HN Books @HNBooksMonth

PSA: If you have a 3-5 year-old child who isn't yet reading independently, you don't need any special training to teach them to read English.

Just 15 mins per day a few days per week, and a single book: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons https://www.amazon.com/dp/0671631985/

The only requirements are that you can read, and can spare 15 mins per day. I guess that applies to ~100% of HN readers.

You could rely on your kid's school to teach them to read, but learning to read with 1:1 direct instruction is just so efficient.

I've posted about this book on HN before (and I myself first read about it here). Here's an excerpt from an email an HN user sent me recently:

"Last year, I bought the book for my 4 year old and we slowly worked through it. Now he can read about as well as his 8 year old friends."

⬐ jbm

I read your comment too. My non-English speaking daughter went from zero english reading to above grade level after 2-3 months with the book during the pandemic.

It wasn't even necessary to do all the lessons. I was impressed and highly recommend it.

Is this it?

https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671...

My wife and I (mainly my wife) used the book mentioned in the article [1] to teach both our kids (now 5 and 7) to read prior to their entry to kindergarten.

I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is so intelligently organized, each day building on the last. If you just read the intro chapter on amazon, you will see how clearly they thought it through

That said:

1. While teaching kids to read is good, I think the real goal should be teaching them to _love_ reading. My son is now a voracious reader, and both kids love books. The techniques we used to make this book fun include:

A. Finding something the kid really loves (e.g. tickles for my son, 'squeeze hugs' for my daughter), and pairing it with each lesson. Every lesson ended with a giant tickle or a set of squeeze hugs. You would think the kids would get sick of this, but ours didn't.

B. Massive positive verbal reinforcement. Excitement, joy, at the reading, amazement, wonder, etc.

C. Regular rewards, including little ribbons every 10 lessons, dinners out, and a huge celebration when they hit 100. Every 20-30 lessons we would do something crazy/unexpected, like rolling out a cake for breakfast (That was just fun, kids love a surprise cake for breakfast).

2. Our kids are very intelligent, but both hit a wall around 30 lessons. I think they were both about 4.5 years at the time. The book says any kid over 4 can run right through the lessons, but I don't know. For both kids, when we sensed they were hitting a wall, we decided to declare victory. We had a big celebration, and told them to book said we had reached a stopping point. Then we returned to it 6-12 months later and picked up where we left off. At that point, we sailed though the rest of the lessons.

All this said, having watched my son, I think the best thing you can do for your kid is make reading fun. The only way to develop a deep vocabulary is by reading massive amounts, and you cannot force a kid to do that.

So, as awesome as this book is, and as amazing as it was to participate in the process as a parent, the number one thing to do is not make reading stressful/negative. Kids will learn eventually, they don't need to learn early. The reason to take control of the process as a parent is to ensure that the experience is positive/filled with joy.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671...

⬐ ksdale

These are great points, and I'd take it even further and say the real goal of all education should be to get them to love learning.

The quantity of formal education 18 year olds receive is potentially dwarfed by the amount of stuff they can learn in their free time if they WANT to. On the flip side, if kids really hate participating in education, they pass out of the school system having learned astonishingly little.

I agree! However, that takes real work & prioritization (time) rather than electricity/technology.

Also (meme-ing a bit here): why not both? :)

In reality, it's always a mistake to let the nonexistent perfect be the enemy of the good (or to be most pessimistic: the not-as-bad).

I personally am desperate for an app-ified version of this well-researched "direct instruction" book/process: https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671...

Realized I left out a recommendation for Baby Signing Time.

Anecdata-ly, speech may be delayed since sign language becomes sufficient for minimal communication.

Also, the following tool has been specifically recommended for teaching toddlers to read English: https://amzn.com/dp/0671631985/