Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons Review

Post contains affiliate links. This copy of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons was purchased by me.

How My Four-Year-Old Learned to Read

One day, many years ago, my four-year-old son, Hezekiah approached me with our copy of  Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. He decided, on his own, that he wanted to learn to read. I agreed, on the spot, to give him his first reading lesson.

He ended up whipping through the first twenty lessons in about half an hour. The very next day we went through the next twenty lessons. That’s right, forty lessons in two days. Within a month of his first reading lesson, Hezekiah was reading independently.

Not my First Four-Year-Old Reader

Hezekiah is not my first four-year-old to learn to read. And interestingly, my other four-year-old reader (against all conventional wisdom) was also a boy.

Judah, Enoch, Adalia, and Tilly circa 2000

Reading Lessons for a Three-Year-Old?

Hezekiah’s older brother, Judah, started begging for reading lessons at age 3 1/2. Well, I was in the midst of teaching 5-year-old Adalia how to read, and not interested in also teaching a three-year-old. Besides, everything I read said in general boys are not “developmentally ready” to learn to read as early as girls. So I kept putting him off. He would not be deterred. He wanted to learn to read and that was it.

Reading Lessons for a Four-Year-Old Boy

When Judah was four years and one month old, I finally gave in. I decided I would start Teach Your Child to Read with him. If and when he lost interest we would put it aside. Much to my surprise, he was reading after his very first lesson. To this day, I have no idea how he learned his letter sounds, but the fact is he was developmentally ready at age four, and when we sat down to learn, he picked it up with almost no effort.

By four and a half, he was reading chapter books. In fact, it was a problem because there are very few chapter books written that are appropriate for four-year-olds, but a  kid who can read that well isn’t exactly interested in Dick and Jane.

Important Notes

1. Obviously, not all children are ready to read at age 3 or 4. My children were all between 4 and 8 when they learned to read independently.
2. We only did the letter part of the lessons and played, “say it fast” and “say it slow”. We never did any of the tracing or practicing writing letters.
3. We never made it more than halfway through the book because by then my children were reading idenpendently.