Call Her Blessed

Yes, Valerie Bendt is the author of Reading Made Easy. I have just completed this book with my son, who is 8. We took about 2 years to work through the entire book. What a sense of accomplishment he had upon its completion! I must say, we could have skipped off of it about half way through, because he was reading from other books by then. However, we continued using RME's lessons to increase his confidence and his reading skills.

I have also been using RME with my 6yo son and 4 yo son. It's funny how different each child is. There's much I could say about how each of them interacts with the material, but suffice it to say, that RME can be easily modified "on the fly" during each reading session with each child. I have found this book to be such an inexpensive, yet invaluable asset to me as a teaching mother.

As a side note, our daughter (who was an only child for 6.5 years) learned to read with NO curriculum or phonics instruction whatsoever. We simply read all the time, about everything we wanted to know about, she and I. She picked up on reading as a four year old. As life got so busy when we began having our sons (we now have 4 about 2 years apart) then there is no way that I could afford to spend the kind of one-on-one time that our daughter received. However, RME makes it easy to achieve simple daily progress, at each boy's level. They each enjoy this reading time with Mommy and I love experiencing their growth in reading skills with them.