Learning to read

A brief history of learning to read in our family...

17ds. Finished 100 EZ lessons at age 5. He has read all assigned books but not much else. Prefers non fiction. He is currently on a self-imposed, self-designed book a week program that is mainly composed of nonfiction choices. High ability- medium to low interest for reading.

16 dd. Non reader at 7. Never finished 100 EZ lessons made it to about lesson 80 or so. She went from non reader to reading chapter books in a span of 6-9 months. She has not had a book out of hand since. High ability-High interest in reading.

Simple goal....I rather have children who love to read than have them be early readers! Also, I know that late readers can be great readers. Lesson learned.

Sam started asking to read at age 4. At age 5 we started 100 EZ lessons but we stopped at lesson 10 because it was interfering with speech therapy. During the "say it fast" portion he would use the speech patterns that we were trying to overcome. We tried to work with Learning Language Arts Through Literature -blue thinking to spread it out over 1 1/2-2 years. I have been spoilt by teaching 2 kids to read without a bunch of "extras" and trying to keep the cards in one place with a 2 year old running aroung was difficult. Sam enjoyed it but it drove me nuts. We put it up around Thanksgiving. I wanted a break from it for awhile.

This month we restarted 100 EZ lessons backtracking to lesson 6. He is currently working through 2 lessons per week. At this pace and allowing for vacations and any Sam-imposed breaks we should finish between ages 6 1/2-7. I'm enjoying using it. He is enjoying using it and it is not causing any conflict with Speech Therapy. We had our perfect fit but just needed time and maturity to work out the speech issue. Lesson learned .....again.