We are using The Ordinary Parents’ Guide to Teaching Reading for two kids so far and love how simple and effective it is. My oldest just started 1st grade and we are on lesson 190. We’ve been using it for 8 months. It was so hard at first and now she’s doing multiple lessons a day. My 4.5 year old is on lesson 80 (she was eager to start) and we are now slowing way down and spreading each lesson over a couple of days. You don’t have to use the letter tiles and index cards. We only did a few times and it just didn’t seem necessary so we stopped. We just stick a post-it note on any lesson that is challenging (per the book). The ‘two review and one new’ technique seems to work. We’ve added used decodable readers from eBay like the ones that go along with All About Reading, Christian Liberty Nature Reader, MFW Bible reader, etc. for additional practice. We love this program! It’s so plain and simple. My kids get distracted with too many colors and pictures. This allows us to learn and move on.

We tried 100 Easy Lessons, but my children ask "why" certain letters make certain amounts and why they make multiple sounds. For this reason, as well as dyslexia, we stick to Orton Gillingham based reading programs. Tried LOE and love it, but one of my sons doesn't and it's so intensive teaching 2 different levels and 3 other older kids. This year I purchased OPGTR and Reading Lessons Through Literature to see which would fit our needs better. For a more gentle approach, I'm leaning towards RLTL and combining my boys.

We prefer letter tiles to an app!!! We tried an app and it wasn’t as hands on enough for my kids!!! The stuff I need won’t. Put me off as I know it’s worth it!!! The classical one looks awesome!!!

We haven’t had any problems with the letter sound “hints” in 100 easy lessons so far. As a separate activity for learning long vowels, my daughter marks words with dry erase marker to determine which vowel makes the long sound and which vowels are silent - I have her cross the silent ones out. So she understands that some letters are silent in words and accepted that explanation of why some letters are small in the 100 easy lessons book. We also practice reading for 5-10 minutes a day with Bob books and other readers that don’t have all the sound hints and she doesn’t have any issue with the normal print. She does get a bit hung up on different punctuation marks but I just tell her to relax and not take them too seriously and I will teach her what they mean later. 😅 I do feel like 100 easy lessons puts a lot of emphasis on memorizing common words which isn’t necessarily a bad thing and helps my daughter read more quickly, but she is really good at memorizing them and slacking a bit with sounding them out. I’m wanting to start in one of the middle lessons of ordinary parents guide after we finish 100 easy lessons to hopefully get her more help with understanding spelling rules and sounding things out.