I have been doing Doman with an interspersing of YBCR and lots of read-alouds with my son since he was a few months old. Lately he has been very interested in letters and letter sounds and although he recognizes and reads individual words he is not reading fluently yet, or even really putting words together. So I decided to try “Teach your child to read in 100 Easy Lessons” the first few lessons have gone really well and although he is only 2 1/2 I don’t think conceptually this is at all above his level. I know Doman says that children will intuit the rules of phonics, but I’ve started to think that maybe this will get him there quicker. You know instead of making him guess the rules teaching them to him in a clear factual joyous manner. Anyone have thoughts on this, or been there before?
My son is only 11 months right now so I am doing the Doman method as well as YBCR and of course LR 
. When he gets a bit older if he still needs it I will add in some phonics.
My daughter is now learning how to read and we do a mix of sight reading using LR and phonics. She really loves www.starfall.com
I have heard great things about the book “Teach your child to read in 10 minutes a day” I am waiting to get this from the library.
I feel that every child will learn differently and some just may need that phonics boost to really set them free.
Hi Linzy.
I used the GD method with my three children and they did intuit the rules of phonics. This can only be achieved my showing a lot of words and it takes time. I am convinced that introducing phonics at this stage will make your child a slower reader. This is because there will be a tendency to read the letters and construct each word which is frustrating and slow. Words are the basic units of language to a child young enough to be taught by the flash method. Obviously most approaches will work but the GD approach leads to fluent and rapid reading.
These are the words that a started with: Body Parts- hand, nose, leg , knee etc. Family-mummy, daddy, dog, cat etc Nouns/Objects- chair, table, door etc. Babies possessions- plate, doll, car etc Verbs- sitting, standing, crawling, running etc Colours-red, blue, green etc
I used to carry my children around the house and garden to teach the names of as many things as possible matching the word to the item.
Once you have taught around 20-50 words you can review by making structured phrases and sentences. These cards can be presented very quickly and it is the speed of presentation that maintains interest and leads to speed reading. This would not be possible if each word is decoded at a conscious level as encouraged by phonic tuition. I spent a lot of time simply reading to my children with no desire to teach anything. They would happily listen to me read book after book. Obviously read books that are interesting and adjust your reading pace to maintain interest-try reading a little faster.
You could consider introducing groups of words like- sat, mat, bat, fat… pot, hot, cot… bed, fed, red… but i would show each card for no more than a second-faster if possible and avoid drawing attention to the letters. It is probably more interesting to avoid words that are similar in structure-similarity might actually make the task more challenging!
Please read other posted items under reading that are related-sorry but i am not sure how to attach links from forum. I have previously posted details on reading schemes.
Hope that i have been of some help, Chris.
Thanks, yes we also have used the starfall website and he loves playing the word games. We actually ordered the how to teach your baby to read kit from doman and did the whole thing along with many of our own words and although he can recognize many of the words on the cards he just doesn’t seem to be able to transpose it to books or combine them when reading sentences he just picks out a word he knows. We’ve been fairly consistent with the program for 2 years and he just is not reading yet, so although I learned how to read at 3 with something similar to natural reading, I thought adding phonics while still doing the cards might help my son make the missing mental connection. I just hope I don’t set him back.
Hi,
I remember having similar concerns when i initially used this method. All of my children started with the Peter and Jane Lady bird books-these introduce the most commonly used words and separate words from the pictures. I read these and other books to them daily and around their third birthday they started to read books independently. The exposure to words and phrases had made this possible and rapid progress was made once they had read their first book. Structured reading schemes that introduce words gradually played a significant part in the rapid progress that was made. I didn’t review all of the words that i had taught and there were times when i was aware that they were unable to read some of the earlier words. It is important to continue introducing new words, even if old words are forgotten as each word provides information required to intuit the rules.
Have fun, Chris.
My daughter is only 14 months old and I have been using Little Reader and flashcards with her since she was 12 months.
I do plan to introduce phonics to her at some stage, probably around 2 to 2 and half years. Since she will have had a long time to learn words perhaps she will already have figured out the phonics, but I’d like her to know the important sounds anyway to help her read words she does not yet know. I plan on using a “building game” concept to teach her basically teaching her to uncover the word and say the part that she sees (b- ba - bat rather than b-a-t = bat) with the phonomes uncovered as a single letter sound.
I do not know why there are no videos of children younger than two reading stories on the internet. This has fascinated me for a long time because I have seen children of this age be able to read phrases and words that should enable them to read a story too (they know all the words, but they cannot read the book) I believe it may have something to do with maturation, possibly with size of the print - but do these children listen to stories all the way through too? I imagine a child should be able to listen to a book much longer than the ones they are reading purely from a concentration point of view. I’d love to know what others think about this.
Firstly, here’s our opinion on the phonics debate:
http://www.brillbaby.com/teach-baby/reading-whole-language-phonics.php
Do also see this thread:
http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-to-read/the-phonics-debate/
The point I would make here is that phonics can be taught or introduced in many different ways. For example, you could even introduce phonics concepts without really ‘teaching’ phonics, such as showing groups of similar sounding words, which would help your child intuit phonics rules more easily.
I do agree that teaching full-blown phonics at an early age would slow down progress and make it a more painful and uninteresting process, but it can be done gently like described above and I think the sooner we do that the better. Ultimately, like almost everything, we need to take our cue from our child, and tailor the lessons according to interest levels and ability.
Very interesting discussion. I admit I have not been very open to teaching phonics as I have been to several Doman/IAHP courses. However, my son is now 2.5 years old and would like to introduce phonics in a subtle way. Does anyone recommend a good book/resource/word list for getting started with phonics… Thanks,
Marie.
I just posted a review about a product that teaches phonics through reading here 
I used with my son Doman metod from the time he was very small and he honestly enjoyed it.I still do inteligence programs and new languages.He is 3 now.At about 18 months we finished YBCR and started to read home made readers with the vocabulary we covered.But he didn’t like that very much,instead he developed this new love for letters and playing with words.So going along with it I started with him phonics while having fun playing with words ,blends and sounds.A friend pointed me to this great site that introduced phonics in a fun and interactive way http://www.starfall.com/.It’s design for older kids but my son loved it.Now he is reading on his own very well .I guess I found phonics as a helpful stepping stone especially that I’m not native english speaker.And by no means it undermines Doman metod.
By the way on this same site you will find lots of very nice readers and it’s all no charge.
Thanks for the great tips and resources!!