Teach Your Child to Read in Just Ten Minutes a Day

by Sidney Ledson

Reveals the phonic program by which preschoolers as young as two begin reading at the Sidney Ledson Institute for Intellectual Advancement (see www.sidneyledsoninstitute.net). This light-hearted, yet scientifically advanced, method permits parents, schoolteachers and even babysitters to quickly teach children of all ages to read.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction, Education

242 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 1999

Reviews

[Melody · Rating 3 out of 5]

I greatly respect the authors approach to teaching phonics in this book.
But I simply can not give this book the best review. Mostly because I could not hold my child's attention using the manner of theatrics suggested. It simply did not resonate with her style of learning.
So my in my review I will tell you how we practice phonics and reading.

Since she was about 18 months old, we have visited Starfall.com... Our lessons would usually consist of 3-5 letters a day. Though on rare occasions, she would insist on completing the entire alphabet.
It is such an attractive site for babies. She quickly learned her alphabet, which she loves singing and attempting to sign (thanks to Signing Time). Walking through the mall, she recognizes and points out large letters that she sees. She will be 28 months soon, and I continue to use Starfall to teach her phonics now. She is beginning to understand that all of the letters that she knows, have their own sounds. Yesterday, she pointed out the "uh" sound in the word duck.

Personally, I don't believe that teaching her the names of the letters has made it confusing for her to comprehend phonics. But then, she is the only baby I've had the honor of teaching. Perhaps she has not learned to read as quickly as other babies, but the way we have been practicing is the only way that I have found to make lessons exciting for her. Good Luck, and Kudos to all of you wonderfully loving parents.

[Zainab Zaidi]

I enjoyed reading it.

[Tamsyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this books approach. It was very clear, and phonetically based. There were games to play to make learning fun. There were things I didn't like about it, like it's stress on focusing on sounding out the word, such as "c-u-p", then "cup". If the child looks at the word and knows it's cup, then I think sounding it out for the purpose of learning to sound out words is going to discourage the child, and teach that learning isn't fun. There are plenty of other words out there for them to sound out, and in the end the goal is for all words to be sight words, phonetics are for decoding the words. But aside from that, it was a great book, and I've been using information from this book with Peter with success.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked it...this is a very specific program that this woman was successful with at a school she taught at (and lots of years experience). I liked the phonics system and the idea of teaching sounds before names of the letters. She breaks it into sections for teachers, caregivers, parents...there was a bit of extra- a little reader for the child, some simple games to use. While I got some ideas from it, it isn't my main source for teaching a child to read, but it is a good start.

[Maryann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have difficulty in believing the author's point of view because she resorted to name-calling of anyone who thought differently than her. I believe that if someone has to resort to name-calling, then their method just might not be all that great. Although I did not like the book and would not recommend it to anyone, I gave it a two-star rating because it doesn't contain swearing or pornography. The book is clean, just heavily biased.

[Susan]

This will be a short synopsis of the book. I will go over it chapter by chapter. The book uses the phonics method to teach reading. >He was using the symbol to signify the sound. Children have to realize that they read from left to right in this method.

(I just wrote a lot but the stupid program erased everything)

[Kathleen Garber · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems like a good mehtod of teaching your child for the most part but it's too much work. I'm sure I can teach my child to read without it.

[Mindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Working so far....

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have seen how teaching the phonics first really works. My daughter is reading and advancing better and faster than I was expecting. However, I am not using all of her methods.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting- a little heavy handed in some areas and not much new information but a few good tips