Review: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

I'm planning on doing a series of blogs on literacy to promote  My Campaign for Woman's Literacy  I still haven't figured out how to make links look like  links in this blog so that is why the tacky purple.  


Its been a few years since I taught either of my children to read but somethings are burned into my memory.  I started off with Sing Spell Read and Write, tried Bob books, Dr. Seuse, a few things of my own devising, none of which worked. One day when I was wishing to Mindy  that I wanted to help her out in the ministries cafe.  She leaned over in a sing song voice whispered in my ear "I'll teach your child to read if you come in and help me."  I was so desperate I jumped at the chance.  You know what is so amazing is 4 years later after Sweet Potato had been reading and reading words well, she was tested by her nuro therapist. Much to the therapists amazement Sweet Potato could read words at a 6th grade lvl but shouldn't be able too since her short term memory only held 3-4 bits of information, you need 5-6 to be able to read well.  


Look at what dedication on Mindy's part and prayer on mine can do :-)

Mindy pulled out her handy dandy Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and proceeded to train my daughter to read. She also taught me how to use to book. Now I had picked up this books at least 5 times but it totally mystified me. Why are there lines over letters? Why are their arrows under letters? It looked like a mess. What I had never bothered to do was read the introduction that explains exactly how the system works. DOH!

One thing Mindy taught me was to only do it for 15 minutes at a time.  Yes the lessons are supposed to be timed for a 15 minute block, but lets face it I had a child with audio processing issues, Strabismus and visual processing issues.  At the time her right eye was being used at like 20% and the glasses she wore blurred her left eye. She had a lot of road blocks to overcome.  So if we only got 3 parts of the lesson done in 15 minutes we quit. (well some days she persisted because I bribed her with treats).
So I had to learn to let go of 1 lesson per day and face reality my child may need 1 lesson per week.  That was harder than I thought it would be.  I wish then I knew what I know now! That kids with these type of non nurotypical behaviors need to see something 400 times before it clicks.  But then I'd have been trying to show it 400 times by showing it to her 10 times for 40 days. 

Another thing that helped Sweet Potato is the fact they had 2 a's one with a line over the top and another that was all plain... One thing they do not teach right away is the names of the letters.  I want to  know who thought it was a good idea to name these letters does H sound like aech? no it sounds like huh. The book is correct in thinking teaching the names just confuses the child.

I saw this first hand when I had the opportunity to teach Little Miss Sunshine to read. She had never learned the alphabet names. It was no trouble to teach her the short and long sounds for the letters.

As a side note, she really struggled with blending, since Chinese is a pictorial language blending was not a concept she understood. A quick trip down Dick and Jane lane really helped.  Just in case you don't know Dick and Jane teach whole word reading, and was a perfect bridge to her ability to sound out.   Notice how the beauty of home schooling is you can tailor the work to the child.  We were 5 weeks into 100 EZ lessons and still on lesson 3 when I brought out Dick and Jane.  One week in Dick and Jane with EZ on the side and she had an epiphany over the word "see"

100 EZ lessons is a training tool. Did my kids love it? NO! Did it teach them to read  YES! Sweet Potatoes  ability to parse words is amazing. Al-tho she still struggles with comprehension, it all goes back to "How much can her short term memory hold?"  It was an easy book to use and teaches in a systematic way.  I did find I had to supplement vowels with Little Miss Sunshine as she still rushes through the work. Both of my children find pleasure in reading. Sweet Potato loves books of facts and biographies of real people, where as Little Miss Sunshine prefers mysteries and silly novels.

I have decided to do a My Campaign for Women's Literacy as a memorial to the fact My daughter can read!  As I worked on reading with Sweet Potato, I often used to think if she was in India, she would be that girl that proves the belief "its pointless to teach girls."  Her and my struggle over her reading was a long and arduous road.   So click on my link and donate a few dollars :-)  https://www.mygfa.org/gardenforsara/
and help us reach a woman who never had the opportunity to learn to read.

Reminiscing, My parents are cool...

Yesterday I was reading an article by the daughter of a leading feminist of our time.  It made me think back to a conversation I had with my dad one fall day when I was in my teens.  I was spouting the latest thing in Feminism. I think I was singing  a perfume commercial remember that one??  I can bring home the bacon... fry it up  in a pan... and never, never let you forget your a man.. cause I'm a women.  Even tho I was quite the tom boy.  I was the anything HE can do, I can do better, type girl. My dad challenged me with a statement, some thing along the line that; Feminism has done as much to hurt the cause of women as much as it has helped them, in fact it may make things worse for women in the long run.

Fast forward to about 10 years ago... it's raining, my newly adopted 2 year old is melting down in the grocery store. The store doors are not opening when you step on the mats and you have to open the door inward. I'm hanging on to a heavy awkward paper bag of bare necessities for dinner,  since I had to abandon my cart due to child's meltdown. All I wanted to do is run home and hide.

A 30 something man is smugly waiting for me to exit the building. Can I open the door, hold on to my groceries and child who is out of control. Well after 3 minutes I managed to open the door and the man said "Thanks for opening the door" as he slips past me.  I was horrified, to my chagrin I thought back to all those times I said to men who opened my door for me "I can do it myself!" Here I obviously needed help yet he waited... why because young ladies like myself had insulted manly chivalrous acts in the past.  I totally deserved his treatment of me. Even if he had pushed the door open I would have had an easier time of it but he waited to watch my humiliation of dropping my groceries and loosing the grasp of my child.

This turns my thoughts to a post I saw on facebook in response to a plea for literacy for women in Asia.  The persons point was if we educate women we take jobs away from men. I remember my mom stressing I needed to go to college so IF I didn't want to get married I didn't have too... IF my husband was a poor provider, became disabled or dead,  I could be the primary wage earner.  IF I wanted to work I could... I could be the captain of my "Employment Ship." Now I'm totally content to stay at home with my children. It's not like, I'm not working. To replace my services to our family would run in the 90k range per year, or so says a book my sister in law sent me.  :-) So I know I'm contributing to the family in a very real way.  

I firmly believe in the LITERACY PROGRAM at GFA. I really feel educating the mother helps the sons and daughters be more educated. A more educated population, hopefully makes better choices in the long run. (I can't ever forget the viewpoint of our driver in India who firmly believed cleft pallets were due to the baby being born during the full moon.) When I think of how widows are seen as a curse on many Asian societies, giving them tools is essential for survival and the success of their children. Is it feminism to believe in the education of women? I suppose on some level it is. I think that turning women into men is an extreme form of feminism.  I can see how men and woman have hugely different strengths and weaknesses. As Rocky says "I got gaps she's got gaps together we ain't got no gaps."

I sometimes worry about our society where fathers have become unnecessary.  Not around here!!! Who would put the kiddos to bed at night????  So here is a big Thank You Dad! for challenging me to think outside the box society was building around me. Not to mention a Huge Thank You to Mom! for helping me to look to my future, you didn't let me grow up ignorant.