Hi there! I am looking for a good learn to read program for my 4 and 5 year olds ( a boy and a girl). I tried using a program with my 5 year old and I fear that I may have deterred him from enjoying reading. Ack! I am looking for something that is fun and exciting, can move them along at a fast pace and something that won't take me an hour and a half per day to do. While I would love to be able to do that, the reality is I have older students who need quite a bit of teaching as well and only so many hours in the day. Thanks in advance! Dana
Honestly, I didn't do much in the way of "teaching" reading. When my kids were that age, I read to them a lot. I did get a Spectrum Reading Workbook, which is fairly cheap. But so much they pick up almost on their own. Also, there's some excellent resources on-line for free (or very cheap!)
For that age, I've liked www.starfall.com. I've seen a lot of recommendations for ABCmouse and for LeapFrog videos.
I don't think there are any shortcuts to teaching reading. They need hours and hours and hours of exposure to you reading to them. And hour and hours and hours of time to practice reading to you. Sure, there are some tricks to learning the sounds, learning their sight words, etc...but when it comes to reading, you really need to dig in and invest the time. Read to them. Slow down and listen to them read. Every day. Three times a day if you can swing it. It's time well invested. It's the most important skill we teach our kids. It's by far more important than anything you're teaching older kids. If your older kids struggle with reading...back up and work with them on reading before you move on to anything else. Make the older kids part of the reading group with the younger kids. Read together.
We used things like starfall, and dollar store phonics/letter recognition books. She had learned most of her letters and sounds that way. I recently tried Reading Eggs for my DD. She is doing really well and enjoys it. I found that I didn't have a ton of time to sit and drill things or do a lot of cut and paste prep like the "All about Reading" program required. Reading Eggs has helped take her to the next level. Now we are reading BOB books, and just trying to practice a lot. She can read a full sentence now and sound things out, but it still takes a lot of effort.
I love Progressive Phonics and it is free. I should add that I used to think... "free? can't be that great!" and did not try it for a long time. But once I did (I have a fair number of children) I thought it was wonderful! I still think it is great. I also like to add in fun things like Leap Frog videos and the Star Fall app and website.
I used a mix of Reading Eggs, the old Colored hooked on Phonics (left over from my older kids) and Explode the code. My 6 year old went from not being able to read at all at the beginning of the year to reading sentences and simple books. My 5 year old is reading fairly well with no formal training at all and only using Reading Eggs.
