The Homeschool How To
Curriculum Series: Using "Children Learning Reading," "100 Easy Lessons" and "Pathway Readers" as a Reading Curricula Combo
Can teaching your child to read actually be fun and stress-free? On this episode of "The Homeschool How To Find My Curriculum," we're here to prove just that with invaluable insights from our special guest, Morgan from Tennessee. Morgan shares her success story with the "Children Learning Reading" curriculum, shedding light on how focusing on letter sounds instead of names can simplify and enhance the learning experience for young readers. We emphasize the importance of creating an enjoyable atmosphere, where short, tactile lessons become a delightful part of your child's day.
Ever wondered about the effectiveness of phonetic methods in teaching reading? We take a thorough look at the "100 Easy Lessons" book, which employs unique phonetic symbols to bolster word recognition and build reading confidence. Through personal anecdotes, we explore how its structured lessons, complete with tiny letters for silent characters and special vowel indicators, make the learning process intuitive and less daunting for children. We'll discuss practical tips like keeping lessons short to prevent burnout and supportive strategies when kids face challenging words.
In our final segments, we delve into the Pathway Readers curriculum, a flexible and interactive program perfect for young learners. Morgan compares it with other popular curriculums, highlighting its ability to instill confidence through shared reading experiences. Tune in and discover the secrets to nurturing a lifelong love of reading in your children!
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Can teaching your child to read actually be fun and stress-free? On this episode of "The Homeschool How To Find My Curriculum," we're here to prove just that with invaluable insights from our special guest, Morgan from Tennessee. Morgan shares her success story with the "Children Learning Reading" curriculum, shedding light on how focusing on letter sounds instead of names can simplify and enhance the learning experience for young readers. We emphasize the importance of creating an enjoyable atmosphere, where short, tactile lessons become a delightful part of your child's day.
Ever wondered about the effectiveness of phonetic methods in teaching reading? We take a thorough look at the "100 Easy Lessons" book, which employs unique phonetic symbols to bolster word recognition and build reading confidence. Through personal anecdotes, we explore how its structured lessons, complete with tiny letters for silent characters and special vowel indicators, make the learning process intuitive and less daunting for children. We'll discuss practical tips like keeping lessons short to prevent burnout and supportive strategies when kids face challenging words.
In our final segments, we delve into the Pathway Readers curriculum, a flexible and interactive program perfect for young learners. Morgan compares it with other popular curriculums, highlighting its ability to instill confidence through shared reading experiences. Tune in and discover the secrets to nurturing a lifelong love of reading in your children!
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Facebook: The Homeschool How To Podcast
Welcome to the Homeschool How-To Find my Curriculum, a series where we talk all about curriculum. I've been interviewing homeschooling families for over a year now on my main podcast, the Homeschool How-To, but I really wanted to zero in on curriculum. There's so much out there. How do I know what would work best for me and my child? How do I know what works for one child would work for the other? I might like the curriculum I'm using now, but how do I know there's not a better one out there, especially if I don't know all the curriculums? And what about supplemental curriculum? Should I be using that too? This series is to help you decide just that.
Speaker 1:I'm going to interview parents who are using all the curriculums so that you can decide the absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey. The absolute best way to unfold your homeschooling journey Welcome with us today to talk to us about three different curriculums, all intertwined to help us get our little ones to read is Morgan from Tennessee. Morgan, thank you for being here again. Thank you for having me Glad to be back, so why don't I just hand it over to you? You're going to teach us about your experience teaching your littles how to read and what three curriculums you use for that? Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:I will say so. I didn't even tell you this ahead of time. When it comes to learning to read, I think the biggest takeaway I've had so far is that how you approach it as a mom is going to be way more important than the curriculum you use, that how you approach it as a mom is going to be way more important than the curriculum you use. So, regardless if the curriculum gives you anxiety, you're better off just switching it off than trying to make it work with a curriculum that everyone's raving about. The book that was most suggested to me ended up working really well for us, but I've heard some people hate it, so all I'm going to say is I've seen it work both ways. If you have anxiety, like delay reading, do whatever you have to to get anxiety out of the room. Like that is the biggest obstacle over any other approach or curriculum or anything like that. It's all about the energy that you bring to the situation and making it fun for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that that is important because I think we get in our mind like you have to do this many you know lessons a week and we have to be on par because you know, right now we're in that critical stage of like learning to read or not. So you're kind of at that level where you can easily compare kids like okay, his five-year-old friend is already reading and my kid isn't. Am I doing something wrong as the parent? And you have to learn to like get that out of your head Because, like when they're 15 and 16, or when someone's 30 and 35, you aren't like I can read 50 words per minute, you know like nobody compares themselves at that level. Or like I read 10 books in a month. What do you read? Like that just isn't a real conversation that people have. So why are we doing that to our five-year-olds?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like that just isn't a real conversation that people have. So why are we doing that to our five-year-olds? Yeah, and on the flip side, if you have anxiety around learning how to read I hate reading as a 15-year-old is a real conversation. That happens because if you have a bad start to it, a lot of times kids don't come around to enjoying it, sometimes all the way until adulthood, because of that insecurity that they felt right from the start or from like the disappointment or whatever that they felt from their teacher. So, yeah, you're better off getting a kid to like reading and then letting them come around to it in their own time than forcing it or forcing the anxiety. But so we do approach it, we introduce it super early and I just try my best to make it fun. So we I found the curriculum called children learning reading when my girls were three and four, but it's designed for even, like, 18 month olds and two year olds because it has such a simple approach.
Speaker 2:I mean, their whole concept is, if your child can learn animal sounds, they can be learning letter sounds. Like there's no reason they can't look at two letters together and say, oh yeah, they make these sounds together and as long as you're taking the emotions out of it and you're just making it again. The lessons are designed to be two minutes to five minutes long. So you've got these flashcards, you're practicing it with your fingers. It's all very tactile too. So they're tracing every letter with their finger as they make the sounds. And I don't teach my kids letter names or the alphabet until they know the letter sounds, because I found it's less confusing for them if they're seeing all these letters and they know the name. But now they're trying to read, they're remembering letter names instead of letter sounds. It kind of just creates an extra obstacle in the way. So this teaches them all the letters by their shapes and their sounds together, and once they've learned two sounds, they immediately start blending sounds together.
Speaker 1:That's such a cool approach and like my son's almost six and I remember just starting out on the could we even homeschool journey and being like, okay, let's sit down and go over the letters. This one's a says and this one's B B says, but like two minutes later saying to him now which letter is this? And pointing to a B, and he's like off in La La Land. He was like three years old and I'm like I remember getting so frustrated I threw a book and I'm like you aren't even paying attention and that was clearly the wrong way. Okay, like.
Speaker 2:I'm aware but what?
Speaker 1:yeah, Like what do we do to kind of recenter ourself or, like you said, take emotion out of it? And now I'm thinking, wow, what I really have to do is be like okay, if he's off in La La Land, like that's okay, he's do it with them, and then I only do it for as long as it keeps their attention.
Speaker 2:So if we trace the letter two times and then he wants to run away, I just put the flashcards away and then I'll come back to it at lunchtime. And as they grow in confidence like so with my kids as they grow in confidence they'll go, they'll hold their attention for a little bit longer until they learn it and then they're not interested again, like if once he's learned it he's not interested in performing. For me he likes the game once he's figuring it out, but once he knows it now he doesn't want to do it anymore. I have to introduce a new challenge to keep him engaged, but I don't know how like was the right answer, the best way? But for me I always just go over the top.
Speaker 2:I got him this like his own little wallet to keep his flashcards in and I'm like do you want to read with me? And it's hard to say no to that excited energy. I've always taken them one-on-one. So reading time, they know, is like special time with mommy. We sit in my special chair, we get my blankie out, so they know it's like uninterrupted quality time. So even if we were sitting there, I mean.
Speaker 1:I don't think it matters what we were doing.
Speaker 2:I think they'd be happy to just to sit there with me for at least a couple of minutes. Sure, and what do you do with the other ones when you're doing one on one time? So when I started with Edith and Adeline, they were three and four and I would just set them up with, like we had our special toy boxes. So like they're I don't know just their plastic toys or their busy boxes that they didn't have access to all the time. So I would say, here's in your room where you're safe, I'm getting out your special toy learning toys and I'm going to be gone for 20 minutes. So we would just cap it at 20 minutes, no matter what. And then they knew they got their turn next. And then the other kid got to go play with the busy toys. Now that I have three, I still do it one-on-one and they just play with the other two. I get one One-on-one time with one and the other two play together. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:I love that yeah it's been fun. Okay, so you're starting with a curriculum called learning. Wait, I'm sorry. Children Learning Reading.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I believe technically their curriculum goes all the way through to reading competently. I just had the book 100 Easy Lessons suggested to me so many times. I wanted to check it out and why I like switching to this curriculum is everything is scripted for you Children learning reading. You have to read the teacher's manual. I strongly suggest like watch the videos. If you just start with a flashcards and trying to wing it, it's not going to be nearly as effective. He explains in great detail how to handle if they're interested, if they're not interested, if they're pretending like they don't know, like. The teacher's manual is gold for that curriculum, but with 100 Easy Lessons, as you know, you can pick it up and you just have to read your script and I loved that. I didn't have to figure out how to explain anything.
Speaker 1:So all right. So you start with children learning reading. At what age for your kids?
Speaker 2:It's been different for all of them. Learning reading at what age for your kids? It's been different for all of them. I've gotten younger each time. I started with Edith when she was four, started with Adeline when she was three, and then I started with Rowan when he was two.
Speaker 1:Okay, and you do that for. Is it a whole year before switching to teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons?
Speaker 2:I would switch to teaching 100 easy lessons when it feels like they're ready to sit and take instruction. Because children learning reading is more like a flashcards game, he doesn't even have to be in my lap. When I feel like he could sit down for 10 minutes and understand what I'm explaining to him, I'll switch to 100 easy lessons.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, so you do, and we're talking about three today. So this is just kind of us going over a brief overview on how you start, what's involved with that one, then what you move to next and what's like an overview of that, and then the third one, so the three all together are children learning reading, and I will link this in the show's description. Then you switch to teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons and then you go to pathway readers.
Speaker 1:But I did kind of interrupt you, so I just wanted to give that like summary over it so that people listening aren't confused Like wait, are they jumping now to a different one? So that okay. So uh, I've been using teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons this year with my five-year-old son and I'm going to let you take it over and then I'll just jump in with questions I'm sure you read more of. I tried to read a little bit of like how they came up with this method and then I'm sure I got distracted and never finished it.
Speaker 2:I gotcha. Are you saying like the history of the?
Speaker 1:curriculum. Yeah, like what made them come up with because, um, so what they do in this book is they're writing things more phonetically, not actually correctly. So if you just hand the book to like grandma or grandpa that day and say, hey, can you do their reading with them, they're like why are they? Teaching them wrong. You know, because they're putting a little line over an E if it's the long E sound, and so this kind of method of the phony, like phonics, writing it out, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And the reason why these curriculums go well together is because children learning reading is also based on starting with phonemic awareness, so they they go really well together. I was going to say I would think of it like preschool, kindergarten and graduating kindergarten. So like when you ask what age is good for what? I don't know that there's a good age, like if you want to start your kid in kindergarten when they're seven, that's great. If you want to start them when they're four, that's great. But I would think of these levels as preschool level, kindergarten level and then pathway readers would be the first book I'd read after graduating. So yeah, so 100 Easy Lessons. What I love about it is it's scripted and then it gives them all the hints. Like you said, everything has symbols around it so they don't have to figure out what sounds are and they gain a lot of confidence as they get used to seeing words spelled the correct way over and over again. To include like, if you have a silent a in the word, they write it tinier than the rest of the word, so the kid doesn't have to figure out, they see it and they automatically know. I don't have to say that one and both of my girls. When they started like writing me letters and trying to spell things, they would write it out with all the symbols and the tiny E and the tiny A and the lines on top. So there's like they were understanding how to reconstruct the word based on the sounds they had learned. And then, yes, as you progress through the book, they slowly remove those symbols and the kid has seen the word that way so many times that they have confidence and they'll recognize them.
Speaker 2:When they're reading K and O W, they've seen the tiny K so many times that they have confidence and they'll recognize them. And when they're reading K-N-O-W, they've seen the tiny K so many times. Their brain just knows okay, I don't say that letter because they've begun to recognize it. I genuinely don't even know how they do it, which is why I'm glad it's fully scripted, because as we go through the curriculum, I'm not knowing how to understand or how to explain these things. I'm not knowing the next best thing to introduce to them. At best, when they say this doesn't make sense or why does this word, say that, I just tell them yep, it's a silly word. I always just make sure I don't blame the kid for not understanding it. We were like yeah, you're right, you said it exactly how it looks. But that's a silly word and it doesn't make sense. And then that way they're just always growing confident in every situation that there shouldn't be shame around reading.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's so true. And I don't think we realize that as adults. How many words don't actually make sense with the primary rules until we're trying to teach our kid how to use them. And it's like, for instance, said is one that is taught early on in this curriculum, and we see it all the time it's in every book. You know, because everybody said something in a curriculum and we see it all the time it's in every book. You know, because everybody said something in a book. You know there's always quotes with said mom or said the baby, so that that word is often used and it's introduced early. But it's S-A-I-D. Well, if you do, sad, sad, like that is how you sound it out.
Speaker 1:And no, that doesn't make any sense. So yeah, it is. They tell you oh, this is just a silly out and no, that doesn't make any sense. So yeah, it is. They tell you oh, this is just a silly word. No-transcript. Yeah it's. It is really cool how they I don't know that I'm doing it 100 percent correctly, though, because like we'll go through the paragraph and it takes so long that I'm like all right, that was. There's no way he can go through it all again the fast way. Oh yes.
Speaker 2:I just kind of like that.
Speaker 2:All right bud good point when, when given the choice between finishing the lesson or sticking to 15 to 20 minutes. We stick to 15 to 20 minutes because, especially with my second born, I didn't want her getting burned out or overwhelmed, and she was a little more likely to do that. So we did not. We didn't complete our lessons, we'd just break it up into two, and once she learned, like wait, mom, I'm supposed to read it a second time. Like okay, well, when we come back tomorrow you'll read it the second time to start out our lesson. And also something that I did different with that one is I would read it for them in between it or I would read it for them first so they could hear me say all the words, because it seemed to take a little bit of the edge off If they can hear how all the words are supposed to sound, it gave them a little bit more confidence reading through it. I don't think that's an official step in that book, but it helped us a lot when they could just hear it.
Speaker 1:It's not and, yeah, I can. I can see my son struggling because now we're at lesson 50. So we're halfway through and they're getting longer and it's I'm like there's supposed to be 20 minutes a day. There's no way to do this. It takes us a little bit longer to do it, but he is reading it, it's just, yeah, he's he takes a little bit to sound it out. And then, uh, the comprehension he can. They give you a picture at the end of reading this and you are supposed to, you know, cover the picture. And at the end of them reading the sentence, you have prompts where you ask what do you think will be in this picture, so that they can kind of oh all right, well, I have to comprehend what I just read to show what will be there. So, uh, that's, that's fun.
Speaker 2:I like that aspect to it yeah and um with that, like if you feel like it's getting to be too much. So with adeline, we I started with her earlier, um, but when we got to that like lesson 50 ish, it started to get long, she started to get overwhelmed and she was determined to do the whole lesson. So if I was telling her like, oh, we're going to only read half of the story, she was feeling frustrated and defeated. Like instead of feeling like she got a break, she was feeling like she failed. So we just backed it up. Once we got to less than 50 ish and it was too much we just reset at like less than 25 and worked our way through the lessons again. And then the second time we got to like lesson 65 and then she was getting frustrated and we started back at lesson 30 again.
Speaker 2:So I I'm all about like introducing things early and exposing them, but not racing. Like just because I introduced things early, I do not push them to go through things quickly at all. Like we are all about, I want every reading experience to be a positive experience. I want you to feel confident and I want you to feel your confidence growing every day. So if it gets frustrating, we will just back it way up and get back to where it feels fun and lighthearted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Because you have this goal in mind, this 100 lessons, 100 lessons, and so going backwards kind of feels like well, hey, I'm going backwards. But to give them that confidence that now they can probably read it the slow way, so like in their head, say like the you know, and sound that out and then say it as a full word out loud, so sound it out in their head, say it fully out loud and then on to the next word, they can probably go back and then do that the fast way. Their second read through. That makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:And so I think we all have to get out of kind of that OCD part of like, oh my goodness, we can't go backwards because that's not the way it's supposed to be. But if it makes so much sense, why not? Especially if you homeschool, you have all the time in the world. A hundred lessons, you could get through that in three months. If you spent their full kindergarten year doing that, you're going to be done in three months. I mean, why not go back and really master it and give them the confidence?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's been one of the biggest mental shifts for me, like big picture is learning to use curriculum as a tool instead of feeling like I have to follow the rules Like it's. I actually avoided curriculum altogether for the longest time Cause it felt like a cage, like I felt like I had to do it the way the book said and on that book's timeline, but being flexible enough to like use this tool but pay attention to the kid the most, so where you're just using it to accomplish your own goals instead of vice versa.
Speaker 1:That makes sense, so okay. So you talked a little bit about what the children learning reading was about, and that was more tactile, kind of hands-on making fingerprints in sand or that sort of stuff, play-doh.
Speaker 2:It's all on flashcards. They're business-sized flashcards, so we're doing it all just right there. They do have books. I think that you can print out to go with it. I've only ever used the business cards. And how long did that take you? Per day? 20 minutes, I mean. I don't think we ever had a 30 minute day, and that 20 minutes is usually broken up into five minute windows. We're just spending five minutes to see how fast they can go through them, see how comfortable they are with them, and then put it down. Come back to it later. Okay, and you said that was just sounds right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're learning all the alphabet sounds and they are learning how to blend them together. So, like my son just turned three and he is putting together three letter words, and like the children learning reading and the 100 easy lessons, they focus on sound blending right away, which is so important, like learning how to say it slow. So, as you're reading, it's not separate sounds broken up. The focus is how do these sounds blend together?
Speaker 1:I don't ever remember learning reading like this.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't remember learning how to read. That's part of my problem. I was like, how in the world am I going to teach my kids this? I just my mom taught me when I was four and I just remember that I always loved it, but I was terrified to teach my kids.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so funny, I don't, yeah, I don't remember where I learned to read or how, and I wasn't terrified to teach my son, because I was like, if nobody taught me, I mean, I'm still coherent, like I can put together a sentence. I might be a slow reader, but okay and so. So, like, how long did it take you, how many months or weeks did it take, to complete the children learning reading curriculum?
Speaker 2:We. I don't know that I can say we completed. It is like a whole program, but, like I said, I think it's built to take you through reading confidently, so I just used it. I don't know how many lessons I did, I can't say exactly a time cap on that. I just used it as a resource, almost as like. Well, once I get these, I'm going to print off the next flashcards. Then I'll print off the next flashcards. I treated it more like an activity until they were ready for kindergarten.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, so you didn't like purchase pre-K and complete it in a full pre-K year. It was just used as a tool, a resource, to kind of do Does that make sense? Yes, and then the 100 easy lessons. Obviously that can take, depending on how often you go back and repeat some, that could potentially take a whole kindergarten year. I kind of blended it as well.
Speaker 1:I started out the year with all about reading, the pre-reading and a Hagerty phonics book that they use like in school, and that was rough. I mean, I think that helped him a lot, but it was just rough to like get through. He was just not digging doing that, but like cause it was very rigorous, yeah, more like I'm gonna say this, repeat it back to me, and there would be three pages full of, I think like four to five of those categories. So you're looking at 20 different sections that were, you know, doing okay, repeat this and okay, what, what two words rhyme, and it just not, it was dry and he wasn't interested. Uh, and then.
Speaker 1:So I did that for about five months and then I switched to the teacher child to read in 100 easy lessons. So, and then now I'm thinking, gee, this might be a little difficult for him. So I was thinking of going back to the all about reading pre-readings. We were. We just had a little bit left of it and just finishing that up. But now I think I'll do what you said and just go back maybe 20 lessons and redo them.
Speaker 2:And another thing that we did to break it up was just get super simple readers, um to like make it more fun. I got to where we were doing like a lesson one day and then we'd pick a book on the second day and I would read the story so she could hear all the words, and then I'd let her read the story after me, just practicing with words in a way that was fun, um, and helping break up the lessons a little bit more. I let her pick out some books from Barnes and Noble. We got some super simple books from the library and then there's a lot of readers that you can print off where they color in the pictures, and it's just simple words that are repetitive, so that every day they feel like they're accomplishing something and it's not frustrating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because how easy is it to be like, okay, we're doing this 20 minutes a day, every single day, and you fight to get through it.
Speaker 1:And then eventually the day comes where you're like, oh, let's just skip that. Today I don't feel like having the aggravation or the fight, I just want to have a good day and we'll just play instead. And then another day goes by that way, and another day, and then before you know it, you're like, wow, we haven't done anything in like two weeks. So, yeah, we have to find that balance to so that we are doing them the favor of teaching them to read and easily and enjoying it. I'll have to find those easy readers. I've been having trouble, like even the I don't know the ones that like they say easy reading or pre-reading right on them, but I find that still some of the words are like hard or they are written where they're capital and then lowercase where I'm like I wish that they would just have them all in capital right now so that it was kind of easier for him to go through.
Speaker 1:They have to basically learn two alphabets to read.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is true, I will see. I just started connecting with a girl on Instagram. Her whole thing is, I think it's Developing Readers Academy and she has a ton of great resources for phonemic awareness and her whole thing is similar, where she's like you can introduce it young as long as you're making it fun and you're keeping it in bite-sized pieces. So I'll see, I'll message you if I find any, but I think I bet she has some good resources on her website, Okay, great.
Speaker 1:And then from there you go into Pathway Readers. What is that I'm not familiar?
Speaker 2:So Pathway Readers is series of books set in Amish community and why I love it so much. I mean they all have workbooks to go with them to help with reading, comprehension and language arts and punctuation and grammar and all those things. So you're getting more than just reading out of it. But it's really the character development I really so I grew up reading them and the moral dilemmas that the characters go through, the ethical battles, learning about relationships.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like I feel like they respect children more than our culture does, as far as like they hold them to a higher standard. So the kind of things that their characters, their friends, are going through in the story are the exact same things we're trying to parent on. So it feels like a constant reinforcing of the values we're talking about, relationship building skills, and more so than you would even find like on. I mean I'm not against looking for good stuff in TV shows or any of that either, but most of the children's books that I find the lessons are pretty light and fluffy. I mean it's not really challenging them on that deeper level on compassion and like making sacrifices at a young age or helping out around the house. I mean I think America almost frowns on giving children chores and like letting them help out with their siblings and things like that, and I'm very that is so funny.
Speaker 1:My son just walked by the window with the chicken's food going to refill it, as you said that that's beautiful.
Speaker 2:So I include like I was included in helping raise my younger siblings and the foster kids and everybody we had in our house and I was really proud of that, like I felt like my parents respected me through including me in all that. I honestly think I would have been better off had they given me more responsibility. So, with our girls, my seven-year-old has been making breakfast since she was six. She gets up and she fries eggs and she makes ham and they help me scrub toilets. And again, everything is about the atmosphere. We put on fun music, we like dance and laugh and they know that if they help me with chores then we have more time to play together afterwards. They help me with chores, then we have more time to play together afterwards.
Speaker 2:All that to say, I love how this book, the whole series, really reinforces that children are capable of a lot. They ask, like the parents are asking their kids hard questions throughout the lessons and it's just really nice because now my girls are thinking that way and I don't even, as a parent, have to do all of the work because they're wanting to mirror these attributes that their heroes are doing in the books. I mean they meet Rachel and Andrew and Peter, and they get into sibling squabbles and they have the issues with sharing, or they have the issues with bragging in front of their friends or getting embarrassed and their friends are laughing at them. So it just I feel like it really complements what we're trying to do as parents as far as developing their character.
Speaker 1:OK, so this is called Pathway Readers, but are these books like book series or is it a curriculum?
Speaker 2:It's a I mean I think it's called a language arts curriculum. If not language arts, I mean they're just called Pathway Readers on their website. But it's a curriculum designed for kindergarten through eighth grade, and the very first kindergarten book where I loved transitioning straight into that is like half of the book is for you to read. So you read a bulk of the story and then the kid gets to read the other half of the story and it's only a few words on a page for them. Every new word is at the bottom of the page, so you get to talk about the new words before they find it in the story. So you get to like practice it together and then, once they read the story, they're confident about every word that they're saying. And then they get to hear you say the names and the like examples and they're hearing you read it. And now they get to read alongside you their part, and it's just as fun to do the back and forth.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is so cool. I love that and that's kind of like. You know, the Tuttle twins have their series and I love the different morals and stuff that they have in those and they have discussion questions at the back of the book. But this sounds like a little bit more suited for the kindergarten, preschool, like age group, first grader where they're. That would be like a little bit, but it's it's age five through 11. But this, this would be like perfect. Before you go into those, all right, I'm looking at it right now so that I can purchase this. I love this.
Speaker 2:They're not. They're not super easy to find. All right, I'm looking at it right now so that I can purchase this. I love this. They're not. They're not super easy to find. Like the children, learning reading is not a very popular program, but it's worth it. And then these aren't easy to find, but I found them on eBay. Amazon does have them, but I think you have to buy the workbook through the publisher if you want the workbook and their website is like you, you could tell they're not like super into technology or marketing or anything. It is the most basic. Go to their website, purchase here. But it is not a scam, I promise.
Speaker 1:It's just very simple yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. I'm like is this the right place? Um shipping info. Are they in? Oh, they're in Ontario, okay. Um yeah, it is definitely not a very user-friendly website, but that's all right, we'll figure. I'll figure out a good place.
Speaker 2:Amazon does have the readers. I just don't think Amazon has the workbooks.
Speaker 1:I gotcha All right. So you recommend beginning with children learning reading, graduating to teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons and then graduating over to pathway readers and that takes you through how? About how many years? Or are you doing this with multiple ages at the same time, like one book for multiple ages?
Speaker 2:Yeah, or like 100 easy lessons.
Speaker 1:You're just doing that with one child at a time, right? You're not sitting with both your girls doing right.
Speaker 2:Yes, only one child at a time, so they can be exactly where they're at and take as long as they need to for that lesson. We do all of our reading one-on-one, but Pathway Readers does go all the way up through eighth grade. So that will be. I mean, the books are pretty easy to read, so I read like the book for the year. I would read it in a couple of months. Growing up, and my girls seem to be following that same trend, because the stories are very light, easy stories to read. They're fun to read. So they're usually pretty motivated to do that. Every single day, even on days off, they're asking to read those books. All that to say, we'll do it through eighth grade, but we'll probably like do the pathway reader in the first chunk of the year and then do something else for the other chunk of the year.
Speaker 1:Okay, and that's what's nice too, is that, yeah, you can switch it up to, like you know, treehouse schoolhouse. She has a couple different, like a nature study. So this gives you time to, you know, get this done. But then when springtime comes and you really want to do reading about nature and what goes on in the spring and um or Christmas time and you want to do books that are about, you know, you have that flexibility, which is something I absolutely love with homeschooling, that you don't think about until you're in it and you're like well, I have some extra time.
Speaker 1:Even if we don't do curriculum every day, there's still extra time to like, add in other stuff throughout the year and still get it all done, and so that's super cool. So, morgan, thank you for discussing with me today about these three reading curriculums. I got a couple more other curriculums we're going to discuss in different episodes, but anything else you wanted to add, that's all I got for you, all right, thank you. Thank you, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Please consider sharing this podcast, or my main podcast, the Homeschool how To with friends, family, on Instagram or in your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. The more this podcast is shared, the longer we can keep it going and the more hope we have for the future. Thank you,