We started working through this book with our 4-year-old boy at the beginning of the Covid lockdown (mid-March) and we just finished Lesson 100 today (mid-August). As others have said, you REALLY need to read the front-matter before you start. The first dozen lessons or so were SO painful that we had to bribe our son to do it... Each Lesson contains 8-9 Tasks, so after he finished each Task, we'd give him a chocolate chip. Yep. We were reduced to bribery. Once we were about halfway through the book, we promised we'd throw him a "Chocolate Party" if he finished. We even started referring to it as the "Chocolate Book" so that he wouldn't come to associate reading with how boring/difficult the book is. We hit a real low once the book switched from the special orthography into normal writing. Lessons were taking over an hour at that point. He'd be crying. We'd be crying. It was tough. But we reminded ourselves the Chocolate Party was coming and we endured. The last 10 lessons went faster since he pretty much knew how to read at that point. Sooo, did it work? Yes. He is a 4.5 year old who can read and is proud that he can read. Would I go through that again? Only if there's another Global Pandemic.

I taught my daughter, Madeleine, how to read by using this system. She wanted badly to read like her big brother. She flew through the lessons, doing two in one day and progressed quickly. She's good at deciphering symbols and recognizing rules, so it worked well for her.

I'm now teaching my son to read this way (we started when he was four, and he's now five. It has taken us about five months to make it through the text--with a few breaks when he was getting too antsy and negative), and though the progress is slower, he's still grabbing all the concepts and despite his bouncy-ness is reading nicely. We're on lesson 88!

If you're interested in doing this, you have to completely buy in to their system. I don't think going half way would be helpful for a child--just confusing. I don't really like the physical feel of the book. It's big, and might be more helpful if the spine could fully open. And the illustrations, though humorous, lack a certain whimsy and taste.

my two cents :)

currently only 3 stars cuz it seems verbose or redundant, but i guess thats 1983 for you.

I think this book would have been better

1) if each Lesson started on a new page
2) if they created a template for each task/skill type since all the wording is the same.
Seems like such a waste of paper and this probably would have helped with point #1 by reducing
verbosity.
3) if they separated the content from the lessons (similar to cuecards but flashcards/tablecards)
this woudl have helped with points #1

It seems like so much information to process even for teh educator.
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My own preference would have been to use IPA-esque formatting for teh educator
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ON THE PLUS SIDE
1) I definitely like the tasked associated with teh picture & sentence reading.
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Haven't been able to try this with teh nephew cuz he keeps saying "NO" each time I try to start lesson one. So i'll change teh rating if it proves to work on him. 3 stars is my personal rating.

I have been using this book with my 5 year old twin girls, and have such mixed feelings about it. We are half way through. Some things I love are the structure, it is scripted and somewhat rigid. That means less work for me in terms of figuring out what to cover. I love how it teaches phonics, which is incredibly lacking in the school system near us. I also like the whole brain approach the book takes. As a neuropsychologist, it's nice to see the integration of writing, sounding out, comprehension and memorization, especially since reading is such a whole brain activity. Making the associations between writing (a parietal lobe function), saying the sounds (temporal lobe function), comprehension (frontal lobe/whole brain) is what good, forgetting resistant memory is all about. I like how the book also takes you through question asking about the picture at the end of the story, focusing the kids on what they might see based on what they read, and then getting them to think about what the characters in the picture might be thinking about (theory of mind, good for autism).

Some things I don't like: the structure. Honestly, sometimes the script is agonizingly boring, and I can't stand that you go through some of the words/stories once, and then have to go back through them again a second time. Plus, my girls are freaking out by that time! Although going back through the story a second time and asking questions is excellent for comprehension.

The biggest thing for me is just managing my own expectations, recognizing when my girls (who are partially deaf anyway) have reached their fatigue point, and letting it go to another day (which is SO hard for me, I want to get things done!).

I've also started switching it up with reading repetitive early readers, like "Dick and Jane" books, and the leveled readers from their kindergarten class. This helps with the boredom/frustration and is good for getting sight words into their long-term memory without doing flashcards. I definitely see progress in my twins. I am hopeful they will be reading independently on some level, any level would satisfy me, by the end of kindergarten.

I wish I had known about it when my son was this age, he struggled to read with the method taught at our neighborhood school - which was, "look at the picture and try to figure out what the word is", totally crazy - and he still struggles, though he has made great progress.

Overall, I think this is one good tool in helping your children really learn to read and sound out unfamiliar words

Reading is not only a critical skill for development, but in many ways it is a superpower to other skills. If you're looking for a structured way to teach your child to read, I HIGHLY recommend this book by Siegfried "Zig" Engelmann, a former professor at the University of Oregon. Zig is best known as the creator of the concept of direct instruction in education. But he and few collaborators created an evidence-based reading approach that builds skills and confidence through a progression that any parent can follow.

How early can you start? Zig recommends 4/5-years-old or a gifted 3.5-year-old. Our personal journey started around age 4 but endured beyond the prescriptive 100 days-in-a-row. It took 14 months in total due to life getting in the way, but we stayed committed to doing the lessons as instructed. And we feel as if we just climbed a metaphorical mountain. In our family we started this when our daughter was 4-years-old and 10 months (or so) but we discovered it was too early for her. We waited a few months and started again around 5-years-old during the spring before she started Kindergarten. We built up some momentum but lost that momentum over the summer. We picked it back up during the Fall while she was in Kindergarten but only completed it on the weekends because she was fatigued from school. Earlier this Spring we started doing the lessons consistently after school, and once going to school was canceled due to the pandemic we were able to do them every day. In hindsight, this was not an ideal strategy. It's best to do these every day because there is a progression to the lessons. But, when our daughter finished lesson #100 today we could see a glorious confidence beam from her eyes.

Lessons learned:
-Do the lessons once your child can recognize words and sounds on a page
-Build a time and place to do the lessons every day for 15 minutes (e.g. 6pm in the dining room)
-As a parent/teacher, read the instructions ahead of time and glance at the pronunciation guide liberally (the book uses phonetic marks to direct you and your child how to pronounce the letters)
-use a reward system but don't over-do it with prizes (we used stickers and the daily reward was that she could have screen time if she completed the lesson, and we created two big surprises at lessons #50 and #100)
-at times our daughter refused, disengaged, pretended to be too tired, and pushed back; but we remained focused
-we worried that our daughter would start to see reading as a chore and not want to read anymore, but as long as we read aloud to her at other times during the day (where she could relax and listen) she was able to enjoy reading and the confidence that came with being able to read sentences
-use the local library extensively to keep reading fun and fresh for read aloud time (we take in multiple grocery bags when we go)

Happy Reading!

My son is not ready to begin reading lessons yet. At the time of this "review" he is 3 years and 3 months old. I can see him being ready to begin in 3 to 6 months, though.

I only wanted to check out this book to read the introduction and instructions. Everything looks good and I think we will probably use this to begin reading instruction if we're ready to start that before we start K. The only issue or confusion I had is that this book claims to be appropriate for children as young as three and a half but there are writing portions in every lesson, from what I could tell. I think most probably any 3 year old that is ready to begin reading still lacks the necessary motor skills to begin writing. I have read that this is especially common in boys, even when they are not early readers. We can reevaluate when we get there, but I imagine I will have to alter the writing tasks to allow for tracing or finger painting or simply skip them altogether.

It worked well for my four year old son: we followed the daily lessons and he went from only knowing letter sounds, to reading a few years above his age level. Also, teaching him to read myself was immensely satisfying. But beware, the process itself, while very effective, is dry and repetitive (read, boring).

I love this book and appreciate it for what it is. I think it's a great tool, but parents should be careful to not push too hard or to start too early. We had to start cutting the lessons in half because my son's attention span was not capable of sitting for that long. We unfortunately did not finish the book. We got to lesson 80, choosing to stop and supplement with other options since this left him frustrated and bored.

My son was having problems learning to read at school. The way that they were teaching just wasn't helping him at all! They finally told me that they wanted to place him in special ed as he wasn't learning with his other classmates.

I knew he was smart and didn't belong in special ed so I purchased this book. In two weeks he was reading at grade level and by the end of the book he was reading at a 3rd grade level well above his peers. Any time a friend comes to me and either wants to start teaching their child to read or their child has a problem keeping up with reading at school I recommend this book. I always get rave reviews from them by the end of the book.

My 5 year old and I just finished 100 lessons!

I learned about this book as a school psychologist and bought it before my daughter was even born. At some point during the most recent covid winter

I wish I could give this book more than 5 stars! It has been such a wonderful resource in teaching my daughter to read. We started doing the lessons together when she was 4 and now that she's about turn 5 she is reading fluently. It has been such a joy to experience. The lessons are easy and just the right length and challenge for her. I'm so glad I bought this book!

I started too late with my twins. Hoping this will be good for my youngest.
Some lessons took a while and my older two would easily lose interest until it came to their turn to exercise their knowledge.