Homeschool World Forum

Another thumbs up for Alpha Phonics. We like it better than Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons because Alpha Phonics has no pictures. With the pictures in 100 Easy Lessons, my daughter was distracted & just wanted to tell stories about the pictures rather than read any words. Alpha Phonics is the best bet for us & is worth looking in to.

We cover the pictures in 100 Easy Lessons until my son has read the story. He loves the suspense. And, he gets to analyze the picture to determine what point in the story it depicts or if it even matches, in his opinion. Works for us!

The best reading program is the one that works. Not all children can learn to read using the phonics method. If your child isn't learning using phonics, then try the sight-word approach. That's the benefit of homeschooling. We can vary our teaching methods to meet the needs of the child!

Phonics is currently VERY popular. But it isn't the only way.

"How to teach your Baby to read" by Glenn Doman and Janet Doman is a sight-word first approach to reading. It teaches a large vocabulary of sight words first, the child learns to read an entire book, and then you go back to teach phonics. It really does very well with a lot of children. This book has been sold for half a century. He has taught brain-injured babies to read, using this method. I used it with my firstborn.

I've heard that Sing, Spell, Read, and Write uses both sight word and phonics approaches. It's been a while since I did SSRW, so I don't really remember that part. But I did enjoy using that with my younger two girls.

Good luck, and best wishes for you and your child!

Lorelei
ps: here's the catalog to all the books by Glenn Doman, including kits to use with his reading book, although you can make the flash cards yourself.
http://www.iahp.org/fileadmin/PDFs/GRPcatalog.pdf

I have two important items about reading/phonics.

On my site http://www.improve-Education.org, I have a page called "42: Reading Resources," which explains what happened to reading and lists a half-dozen phonics programs.

I'm just published an article (on another site) titled: NINE READING EXPERTS EXPLAIN THE SAD STATE OF READING. This is an outstanding article, and I hope everyone will read it. I asked nine of the leading people to give a summary of the reading situation today: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/123851

Bruce Deitrick Price

PS If this info is not in the right place, please move it.

Another vote for Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons here. I taught all 4 of my children with it. I did NOT do the writing instruction though. We just did the reading instruction with the pictures.

Don't think that just because it is $20 that it is not as helpful as the $200 programs. Sometimes simple is better...

I work with children who are struggling with their ability to read. Nine times out of ten, if they know their phonic sounds, but are having trouble blending them to from words it is because:

They are pronouncing some of the sounds incorrectly. For example: d is often pronounced as du. So when they try do decode words like daddy they say, "du-a-du-y. This does not effect all children, but it does many. By simply correcting the sounds they are enunciating incorrectly most take off reading rapidly.

Here is a free video that explains more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dlCPVeWtIk