A Video Introduction to "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Lessons"

Many thanks to Terri Wheatley for this picture of my hometown.

 It was my first year of teaching and I had been hired by a small district in the mountains of Northern California.  My class would consist of 19 students:  Three Kinder, 2 First grade, 1 second grader, 8 third graders and 5 in the fourth grade.

 (You thought this kind of classroom only existed in history books from the 1800's, right?  I did, too!  Many small rural towns across the country have to consolidate their grades into one classroom.  Another school in my district had Kindergarten through 8th in one class.)  

With one full time Teacher's Aide and a whole lot of advance planning, I had figured out a way for my 2nd through 4th grades to work independently while I focused on reading with the younger children.  But the question was, in a setting like this, what reading program do I use?

Something that would work for a 5 to 1 student teacher ratio, that would pack a big punch in a short amount of time and that would cover abilities that were widely ranging, as one of my 1st graders was special needs.  I knew what I needed:

But this book had been modified by DISTAR for parent and child, in a one on one setting (as almost every homeschooling parent can tell you).

Could I add a few items to make it work for my group of 5?  I could and did!  Let me share a little with you about this amazing reading program, and the packets we offer that work so well with it:

Here is a free sample of some of the worksheets and crafts we offer
Free Printables That Work With 100 Easy Lessons. 

But this is just a sampling.  Our supplementary worksheet packets are filled with crafts, additional reading materials and are available for purchase.  You can buy them in separate packets or purchase the entire bundle here: 

"After Five Through After Fifty Bundle".  

Sometimes, children need a little something extra to turn on the light of excitement inside them. 

These supplements are exactly what is needed to turn that light on!  We hope you enjoy them!

Still More Worksheets for "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons"

As I mentioned in the last post, I have begun the "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" book with my four and a half year old daughter.  She has completed the first five lessons of the book, and we are now following up with the supplementary worksheets that I created to compliment DISTAR's fabulous reading program (available for sale here.)

Since completing Lesson 5, we go over the flash cards (seen above) for the sounds m, a, s and long e, every morning first.  And then, I give her one of the complimentary worksheets to practice.

We laminated most of our worksheets, we use dry erase markers and then wipe them clean to give them another use, later.

This additional practice has been excellent for giving her practice with the sounds and the needed repetition connection with hand-eye coordination.

Plus, she just seems to be having fun with it.  (It took three careful tries on her part to complete the picture of herself above.  I was terribly impressed with her finished product.)

The included crafts are also a fun way for her to connect the dots with sounds, words and imagery.  This one below is a fun little sheep we call "Sam the Ram".

All of the supplemental worksheets seen in this post are included here in our "After Five Phonics packet":

If you're looking for a few fun free worksheets for supplementing "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons", download these five awesome free worksheets:  Free Sample Lessons.

We have been working away at these supplementary lessons for "Teach your Child to Read" and now offer a full bundle of these supplementary worksheets.  The bundle covers the lessons all the way up through Lesson 50.  Check out this Cost-saving Bundle here.



One of the neat changes I have begun to incorporate in these newer packets is a new style of graphics, using photos with my hand drawn images.  I think they look so much more fun and engaging this way!  Perhaps a little more modern, too.  See what you think:

Why does the picture in this worksheet make me giggle each time I see it?  Probably because I still work with children each day, and I can imagine them giggling over it, too.  :)  For all our supplement packets, check out this specific store link!

Those Little Extras for Teaching Your Child to Read With "100 Easy Lessons"

One of the most popular items in our store has been the downloadable packets (free and otherwise) that are filled with supplemental activities that work hand in glove with the amazing Distar Reading Program, "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons".

I used this reading program in my traditional classroom when I taught reading, but since the program is designed for a parent and child to sit down together one on one, I had to modify it quite a bit.  I created quite a few supplemental worksheets and printables at the time, that would work for the classroom experience.

And now that I have begun using this program with my own children, I find that those supplemental worksheets are a lot of help.  So I have been developing more and uploading these to my store, in bite-sized segments.  At this time, we are all the way up to Lesson 50, and offer our packets as a Bundle for cost-saving. 

I have had many requests to create supplements for the entire 100 lessons.  I'm working on it! 

Here's what we have so far:

 This was our first experimental packet, following up the great reception to the freebies we put up.  Now if you are familiar with the "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons", you will remember that by the end of lesson 5, there are only 4 sounds to work with:  a, m, long e, and s.

So the worksheets and crafts in this packet are based only on those sounds.  We included a Dot to Dot activity and crafts to keep it fun, but also really helpful are the Writing Practice Sheets that have the paths of motion already included for children that are just being introduced to these letters/sounds.

We call this one "After Five Phonics".  

Keeping the Covers of the packets pretty similar, but with different color schemes, our next release was "After Ten", intended of course, to be utilized after you and your child have completed Lesson 10 in the Distar Program.  At the completion of Lesson 10, children will have been introduced to two more sounds:  r, and t.


Now, very simple words can be formed, and so I tried to get creative with these and make worksheets that would echo the instruction that is received in the program.  In addition to the craft pages and the writing practice sheets, I added a "Finding the Sounds" Activity, utilizing shapes and a "What Do You See?" page where children can illustrate a short sentence that they have read.

This, of course, is "After Ten Phonics".

By this time, I was starting to receive some great feedback, including the news that a 2nd grade Special Ed teacher was utilizing these new worksheets and so I decided to try my hand at a few other new kinds of activities in the next packet, "After Fifteen".

The sounds introduced between Lesson 10 and Lesson 15 are d and the short i sound.

So after creating all the activities I now considered standard for the packets, I also created an "Identifying the Sounds" worksheet and an "Identifying Words" worksheet, so that children could work with newly acquired sounds by connecting the sounds to the pictures represented. 

Now I was having people contact me via my website to ask when and if I would have the other packets completed soon.  This was exciting and also helped me to keep the creative juices going.

After Lesson Twenty, the new sounds include:  th and c 

"After Twenty" also included another new activity, a Story Time Page, where children can practice their reading comprehension of a very simple story.

Then, came "After Twenty-Five".  Along with the crafts, and the other activities that have already been listed, I added something new to this packet.

The new addition is something I have been wanting to do, when enough of the sounds were there.  After Lesson 25 in the Distar program, children have been introduced to sounds o, n, and f.


With these sounds added to the repertoire, there are now enough sounds to create a Mini Book, that children may read, color, and then take home to share their skills with their parents.

The Mini Book is intended to be cropped to the size of the outer black rectangle, folded into a 1/4 sized paper book, and then read, and colored, if desired.

As we have expanded our packets, the supplements we have created have modified and expanded as well.  We now offer multi-sensory pages for each sound in the first 50 packets. 

  These Multi-sensory pages are not only able to be used for children to find and circle the images that begin with the sound that is pictured, but they can also use manipulatives to fill in the sound.



For instance, this nice big S sound could be used to fill in with string or small stones.  Children have the opportunity to create the letter using manipulatives like these. 

We have also revamped some of our Craft pages, to ensure that children can learn more about the new sounds they are learning through easy, crafts that help explore vocabulary with delightful experiences. 




We can't wait for you to dive in and learn more about these awesome supplements! 




Come visit our store, and look them over in detail.