Name: Thrive! NCHE Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-05-22T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-05-24T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Winston-Salem, NC

This topic has 18 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 5 months ago by janna.

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November 18, 2011 at 11:46 am
dmccall3
Participant
Would you recommend this? Is it in line with or against CM principles?
November 18, 2011 at 11:50 am
Heather
Participant
I used it with my oldest and she became a great reader by lesson 70 so we put it down and started reading real books. As far as teaching reading it is good, but my daughter has always been a terrible speller. I have a friend who used it with her oldest two…who are also terrible spellers. I can’t help but think there may be a link to bad spelling and 100 EZ. My dd has come a long way just by using spelling wisdom this year. I am using The Reading Lesson with my youngers and they are doing great!
November 18, 2011 at 12:07 pm
dmccall3
Participant
Does Delightful Reading use a different philosophy, eliminating the result of being a bad speller?
I learned to read using the “sound it out” method and I, too, am a terrible speller. Interesting.
November 18, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Misty
Participant
I just wanted to chime in here. I have used this with 5 children. They have all learned to read very well with it. I have only 3 at this point who do formal spelling and 2 are very good spellers and one is average(normal). So I don’t find that it to be corlated. Also, my friends have used it with there 5 children, 4 of whom spell and they are all average to high spellers.
I love the book, the layout and how it works. Just wanted to let you know that others have used it and not had a problem with spelling. I actually had learned some new things using it :0)
November 18, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Monica
Participant
I used it with my 6YO and I really liked it. He’s not spelling yet, of course, but we really liked it for reading.
November 18, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Sonya Shafer
Moderator
The videos on the Delightful Reading page might be helpful in comparing and contrasting the two approaches. One video walks you through Charlotte Mason’s approach to teaching reading; the other discusses her approach to phonics.
Hope this helps!
November 18, 2011 at 2:53 pm
my3boys
Participant
I have the book and tried to use it (it was free) but could not figure out how it worked. I guess it just went against my own way of thinking. We did use Sing Spell Read and Write for quite awhile then switched to Reading Reflex (that was with my middle ds). My youngest and I are enjoying Delightful Reading right now. He’s not completely ready for “heavy” lessons, but we are slowly making progress with the ‘at’ sound adding ‘m’, ‘c’, ‘b’, etc. Each lesson he is remembering more and more….but we are taking it very slow…I’m just taking his lead.
HTH
November 18, 2011 at 3:16 pm
WendyB
Member
I’ve taught my 2 oldest to read with 100 EZ. My eldest,( age 21) is an excellent speller who only had dictation lessons for spelling. His spelling ability was always above average. My eldest dd(age 20) was a poor speller. She did dictation lessons and a separate spelling program. We also did a lot of visual work while doing nature study via “Object Teaching”. This was something that I implemented after reading about it in a PNUE article. She is now an OK speller. She was a speech therapy kid and late reader. I do not believe that 100 EZ and their spelling ability were related.
I attempted to use 100 EZ with my middle son. He had severe speech motor issues, and our primary means of communication for 5 years was sign language. 100 EZ was unsuccessful for him. CM style reading lessons were an epic failure for him. He needed a slow and systematic phonics approach to learn to read. I am doing the visual work exercises with him and we have recently begun some simple dictation. I am also doing AAS with him. He is an OK speller. Spelling frustrates him. He is able to spell although it is tediously slow at times.
I’m currently using 100 EZ with my 6 yo. We do about 10 or so lessons with 100 EZ then spend a week doing CM style reading lessons. It is a too early to make an accurate assesment of her spelling ability. However, with the little bit of spontaneous writing it appears that her spelling is OK. Charlotte takes after her eldest brother and could probably learn to read with any method that I wanted to teach her.
100 EZ lessons is not a CM style reading program. However, it could easily fit into a CM style homeschool due to its short lessons. I obviously like it since it is the first resource that I implement with my children. In my family, spelling ability was more correlated with speech than reading method. Most families that I know who struggle with spelling with one or more children tend to have a parent who describes themselves as a poor speller.

HTH
November 18, 2011 at 3:34 pm
pangit
Participant
I would not use it again. We actually never finished it. My oldest hated it. Reading class time was terrible for both of us. I don’t find it to explain a lot of the reason why a letter says a certain sound over a different one. And towards the end it seemed to me to be just doing word memorization. My youngest did fine with it, but towards the end didn’t like it so much either. She was reading so well that we just quit using it. She is only 5 now and reads like a 2nd/3rd grader. She spends lots of her free time reading and sounding out new words. She has done and is still doing a lot of self teaching.
When I quit using 100EZ I started using Progressive Phonics (progressivephonics.com). It is free online. I don’t like all the stories, but we’d just skip those ones. They are very twaddly, but they did the job and made a HUGE difference in my DD reading.
I have just started All About Spelling with the girls. We are still on the first step and I love how it immediately teaches all the sounds. I wish I’d started this earlier. If I were to do it again, I’d start with All About Spelling and maybe Progressive Phonics or something similiar.
November 18, 2011 at 3:52 pm
suzukimom
Participant
It isn’t CM style. I’d love to try Delightful Reading but got 100EZ lessons for free recently.
With my son, I used a different phonics program… and he bogged down after a while…. sounding out was SO much work. It took a long time for him to learn how to blend…. so we started reading the old Dick and Jane books which had many repetitions of words… and he got much better at reading. That said, he is 8 (about grade 3 age), and I’m not sure he reads at a grade 3 level. He started the reading at about age 4
I did the same thing with my daughter, although she started at the age of 2 by listening in to her brothers lessons (then doing her own at a slower pace) – she is not 6 yet and reads at about the same level as her brother.
So then I was given 100EZ recently. (I had looked at it in the library way back and thought no…. but when I got it for free I looked at it again.)
My 3yo started asking to learn how to read, so I got it out. She is only on about lesson 20 so far – and we are taking it at her speed. She asks for the lessons each day (she wants to do school like her brother/sister.) And here are my thoughts.
I like how it has “tasks” that build up various skills needed to read (using phonics). It uses rhyming. It teaches them to say a word slowly, then say it fast. It teaches the letter sounds. It teaches how to sound-out a word. It teaches how to find a word. So far it seems to be working. (Oh, we are skipping the writing exercies….)
I am sure the effectiveness will vary from child to child.

November 18, 2011 at 4:00 pm
thepinkballerina
Participant
I love 100EZ! I used it with our now 8 1/2 yr old and now 7 year old when they both were 5 yrs. It took us about 9 mos plus to complete. I feel it doesn’t affect their spelling at all. The book weans them off the special letters towards the end. They learn to spell by either seeing it in print or sounding the word out. I think bothphonics and site reading are equally important.
If the lessons were too long (they go through the reading twice) I split the lesson up into 2 days. I look forward to using it with my 4 year old next school year who seems to pick up things more easily than her older sisters!
Ps We also skipped the writing part and I checked it out from our library first befor I purchased our own copy.
November 18, 2011 at 5:13 pm
dmccall3
Participant
I saw 100EZ at a friend’s house today. It seemed like a game and a lot of fun. Is Delightful Reading fun or more like serious lessons? Anyone know? Sonya?
Thanks everyone!
Dana
November 18, 2011 at 5:24 pm
MamaSnow
Participant
I haven’t seen or used 100EZ so can’t comment on that, but we used Delightful Reading for awhile. (We stopped mostly because dd was reading fairly fluently already and we had gotten to the place where I didn’t feel like we need formal phonics lessons anymore, not because I didn’t like the approach). She LOVED DR. She enjoyed playing around with the word tiles and such. So, to her, it was like a game. I almost felt a little guilty when we dropped it because she enjoyed it so much. We have recently started AAS which has the letter tiles too though, so I guess all’s well that ends well!) It was definetely better than the phonics book we started with (Phonics Pathways) that bogged her down VERY quickly.
FWIW,
Jen
November 18, 2011 at 5:26 pm
dmccall3
Participant
Interesting. What is AAS?
November 18, 2011 at 5:53 pm
pangit
Participant
All About Spelling