Hello,
As I have posted before, I’m doing EL with my twins since they were 12 mo. Now they are 17 mo, and we are really making progress in different fields. My little girl can sightread a lot of words in English and Spanish, recognises the numerals up to 10, shapes (2D and 3D), she’s reading all the notes in Little Musician, etc. All this is quite “normal” because this is what I’ve been teaching them every day during these five months. But yesterday she really surprised me by saying almost the whole alphabet (she missed 4 or 5 letters). And this is something that I just had shown them two or three times because I thought it was too abstract for their age.
So, my question is, given the fact that she knows the alphabet and that we speak Spanish, which is simpler in terms of phonics than English, do you think I should turn to phonics in teaching her to read in Spanish and keep the sightwords for English?
And what should I do with my boy, as I don’t know if he’s learnt the alphabet or not? (he doesn’t perform at all) I try to teach them at the same time, because I have a full time job and we don’t have much time during the day.
Thank you very much for your time and advices, I really appreciate the help that you always provide in this forum.
Just introduce a few youtube phonics letter sound videos and keep teaching sight words. You can teach both at the same time, there is really no issue with incorporating phonics and sight reading. At 17 months, I would do both. Check out http://www.youtube.com/user/TeachingMyToddlers/videos?view=1&flow=grid and check out the “phonics” and “spanish” playlist. The Spanish playlist has the alphabet as well.
Leapfrog Letter Factory is another good way to introduce letter sounds, just keep at it and they’ll know them before you do. If you are interested in that, I can dig up a link to print off some free flashcards to go with the Letter Factory video. Are you using the latest version of LR?
Oh, and I always just taught my son the same as my daughter for the most part, with the exception of deliberately teaching him letters and letter sounds around 14 months. She already knew hers. I just played youtube clips a few times a day and it only took a month or two. For everything else, I did not differentiate at that age.
I’m using the latest curriculum from LR now, baby is not yet interested with phonics, she moves away everytime the pattern phonics lesson starts 
Thank you very much TmT, I will have a look at your videos.
We are using the last version of LR, and many times they also lose interest during the phonics sessions, or the girl tries to read the words in Spanish… 
(good news is that she succeeds).
So, I will emphasize phonics in Spanish and continue with sight words in both English and Spanish.
I forgot to mention that some parents color code language lessons in LR. Now, of course that will not translate over to books that are printed in black ink, but initially it will create a distinction. Just an idea!
Larry Sanger explained in details how he taught his son to read phonics in English. You could read here
http://larrysanger.org/2010/12/baby-reading/
Hope this helps!
My daughter also dislikes the Pattern Phonics section of LR and turns her head away as soon as it comes on.
Is it possible to insert pictures into this section like the other sections? Or are there files available to download as custom content that use the pattern phonic words but make it a bit more interesting?
I am also thinking of using Dad Dudes method of flash cards to do it, but maybe just keeping it electronic as physical cards are a huge distraction for us at the moment