Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
 The funnest program available! kids read lots of fun words right away, no guessing, no sightwords! June 18, 2008
Harmony (Spanish Fork, UT)
31 out of 31 found this review helpful
The program presented in this book is pure phonics just like in the perennial favorite "Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons" and it works. The backbone of the program is a fun little game called blocks that motivates kids to get through the early stages of learning to read. The author chooses to start with fun words like up, cup, and cat whereas most programs start with am, sam, and see. Phonics is nothing new, but the reason this book is so useful is the wealth of knowledge it gives parents on the science of teaching a child to read. After reading the book, all you need in order to sit down and teach your child to read is the list of 32 steps to remind you what order to proceed in and a little creativity about how to make it fun. There are not day to day lesson plans, because for a young child that isn't the most effective teaching method. Essentially the child needs to practice word blending, letter sound association, and left-to-right decoding. Ledson explains how to make these activities part of your daily routine. Lots of examples are given on how to make learning to read into games which you could copy directly, or even better if you are creative, you can make up the games as you go along to fit your child's unique interests. In addition to games, the author suggests using puppets as fellow learners to help motivate and captivate children and that worked really well for us. A puppet can encourage a child to try again ten times as often as a parent and the kids still giggle. In our public school, kindergartners are asked to memorize 100 sight words all about 3 letters long. That is a lot of hard miserable work, my child was in tears when she got the list the last month of preschool. The next week we started this program and it was easy and fun, no more tears. She only had to memorize 54 sounds, mostly one letter long and they were part of a game! Then she was able to start reading real books and enjoy it.
How fast does it work?
My daughter completed steps 1-32 (kindergarten) in 3 weeks at age 5 1/2, spending an hour a day playing games with me(she knew half the alphabet when she started). In three more months she completed the next level (first grade) spending 20 minutes a day. In two more months she had read her first 100 books. I never taught her sight words, but about half way through the second level she started kindergarten. She passed off the entire list of 100 sight words on the first day of school using phonics--only, struggling on "been" and "said". I had a friend who teaches at another school say she heard teachers talking about my daughter's amazing reading ability.
My son, age 4, needed lots of practice decoding left to right. We did about 5 minutes a day several times a week for over a year and he still was unsure, it was just games though, so he didn't get frustrated or feel dumb. Left to right was never destined to be easy for him, the games we played served as therapy to rewire his brain. He would certainly have been labeled dyslexic (like three generations of my family before him) if not taught to read by the phonic reading method. My son took about a year to finish the first 32 steps. His kindergarten teacher commented that although he wasn't "reading" like a few of her other students that he showed amazing confidence in sounding out new words, better than the students who were reading. Also, he was writing up a storm! (another fringe benefit of phonic reading instruction.)
I started my third child at age 2 on the 32 steps. She went through the first 32 steps in the course of a school year. She learned left to right reading automatically with no problem! We would spend time working on it for about 5 minutes at a time once a week and the rest of the learning was just conversations, refrigerator magnets, playdough letters, letters on cereal boxes, etc.
Pros of this method
*Don't have to memorize a single sight word (my kids can't/won't do that).
*Kids never think of learning to read as any more difficult than learning the alphabet song.
*Kids don't develop dyslexia (disordered reading). I come from a family where about half of the people in three generations suffer from an intense difficulty in learning how to read (aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, nieces, nephews, and so on). As a child, four of the five children in my family received intensive phonic reading therapy after learning to read proved unsuccessful. Then we moved to a new state where they didn't do this for struggling readers. The fifth child was labeled dyslexic and put in special education. (I taught him to read in the eighth grade and he is now a history major at a prestigious university, a very reading intensive field of study.)
*This method helped me spot reading problems that had been invisible with my daughter while she tried whole word method unsuccessfully and tearfully in the last several months of preschool.
*When kids graduate from this program they don't have to read boring repetitive books that insult their intelligence. Repetitive books are whole-word method, my kids can really read and aren't limited to books with 30 or less words.
*I've noticed that this method of reading instruction makes WRITING easier for kids. My kids write all the time, they don't think about it, it is just second nature because if they know how a word SOUNDS, they can write it and if they have read it a few times in a book, they spell it correctly too. This puts them miles ahead in school.
Cons of this method
*this method requires a lot of thought and preparation from parents.
*you use treats and candy to get them started, which have to be weaned away eventually.
*because it is easy, it is SOOOO tempting to rush a child through the program too fast, keep telling yourself "easy and fun, don't push too fast". The first 6-7 steps should take much, much, much longer than the rest.
*the program doesn't have lesson plans. That is because you don't need one, you just say "U" makes this sound "UUUUU" an play games to reinforce it, after reading the book, you know what to incorporate into the games to be successful, however some people see this as a negative.
The second level of this program is sentences. Since my kids were reading so well by then, rather than games, I typed up the sentences in the book and printed them out 6 per page to make a reader. The kids read each "page" in the reader 3 times before moving to the next. This level was very easy to teach and I believe this is what could be expected for most kids. The first 32 steps take more effort, time, and creativity, but are more memorable. My kids still talk about how much fun it was.
The Fun Is A Bonus August 24, 2000
Maureen Horrocks (Fort McMurray, Alberta Canada)
22 out of 23 found this review helpful
This book was great for its clear directions, great ideas and good advice. I was amazed by the complete acuracy of how the suggested activities would take place. Not only will you learn how to teach phonics, but how to instill the fun of learning. On cue, my three year old responded to the "lessons" with giggles, laughter and begged for more. This book is great for anyone that wants to see the joy and delight of any child as they learn to read. The challenge will be to keeping it to only ten minutes a day.
Give them the gift of reading and the sky is the limit!! January 10, 2006
By Grace (St. Louis ,MO)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
If you want a fancy program with alot of pretty colored pictures this may not be for you. If you want to educate yourself and give your children the correct foundation to open their eyes to a life long love of reading this is it!! I am now teaching my 4th child to read using this book and I am here reordering another copy because my first copy is wearing out after using it with the others! My 4th and 5th grade boys are sitting in the living room each reading a 400 page novel as I write this. I have found this solid program has kept us from the pitfalls of "sight words" and has helped them both with speech and spelling. I only used the games the book suggested if my child was either very young or was a little stubborn and needed encouragement! Check this out at your library, read it and you will find it makes sense!
Sidney Ledson taught me to read February 27, 2001
19 out of 24 found this review helpful
I haven't read this exact book but I have read other Ledson books. Sidney taught me to read at the age of three. I highly recommend his methods to everyone. I was able to read at a grade twelve level by grade four as a result of his phonetic teachings. I was spelling at the eighth grade level (the highest level measured) by grade five. In fact, as a result of learning to read by this method I got only one spelling word wrong in my entire school career. I believe that this method had a great deal of effect on my reading comprehension as my sister, who has a higher IQ than me and was taught to read in school had much more difficulty with reading and spelling throughout primary school. Her reading is as good as mine now, but she still can't spell. Phonetic reading techniques also work wonders for foreign language learning. By just learning what sounds letter combinations make in various foreign languages I can read in Africaans, Danish, French and some German. Please use this book and give your child all of the advantages of learning to read the Sidney Ledson way, like my parents did me. They will thank you later.
Highly Recommended March 6, 2002
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I am only 1/3 of the way through the lessons, but already my 3 and 5 year old children are starting to read words. Every day they ask to play the games, especially the "Block Game". Never before have I had my children ask to learn. Highly recommended!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
|
