Teaching my girls to read...

A lot of parents cringe at the thought of homeschooling because the thought of teaching their child to read is daunting.  I've found the opposite to be quite true... it is one of the most exciting and thrilling things I've ever done!  It is such a joy to finally see all those sounds click in my preschooler's mind and see the light come on.  The excitement is so contagious!  I've learned a lot and used many resources in teaching my first 2 children to read so I thought I would share the books that helped my girls the most.

1. The Reading Lesson Book:
Ordinary Parent's Guide To Teaching Reading -- this book makes it easy.  It teaches all the rules as the child needs to know them.  I will admit that it wasn't my girls' favorite initially (because reading is hard work at first and the font is small) but they grew to like it.  It calmed my worries because I was afraid that I would forget to teach something important.

and/or

Alphaphonics -- this book has bigger letters so my girls usually like it more initially.  It takes a while to get through the first page, but after that, reading has begun!  We usually start with this book for a while, but then it gets monotonous so we switch to Ordinary Parents.  Once reading has begun, I usually do one reading "lesson" and have them read one "real" book to me each day as well.

Note: These simple reading lesson books are sufficient for teaching reading in most cases, but if you really desire a step-by-step hands-on program, the All About Reading program is phenomenal.  I haven't used it with my girls, but have reviewed it and have friends that highly recommend it and it is the best reading program I have seen.

2.  The first "real" books we love:
Bob books -- these are fabulous little books that the child can read as soon as he starts blending sounds.

Dick and Jane books -- these might seem "old school" but they are seriously the best books for sight words.  I have never ever drilled my girls in sight words because they pick them up easily when reading the Dick and Jane books. They also start out super easy and get progressively harder which is great.  My girls love the silly stories as well.

Dr.  Seuss Beginner Books -- we love them!

3.  Once those are mastered:

You Read To Me; I'll Read To You books -- My girls beg to read these with me!

Ready, Set, Read! by Cole -- A great collection of simple children's literature

4. Now ready for anything!
The 20th Century Children's Book Treasury by Schulman -- My 6 year old is currently reading through one story a day from this book with me.  Her vocabulary is really expanding while reading great children's literature!

Another great resource:
Explode the Code:  These inexpensive workbooks are fantastic for phonics practice.  My second child actually read for the first time the day she begged to do Explode the Code like her big sister.  We still had more work to do before everything clicked, but she began sounding out words immediately!  I will say that with my girls, their brains were ready to read long before their fingers were ready for a lot of writing, so I didn't ask them to write out a lot of the words in ETC until much later.  They did all the circling exercises and x-ing out and we just did the writing part out-loud instead of on paper.  I did not want to slow down the reading process because writing was still difficult for them.