She is 5 and is eager to learn. We have been working on letter sounds. I just bought 100 EZ lessons, but have not started it yet. I was looking through it and it looks a bit intimidating. I want a phonics approach and I want to make sure I do it right. Thoughts? Suggestions would be appreciated. Karen
Hi Karen, I taught my oldest how to read at 2 1/2 with flash cards. I had seen a story on Dateline NBC or one of those news shows about a professor that was teaching babies to read by basically using flash cards he had made up. He started with big words like refrigerator and alligator. He wrote the words on poster boards with a thick red sharpie. He believed that red caught the babies attention. He was right! I contacted him and bought a copy of his homemade vhs tape. My son memeorized 400 to 500 words when I realized I needed to teach him phonics. So I bought School Zone phonics flash cards and School Zone work books. These were a tremendous help to us, and are a minimal investment. My son was reading on a 4th grade level in 1st grade. It's hard to believe that was 16 years ago! That's when my homeschooling journey began. When I found the School Zone phonics flash cards I also bought everything else they sold: colors, shapes, numbers, opposites, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, ect. My son really loved "playing" flash cards. He was like a sponge taking it all in. http://www.schoolzone.com/best-kids/flash-cards He just graduated with honors last week, and won a scholarship! We are very proud of him!!! Good luck with teaching your daughter to read. Have fun with it! Angie
I know alot of people on here have used 100 EZ Lessons and have had sucess with it, but I found it a little boring for my wiggler! I mostly used cheapy Phonics workbooks for a long time and ds loved them. We also read alot of easy readers, plus I made letter cards and made a game out of putting them together to make words. I made consonants one color and vowels another. I use abc.teach(free online resource) and found a ton of phonics work there. We still use a poster I made about vowels and their jobs.(When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, bossy "r", and silent "e" is a ninja) I have never bought a formal phonics curriculum ,or spelling, or handwriting for that matter, and we have done really great. My kids seem to really like anything they can use a whiteboard with. Mostly just read, read, read, then read some more!
progressive phonics has an approach my 3 year old seems to be enjoying, if your child is having problems with the phonics books just step back to the alphabetti books on the same site ... i'd link it but im pretty sure im still to new to the site... someone suggested it to me on a thread where i was looking for early reading software and such...
We are currently using 100 EZ Lessons. It is on the dry side, which caused me to try something else initially, but it works! We are halfway through now and while my son doesn't love it, it is phonics-based, thorough, and even covers reading comprehension as well. I would recommend that you try it for 3-4 weeks since you already have it and see how your DD responds. I also use some leveled readers to supplement the 100 EZ Lessons. My DS likes the humorous stories in the Now I'm Reading! series. I found them at my local bookstore, but Timberdoodle sells them too (for less than I paid). Also, since my DS loves the computer, we use sites like Starfall too.
thanks everyone! Im going to try the 100EZ for a few weeks and still continue are daily reading together and see what happens. Ive noticed that even though she knows her letter sounds and she knows the vowels...when I have her try to sound out a word she isn't making the connection.
ditto....all three kids learned to use Starfall, and are EXCELLENT readers, and enjoy reading very much. My youngest two taught themselves how to read using Starfall. That's how easy it was! If you've got an eager learner, this is so great b/c it's self-paced. It's FREE, and if you WANT (you don't have two, I did not with my middle & youngest), there is worksheets you can print out to do along with it...that are also FREE. LOVE Starfall for learning to read!
Yes we are HUGE fans of Starfall. Love it. I love that it is free. I am just wondering how long it should take for the average child to pick up sounding out letters to make out a word. Practice, Practice, Practice I suppose right?
Good Luck! I never had any luck teaching any of my guys to read. (Though I'm working with Sully right now.) It was a lot of head banging and frustration on both our parts. I'm hoping to do better with Sully, but he may go to kindergarten at the PS and HS after that. (Same for Finn.)
We practiced 2 letter blends [a-t, i-t, o-n, i-f, b-e, m-e, n,o, w-e, i-n, h-e] She did very well and omg she was really excited LOL. She kept asking me to do 3 letters but I told her next week we needed to practice 2 letters a little bit longer. It's amazing. Watching the connection happen. Total mom moment and she can't wait for dad to come home so she can show him. :love:
testing... www.progressivephonics.com we like it because the child is reading from the start yet its not intimidating hooray i'm allowed to link! i promise not to abuse the privelige... :solemn but proud face goes here:
I started my dd with 100EZ lessons but it was too frustrating for both of us so I used headsprout (the website). Its not free but it does work. Both of my kids have used that program and done well. We do use starfall and my ds isn't as good of a reader as my dd so I have begun another learn to read (he can read and has a great phonics base but is just lazy so I'm going back as a review to see if I can get him more into it now) program CLE and he's really liking it so far (although its pretty easy for him at this point). Good luck. I highly recommend starfall too...my son attends a private school K this year and his teacher uses starfall and their lessons as a regular part of her reading curriculum. My son loves it!
100 easy lessons is more suitable for a younger child, age 2 to 4. At age 5 I would go with a phonics program like Sing, Spell, Read, & Write.
Hi Karen. I bought EZ lessons and put it on a shelf after reading through the parent section. Six months later LOL, I got it back out. We are now on lesson 66 and it has been great for us. I do not follow it word for word by any means, but move through it fairly qucikly based on how he is grasping things. For me, with no homeschooling experience, it was great. I wasn't sure how to approach teaching him and the book made it very clear. We also play around on starfall and have enjoyed BOB books.
