Review - The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading

I am on my 2nd round through this book.  I've bought it once, and it's completely non-consumable.  What an excellent purchase for any mom.

I started using it with Krypto, our eldest child, when he was in the 4-5 year old range.  The book starts off with lessons that teach you the vowels, and their sounds, and then moves on to the consonants.  Once you know all the letter sounds, you can continue into the next section of the book, that has all of the short vowel sound words.  You keep moving through, learning how to read, learning phonics rules, like "an 'e' at the end makes a vowel say it's name" and "the silent 'k' before an 'n'."

After 225 lessons, you have a child that can read on a very advanced level, understands the rules of reading, and spelling for that matter.  In short, a very confident and independent reader.

One of the other wonderful things about this book is that it is fully scripted for you as the teacher.  There is no prep work, just pick it up and go.  The "Instructor" verbage is clearly labeled for you to read out loud to your student.  What a blessing!

Krypto finished this book by the end of his 1st grade year.  Gwangi began and stopped with this book a couple of times, because he just wasn't ready for the next step.  We would just get to a point where we needed to take a couple of weeks off from reading.  That's ok, each child is so different.  If they aren't ready, for the next jump in any subject, it's always better to wait and come back to it at a later time.  This way you preserve their love of learning and education, and stay in touch with their strengths and weaknesses.  Isn't that one of the beauties of homeschooling?

Take a look at this wonderful resource.  Teaching our children how to read well, is one of the most foundational things that we, as parents and teachers, can do to start them off on a lifetime of learning!

The cover of the book.  Mine is an older copy, so just put the title into the search engine on Amazon, and I'm sure you'll find it.

An example lesson.  I just randomly opened the book.

One more note, once we're truly reading, I also make sure to have my new readers read a real book, or a chapter of a book, out loud to me each day.  This is in addition to continuing the lessons in the "Ordinary Parent's Guide."  Reading to each other each day makes for some great cuddle time together.

What have you used for reading and phonics instruction with your children?