Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My daughter loved this book (The Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons). She is currently in kidergarten and reading on a late second to early third grade level. We used this book during her preschool years. I taught my daughter to read using "The Reading Lesson", but I used Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons to teach my first child. Both books use a similar approach. I believe that "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" gives the teacher (parent) a stronger foundation in teaching reading, and I used some of the tools I had gained from experiencing that method when teaching my daughter. The strength of "The Reading Lesson" is it's child-friendly appearance and approach. "Teach Your Child to Read..." is fully scripted and has the parent's script and child's assignments jammed together. My son hated it after a while. "The Reading Lesson" is not quite as strong of a program, but the pages are easy and fun for a child to look at. My daughter always wanted to do "just one more" page. Once we got to lesson 12 or 13 her reading started taking off. We actually didn't finish the book because she had gained enough tools to continue learning to read on her own. The cover is a little misleading when it says "teach your child to read in 20 easy lessons". "Lesson" here is more like a unit. Each "lesson" may be 10-15 pages long, and is not designed to be completed in a day. With young children you would probably only do one page a day, where you might do several with older/highly motivated children. You and your child determine the pacing of the lessons. With "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" each of the 100 lessons is intended to be taught in one day. "The Reading Lesson" is more flexible, "Teaching Your Child to Read..." is more scripted and rigid. In "The Reading Lesson" one days lesson might be practicing sounds, another day practicing words, another day reading a story, some days a combination. In "Teach Your Child to Read..." each day's lesson follows a similar format which includes sound practice, blending practice, word reading, story reading, and sounds writing practice. I believe the integrated writing practice is one of the strengths of the this approach. With "The Reading Lesson" system you can order additional books that include writing practice, as well as computer software. When you visit the website for "The Reading Lesson" you can download the first two lessons for free. If you email the company they will send you a download for the third lesson as well. We did this to "test drive" the book before buying it. The first three lessons are representative of the rest of the book, but later lessons have more stories. In fact, lesson 20 is entirely stories. Through the company's website you can also download free certificates of completion for each lesson. These were very motivating for my daughter. In conclusion, I feel that both methods can be successfully used to teach children to read. "Teaching Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" was stronger in it's methodology, and I'm glad I gained some experience teaching reading with that method, but it was not child friendly for my son. If I can't get my child to use it without whining and crying, it's not much use no matter how strong of a foundation it builds. "The Reading Lesson" uses a similar approach, but is much more fun for children. My daughter really looked forward to her reading lesson time, and she loved to call relatives on the phone and read stories to them. This is the book I would recommend to most parents, especially of reluctant readers.