Love it! Love it!

I am a teacher who has been using this method to teach preschoolers, kindergartners, and first graders to read. There is no better or faster way to teach reading. In the largest educational experiment ever undertaken by the U.S. Dept. of Education, this method was conclusively proven to be the best method for teaching reading. It was entitled the Direct Instruction model in Project Follow Through--a 10-year, billion-dollar project.

I used this method to teach my 30-year old son (who is now a high school English teacher) to read. He learned to read when he was 2 years old. My now 4-year-old granddaughter is reading close to a 4th-grade level---having been taught with this method. I have used this method to teach English-language-learners to both speak and read English as well as teach their own children to read English. One Vietnamese woman whom I was teaching to speak English taught her 3-year-old son to read fluently. Another Hispanic English-language-learning mom in my class taught her pre-schooler using this method. I then taught his kindergarten teacher how to use this method. By the end of that student's kindergarten year, he was reading at about a 4th-grade level.

For the past 6 years, I have been teaching a class of moms with their beginning readers. This, of course, is my textbook. Each mom works one-on-one with her own child. The kids make amazing progress! I have also taught English-second-language adults to use this method with their children. It has been similarly successful for them. It is not difficult to use.

I went in search of this book after reading many reviews on other blogs about how good it is. I couldn't quite understand how it worked and what the "magic bullet" was, but after only 7 lessons with my four year old, she is really starting to read! She brought me one of her books the other day and although it took us about 10 minutes to get through it, she sounded out most every word and actually READ the book!! I was blown away!
It is very tempting to skim over lessons as some seemed a bit pointless. After finishing a few lessons I wanted to just keep going as it only takes about 8 minutes to do a lesson, but the author urges you to skip nothing and to only do one lesson per day. I am hooked and I am seeing the results more and more each day.
I highly recommend this book!!

This is the best book out there to teach your kids to read! I can not say enough about it. It will be used with everyone of my kids! It is so easy to use and is fun for the kids and they love to learn with this book. I have recommend this book to all my friends and they loved it also! The only thing I would recommend is that you get the book spiral bond!

I really cannot recommend this book highly enough. My son wanted to learn to read, but was having trouble going from making the letter sounds to putting them together to form words. This book changed that, and made it fun for him. The lessons are short, and fairly easy, and the way it teaches the sounds and writing, and building upon past lessons, just plain makes sense, and better yet, it works.

My son was able to do a lesson after breakfast and a lesson after dinner, so it only took about a month and a half to get through the entire program, but even if you can only do one a day, it would take just a little over three months.

This book was worth every penny, and I can't wait to try it with our daughter in a few years.

Excellent book! Easy to use, no preparation necessary, my daughter was 3, learned to read and loves it still, 3 years later. Now that I am teaching my son, theres no other choice but this! It gives a full transition from phonetic to regular reading, learning the names of the letters and everything else you want in a reading program. In 3 months they make a full transition from knowing nothing to reading any book or sign they want, and writing, as well.
I recommend it to every mom, nanny, preschool teacher and homeschooler.

This is an awesome book for teaching your child to read. I used it for one of my children, who, then, at 5 taught her younger sister, 3, how to read. We were recently approached by a Mom going through a tough time and my daughters wanted to teach her son to read, so guess which book we had to get? This is easy to use and makes it easy to learn to read. I highly recommend it.

I started asking all the moms I knew what they used to teach their kids to read, and every mom I talked to mentioned this book! I couldn't believe the consensus, but then I got the book. I loved the easy to read script for me as a parent. It helped me to focus on not saying too much and wearing my kid out! I had to stick to the script. My daughter did great with the method of pointing her finger and running it along the line under the letters. She also loved the comprehension questions because I would always hurry to cover the picture. I found she could read the stories in this book much better than the easy readers like, "Mat sat. Mat sat on the hat." and so forth. We loved the short 20 minutes or less format. From time to time even my 3 year old would chime in to repeat sounds and things. Excellent book from front to back!

I really do like this book. It is very repetitive, which is what is needed for the younger reader. I had a couple friends tell me about this book and how well it worked and how much they liked it. I was very happy to be able to find it on ebay. Thank you, I am very pleased.

I used this book with my oldest son and although it may LOOK complicated at first glance, it really isn't at all! It was easy to use, some lessons were maybe too easy and we skipped a few (he knew what sound B makes for instance). Although it starts out very simple and easy, it gradually builds in length of lesson, and "difficulty", but since the change is gradual, the child barely notices. If you can read, then you can teach your child to read with this book in just 10-20 minuets a day. It really is that easy.
The only reason this book gets a good instead of great from me, is because I found The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading; which is along the same lines, only has double the lessons and works up into more difficult words and reading levels. So, I'll be listing my copy for sale here very soon, since I'll be using the other one with my younger child.

The techniques are great and helped me teach. First however I had to study the introduction (about 20 pages?) before I got the point. Each lesson tells you what to say but before you can jump in, you should read the lesson first. Otherwise you will lose your child's interest quickly while you try to figure it out. It teaches you how to teach and you have to do your homework to work it properly. The great thing is you can use the techniques to teach any book. My child has done about ten lessons and loves it.

I am a teacher in an overcrowded, under-supplied public school. Almost all of my kids are from non-English speaking homes, or are special needs, stuck in a regular classroom. The program that the school offers does not always work, so in a desperate attempt, I bought this. My sister has used it for her daughter, and loved it. I have an aide for a half hour a day use the program on a couple kids. So far so good.

So far so great! Important to really read through the discussion of how to read through the book. Already seeing wonderful results in only 3 weeks time.

A home schooler at our church recommended this book to us. We borrowed her copy for our first child. She learned to read in about 4 months. She's in kindergarten and reading at grade level 2.5. Needless to say, we bought our own copy for our second daughter.

An excellent tool to begin your child reading. Simple and easy for the child to learn to sound out words by using their hands under the words. Valuable in building a child's self esteem, allowing him to feel as though he is accomplishing something.

This book is awesome. This method of teaching totally makes sense. It tells the parent exactly what to do and how to teach using a step by step method. My six year old was reading in two weeks (she already knew a lot of sounds, etc.) and my 4 year old is learning slowly but surely. I would definately recommend this book for any parent that wants to get a head start with their young child on reading or just help their older child that is struggling to understand reading.