The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading [Paperback]

I (homeschooling mom) was very skeptical when I first received the book: No pictures! Then we (my 6-year old twins and I) started. And we loved it! We are half way through the book, and both kids read fluently. In their free time they pick up other books or anything else readable that they can find.

The (231) daily lessons are very well structured, take about 10-15 minutes each, and provide excellent in-text directions for the teacher, so there is no preparation time. And I learned that because there are no pictures, the focus is on decoding the letters and applying the phonics rules without any distraction.

Optional activities/games are fun to choose from. I recommend getting the pre-printed index cards that go along with the lessons and games (directly from Peace Hill Press, about $5.00).

The book ends with "Reading a Really Long and Silly Word": supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Imagine your new reader to read that properly without problems, and YOU helped them to get there.

This is everything a homeschooling parent could be looking for in a reading program and more. After only a few days of using this book with my 7 and 5 year old boys, I am seeing amazing results and am very happy with my decision to buy it. No more guesswork on how to teach certain concepts; the writers actually tell you what to say and how to say it. They also suggest optional games and songs to further engage kids and reinforce concepts, making this program all the more fun and thorough. My only suggestion for improvement would be to have the teaching words typed in a slightly larger print/font (that was something I really appreciated about "Phonics Pathways", the other reading program I highly recommend). Bravo, Jessie Wise, on another job well-done and our children thank you for it!

After completing 89 lessons in this book, my daughter and I are calling it quits. We've worked on it on and off for over a year (she's 5 now), and for the sake of preserving a love of reading, have decided to shelve it. This book has been helpful in a number of ways; it is great for giving a parent the sense that they can indeed teach their own children, that reading is easy, and laying out a path for doing so. I have found it useful as a reference book, i.e. to show me what to introduce, remind me what the actual "rules" are, and give me direction for our lessons. However, there have been some significant problems.

1) The layout of the pages is daunting for a child. There are lots of words, no pictures, nothing to visually set apart the words that the child reads except that they're a bit larger. It seems overwhelming and very un-child-friendly.

2) The practice stories often make no sense, and fail to capture my daughter's interest at all. An example from today: "The black snake did wish that he had a snack of mice. The snake did scan the grass to prey on mice. The grey mice sat on the rock and ate nuts. The snake came to the rock. Hey! The mice fled. They hid in holes. The snake will have no snack this day." Awkward wording, nothing particularly interesting about that, no pictures. The optional follow-up activity is to illustrate this story and label the items.

3) The practice sentences are way too long, and overwhelm new readers. For example, the child has just been introduced to the "fl" blend (lesson 50), and reads the sentence, "Ducks in flocks flit and flap on the flat pond." This sentence is too long, has onomotopeic words with which they may not be familiar (flit), and makes them use the new rule 4 times!! Very frustrating for a child struggling to learn a new rule. This was one of 6 new blends introduced in this one lesson.

4) Exceptions are often introduced before rules. For example, today we learned that the vowel pair "ea" can sometimes make the long-a sound, as in great, break, steak. Okay, so my daughter goes to read "please", and says, "place". Of course! She's never been taught that "ea" USUALLY says the long-E sound. The old "when two vowels go walking" would have been helpful to learn first, not later. Also, today she learned that "ey" can say the long-A sound. So "smiley" is smilay until a later lesson... you get the picture. This has come up more than once.

5) Very rigid rules, introduced in a logical, but not necessarily helpful, order. Much more actual reading could be possible much sooner if they'd go ahead and introduce some of the more helpful rules out of sequence.

6) It would be helpful to introduce a number of sight words much earlier. Kids learn sight words very quickly, and a few of them up front can make many more books accessible.

If your child is VERY motivated to learn to read, I do think that this book will work. My 3-year-old son has this drive, and the first few lessons (we skip the letter-learning part) have taught him the basics of CVC words. But he would learn that just as easily if I just stuck some magnets on a board. My daughter is very global in her thinking, and is more interested in the content of stories than in mastering reading technique, and this book sends her running for cover. Honestly, I dread it, too. Fortunately she is now at the point where she can read basic easy readers, so we're going to drop this book, use it as a reference tool only, and continue with McGuffey Readers, Bob books, and everything on the library's easy reader shelf. For my other 3 kiddos, I'll be investigating other options.