Curriculum Recommendations

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Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons

vs.

I Can Read It

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is an excellent curriculum that makes it fun for the child with NO prior letter/sound knowledge to learn to read well. By the end of the year, children are reading at second-grade level and improving all the time.

I Can Read It requires the child to have a prior knowledge of the alphabet and the sounds made by all letters. Lessons are longer. They are not as much fun for the child. They are not as easy for the parent/teacher to implement. By the end of the year’s curriculum, kids are not reading any better than kids who used the less-intense, shorter-lesson, more-fun approach of 100 Easy Lessons.

	Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons	I Can Read It
Cost	$15.75 Rainbow Resource	$33 from Sonlight
Lesson Progression	One lesson per day	One chapter per week. Five sections per chapter.
Prerequisites	none	must know all consonant sounds before beginning lesson 1
Typeface	Child’s words are easy to read (over ½” tall), progressing to slightly smaller (but still a very good size for little eyes) in lesson 37	About 14point font. Words are much too small for young eyes.
Presentation	Tells parent exactly what to say (read the red words to your child, point when told to point)	No instructions. You figure out how to teach your child.
Lesson length	approximately ten minutes Short, fun lessons.	approximately 25 minutes Long lessons, too much information at a time.
Pictures	every story	a few pictures per week
First day	Play fun game that will later help with sounding out words. Short, easy-to-remember lesson. First reading lesson is fun and kids beg to do more. Introduce two sounds: m and s	Must know many letter/sounds and know how to sound out words. Long lesson, many new things to remember. First “reading lesson” is drudgery and kids can’t wait for it to be over. Thirteen 3-letter words ending in “-at” Six additional words (is, his, a, the, that, on) Two seven-sentence stories. Introduces capitalization and punctuation.
Second day	Review 1, more fun	similar structure as first day. More words and sentences.
Third day	Introduce “a” sound Review previous material	similar to first lesson
Fourth day	Review 3 read first word “am” nonsense word “sa”	similar to first lesson
Fifth day	Review 4 Introduce long /e/ sound eem, ees rhyming game	similar to first lesson
First sentence	day 13 “See me eat.” with a fun picture of a boy eating	Full-page stories in chapter 3 “Can Val the nag pass Sam the Ram? Val is fat! Can Val pass Sam” A nag can pass a ram! Val can lap Sam. Sam can not pass Val. “ etc.
Day 59	Story: “A big bug met a little bug. The big bug said, “Let’s go eat.” So the big bug ate a leaf and a nut and a rock. The big bug said, That is how big bugs eat.” The little bug said, “Now I will eat.” So the little bug ate a leaf and a nut and a rock. Then the little bug went to a log and ate the log. Then she ate ten more logs. “Wow,” the big bug said. “That little bug can eat a lot.” The little bug said, “Now let’s eat more.”	Stories are one-and-a-half pages long.
	Stories through end of book	Stories end with chapter 24. Remaining chapters are word lists (to 69)

To be fair, I should point out that since this comparison was done, Sonlight has reformatted I Can Read It into a four-volume set: three books of stories and one book of word lists. I have not seen the new format. It is possible that they used a larger font, and that they added more pictures.

That would not change the fact that far too much new material is provided per lesson. It would not make the lessons shorter. It would not build fun games into the lessons. It would not provide instructions to the parent on how to go about presenting the material. For twice the money, it should be a better program. In my opinion, it is not.

People’s learning curve is not a straight-line graph. People learn, then plateau, then learn a little more, then plateau again.

NO YES

I Can Read It is written for a straight-line graph type of learning curve, with a reading lesson every day of the year. 100 Easy Lessons is written to be used while kids are on the learning part of the curve, then TAKE A BREAK for a week or two during the plateau phase. I point that out to make explicit the fact that 100 Easy Lessons is not a curriculum that will be completed by the child in 100 days! A typical school year is 180 days, yet there are only 100 lessons. Allow your children to progress at their own pace.

Some people will argue that kids need to learn discipline. I agree 100%. I do not agree that tedious lessons for 4-6 year olds is the best way for kids to learn discipline. They can learn perseverance, follow-through, and other character-development traits with things like brushing their teeth consistently, making their beds every morning, helping set and clear the dinner table, and scrubbing the toilet. Make learning a fun privilege, not something to be endured.

For Sonlighters, it is very easy to use 100 Easy Lessons for first grade reading, then use Sonlight’s reading book list in second grade.

HOWEVER, every family is different. Even though Teach Your Child to Read In 100 Easy Lessons was vastly superior for my family, there are many people who do very well with I Can Read It. Pray about your curriculum choices.