The Reading Lesson Teach Your Child To Read in 20 Easy Lessons Review & Giveaway

When I decided (a few years back) to homeschool my daughter, one of my main concerns was: Am I going to be able to teach her how to read? If I can't teach her how to read, then how am I going to be able to homeschool her successfully? 

It has been a slow moving process. I would be lying if I didn't say that there has been some frustrations (on both our parts) and some tears. But, the one thing I have learned (with a little help from some friends) is that kids will learn to read when they are ready to read. You can't force them to read. Trying to will get you nowhere and you will have an upset child who might end up to hate reading.

So, like I've said it has been a slow process, but in the past 6-months she has come a long way with it. There are days I realize we aren't getting anywhere, so we do something else.  There are other days, I'm shocked (and very happy) at how fast she is picking things up. 

It also doesn't hurt to have a little help when it comes to trying to teach someone to read. That is where The Reading Lesson comes in. I was contacted by Nina at the Reading Lesson and asked if we would be interested in doing a product review of their "Teach your child to read in 20 easy lessons" and I jumped at the chance. 20 easy lessons? Oh yeah, I'm in. 

This is a pic of it new, it so doesn't look like this anymore. 

So, how does it work?

We've been taking our time with it and only doing about 3 pages a day. It tells you that if you are starting with a child that is under age 5 you should do one page daily, five to six years old is 2-3 pages per day and over six years of ages 3 or more pages a day. 

Each lesson begins with three or four sounds and introduces sight words and key words as you go along. Starts out pretty basic and works its way up to longer words with more sounds and longer stories for them to read. The program also comes with a CD which brings the lesson to life. There is really no better learning tool then a child hearing the sounds of the words. 

Lesson One starts out with the sounds: c, o, s, a and t. I know you think that you child already knows these, but do them anyway. It is a great starting point. It finishes up on Lesson 20 with the sounds: c, g and ph. We aren't quite there yet, but we are working on it.

What I have loved about the program so far is the way that it works. It tells you the new sounds for each lesson and even explains in details what it sounds like. Plus it underlines the letters that the sounds would be blended together: such as with st as well as new letters/sounds that they are just learning.

Example in Lesson One: "Read s as the first sound in the word snake. This is a hissing sound [ss], not [sah] or [es]." It does this for each new sound that the program introduces. 

Lesson one starts out with simple sentences, two words, three words and is such a confidence builder for your child. There are also little activities (draw lines to matching words) in each lesson for your child to do. 

Each lesson introduces your child to new words and at the end of each lesson there is a review of the key words from that said lesson. 

Key words from Lesson 6. Smiley face and all. Love making notes and little encouraging things for the kiddo.

Overall: I am so impressed with this program. As I said in the beginning there was a lot of frustration with trying to teach her to read. I tried a bunch of different things and it just didn't appear like anything was working. Then along came the Reading Lesson. This is an A+ Program and I highly recommend it.

Seeing the joy and smiles on our daughter's face because she is actually "getting it." She loves picking up books now and always goes over with her father each night the new words she has learned and the new sounds. I love seeing her so proud of herself.

Ending thoughts:

Took me a while to realize that this isn't a sprint, its a marathon. Your child (and mine) will need assistance on words, you need to want to help them out with the longer words.  But if they just aren't getting it then maybe they just aren't quite ready for it yet, put it away and start again at a later date.


Please feel free to check out The Reading Lesson.
You can also find them on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/TheReadingLesson
Twitter: http://readinglesson.com/

Disclaimer: I received no monetary compensation for this blog post. I did, however, receive this program free of charge so that we could do a proper review on it. But, all thoughts/opinions are our own and were not influenced by any outside source.

Nina at The Reading Lesson  has graciously offered one of our readers this same product that I reviewed. How awesome is that of them? If you are like me and looking for a program to get your child reading or something for some refresher in reading, then this is the program for you. Please enter in the rafflecopter form below.

Giveaway will end on: July 29th, 2014 at 11:59 p.m. est and is open to residents of the US. 

We offer our sincere thanks to Nina and the folks at The Reading Lesson for the opportunity to do a review of this program. We have almost finished up with it and you have saved us (both her and I) a lot of tears and frustrations.




 a Rafflecopter giveaway