One of the earliest ways we educate our young children is by teaching them how to read. Reading is the most fundamental area of education. Teaching a child to read will set them up for a lifetime of learning. Many of us don’t feel fully equipped to handle such an important task, however, and can use all the resources we can get! If you are a parent looking to help your child learn to read, these six programs are some of the best (and most successful) you can use.

6 Best Programs for Teaching Children to Read

1. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is a complete, step-by-step program showing parents how to teach their children to read. It’s a sensible, easy-to-follow, and enjoyable way to help your child gain the essential skills of reading. This program contains one hundred lessons. It is fully illustrated and color-coded for clarity. Twenty minutes a day will give your child the basic and more advanced skills needed to become a good reader.

2. Reading Eggs

Reading Eggs is an online program that makes learning to read fun, interactive, and highly rewarding. It is intended for ages 2–13. Reading Eggs was created by a highly experienced team of elementary school teachers, writers, and developers to help children become fluent and proficient readers. The multi-award-winning early learning resource supports your child’s reading journey with carefully designed online reading games and activities that are easy to follow, self-paced, and highly engaging for young learners.

3. Teach Your Monster to Read

Teach Your Monster to Read is an award-winning series of online games that’s helped millions of children learn to read. The game is for children in the first stages of learning to read or for older children who need a bit more practice. Teach Your Monster to Read takes children on a magical journey, meeting colorful characters along the way, and collecting fantastic rewards. As they progress, they rehearse a range of essential reading skills, including matching letters to sounds, blending, and segmenting. They’ll also learn tricky words and to read full sentences. The game runs on any standard laptop or desktop computer (including Apple Macs), and the app works on iPhone, iPad, Android, and Kindle tablets.

4. The Reading Lesson

The Reading Lesson is a bestselling program that teaches young children to read in 20 easy lessons. It is designed as a step-by-step course for parents who want to teach their young children to read at home. The teaching method is based on phonics and word recognition. With its innovative and guided approach, the lessons provide an easy-to-follow recipe for teaching children to read. This program has also been used successfully for children with disabilities.

5. Bob Books

Bob Books is a true first-reader series. It is designed to make helping your child learn to read simple and straightforward. The clean layout, short words, and simple phonics make learning to read a fun and natural step for a child that knows the alphabet. Bob Books was designed to give young children the tools to go from learning letters to reading words. The beginning reader book sets start slowly. They progress from books with three-letter words to books with more than one sentence per page.

6. Phonics Pathways

Phonics Pathways is a best-selling book that teaches reading using sounds and spelling patterns. These sounds and patterns are introduced one at a time and slowly built into words, syllables, phrases, and sentences. Simple step-by-step directions begin every lesson. Additionally, wise and humorous proverbs encourage virtues such as patience, perseverance, honesty, kindness, compassion, courage, and loyalty.