I have been using this book to teach my little ones to read and we have been very successful. I would like to share a review of this book and maybe you will find that it will work for your home school situation as well.
The book is an adaptation of the Distar Fast Cycle Reading Program whereby teaching your child to read in one hundred days. The introduction notes that this program would be appropriate for bright three-and-a-half year olds and average four and five year olds. My daughter started asking to learn to read shortly after age three and we started at three-and-a-half.
There is an excellent Parent’s Guide immediately following the introduction which answers any question you might have and helps you make a smooth transition into the book. She teaches you how to teach your child in a very brief and understandable manner.
Dr. Phyllis Haddox began her education career as a classroom teacher more than 40 years ago. She has also been a reading specialist, has trained doctoral students, was an instructional design consultant, and was an educational consultant. Let’s just say, she really knows her stuff! She was also the director of what has been called the “largest education experiment ever conducted”. Once the results were in from that experiment, the “Direct Instruction Model” achieved the highest results in all areas of education. “The term “Direct Instruction” refers to a rigorously developed, highly scripted method for teaching that is fast-paced and provides constant interaction between students and the teacher.” http://www.jefflindsay.com/EducData.shtml
So, that’s the background of the book. Here is a copy of a few pages so you can see what it looks like. 
This is the first lesson in the book. As you can see, each lesson is divided into several tasks. The first lesson has six tasks including sounds introduction, say it fast, say the sounds, sounds review, say it fast, sounds writing. Because my daughter was just over three when we started, we did not go through the writing portion. I really like how the book teaches the child to sound it out slowly and then fast. One thing that was hard to overcome with my oldest son was the choppy way he would sound words out. When my daughter starts to do that, I just remind her to sound it out slowly and she knows exactly what that means. 
This is the story your child will read during Lesson 14. Each story has a photo with it that gets covered up during the initial reading and then after a few questions to test reading comprehension, you get to reveal the picture to them. This lesson had eleven tasks. This is a view of the transition between the “funny” print used to teach the child and print in regular books. For me, this was the true test as to whether or not this system would really work – could she read real books after looking at the special printing? I am happy to say that she has indeed been able to make that transition rather smoothly. This is one of the last lessons in the book. Your child goes from a short three word story to this in just one hundred lessons! I am so excited that I was 
able to find this book – as a matter of fact, it was given to me as a spontaneous gift by a veteran home school mom of nine whose first child was already 18 at that time. The lessons start out at a very beginner level and those first lessons go very quickly. I felt this was ideal so the child does not get overloaded – they immediately feel successful from the very first lesson. Each time they come back to the book, they taste a little more success and it spurs them on when the words get a little longer. Everything a parent needs to say or do is completely scripted and although you may want to 
improvise on some aspects, I wouldn’t recommend it. Each lesson is carefully laid out to build on the previous lesson – if you skip something or change it around, you may regret it later or have to go back and figure out what you left out. This was a big time saver for me since I have been teaching two children out of the book at the same time. I sit down with both kids at the kitchen table and look over the lesson and tasks for this session. That is all the prep work I need in order to be completely ready to teach my preschoolers to read! Then, the first child sits or stands next to me (or kneels, or sits on the table, or swings from the chandelier – wherever they might be comfortable) and we go through the lesson while the second child is looking at some ever-rotating library books at the same table. The first child then moves to his bed for quiet/nap time with a different set of books and the second child takes her place by me and we go over her lesson. Then she goes down for quiet/nap time with books of her own.
At first I thought that black and white and red would eventually get boring. What I have found is learning to read is a very energy consuming task no matter how well laid out the lessons are for the child. Any other colors would have been a distraction and a hindrance during some portions of learning.
The only drawback I have found is with the “Rhyming” task laid out in many of the lessons. As I look back now it seems simple enough, but when I first had to go through it, I wasn’t exactly sure how to get my daughter to say what I wanted her to say. I decided not to skip it but just sort of get through it the best way I knew how and eventually we worked together and figured it out.
Overall, I think this is a well-rounded and very complete guide to helping you teach your child to read. The accelerated pace helps child feel success more quickly and the scripting of each lesson makes it fit into our home schooling day so efficiently.
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I also have used that book for my son, who is 7 1/2 now, and he is an excellent reader! I plan on using this with my daughter also as part of her 1st grade schooling, this fall.
I am so glad to hear about your success with this program! And even better that you liked it so much you’ll be using it again. (I cannot believe your kids are that old already!) Thanks for stopping by!
Thank you for blogging about your experience with this book. I am currently using this book for my daughter who just turned four. She loves everything about the lessons so far except the rhyming tasks. So knowing that you and your daughter struggled with that and got through it gives me hope!
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