I’d like to ask your opinions about teaching phonics. My daughter is 12 months old, and a few days ago we put on Preschool Prep Meet the Phonics Letter Sounds. She loved it! She especially loves “a” and “i” and even says some of the letter sounds while watching. My question is the following: is she too young for learning the letter sounds? Should I hold off on phonics and concentrate on sight words?
We just started the meet the sight words as well.
Thanks for your input!
If she likes it keep showing it. Preschool prep is great and many of us can credit it with some successes. They have apps as well BTW
Thanks for your input! She definitely enjoys it, and today she also said the “b”, “d”, “o”, and “t” sounds while watching. We have been skipping the word building section thus far and doing only the letter sounds, the vowel song, and the phonics song. I have shown her the silent e portion a couple of times because she seems to really like that character. The word building section seems like it might be difficult concept for babies to grasp at this age…
What do you think?
I’ll continue with the sight words as well.
I downloaded a couple of the apps. I’m hoping she loves them just as much!
In addition, we just got her the leapfrog letter factory phonics toy to reinforce, as I’ve seen positive reviews on this product on the forum.
hello ELeducation ! , learning phonetic sounds via leap frog amuse my kid while watching the letters jump and play its sound…, I would recommend to continue phonics . even my kid is happy to say aaaa asteroid… and then learn the word sounds too. Also they do master letters sounds pretty quickly …so get prepared to quench their next thirst 
By the way glad that you do ‘sight words’ separately, they are one of the best RB simulators for 12 months old 
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- happy learning !
cheerymom :hi5:
Thanks for the encouragement! I will continue with both the phonics and sight words then. Today she recognized a “d” and an “n” on a random sign and said the sounds. Unbelievable!
I’m glad you mentioned right brain. I’m trying to get some more ideas for right brain besides Tweedlewink (which is excellent).
Hi all, my elder child is 3 years old and she seem to be poor in phonics, despite showing her some of those free apps. She don’t seem very much interested.
I myself know nuts about phonics and can’t help feeling lost of how to go about teaching her phonics to get started.
Any advise here on how I can start and any other resources or useful apps I can engage in?
Thanks much.
Starfall.com is a great free resource for learning letter sounds/phonics. Many others have had success with the Leapfrog videos and the Leapfrog fridge phonics magnets. There’s also a few Preschool Prep meet the phonics DVDs that are wonderful.
I know there are members here who love Hooked on Phonics and their app as well.
Reading Bear is another great resource that I believe belongs to one of our members and has been mentioned many times.
Readingbear.org is definitely a great place to begin on the phonics journey and it’s free! It will teach phonics from the beginning to the end and also teaches blending, a skill little ones often struggle with when beginning with ohonics.
I like staff all too but all the kids I know prefer preschool prep DVDs. They even pick preschool prep overs magic school bus and that is a high honour 
So basically I let her to learn on the pronunciation of the alphabet first?
The mentioned free apps teaches on the pronunciation right? I bought some phonics book but it’s more of practice than teaches on the sounds of the letters.
I don’t really dare to buy dvd per say… Worrying about the version of the eve player compatible as well.
I just want to add, if she likes Preschool Prep, she might also enjoy Alphablocks - there’s over 100 x4 minute episodes of Alphablocks on youtube.
Mandabplus3, my little girl absolutely adores preschool prep videos I’ve noticed that reading bear is often suggested as an excellent resource for phonics but haven’t actually tried it myself. Does it teach letter sounds?
MamaOfWill, I was not familiar with Alphablocks. Thanks for the suggestion! It looks very entertaining and educational. I can’t wait to show my little girl
MamaOfWill, I just wanted to let you know that I played the first Alphablocks 3 minute episode of the alphabet (where each letter basically introduces themselves by making its letter sound), and my baby LOVED it! She was laughing the whole way through. Thank you for introducing us to this additional free resource for teaching letter sounds and phonics
Starfall was the best that I found for teaching letter sounds other than preschool prep videos.
On this topic, I m riding on to ask at what age can we start to introduce phonics to a baby? I have a baby girl of 4 months plus… And I recalled a member here already started exposing phonics to her 12 months old child.
Thanks much.
Korrale4kq, thanks! We did starfall a few times, and she really enjoys it. I think doing preschool prep and reinforcing with starfall and the others will help her learn her letter sounds in no time
starfall n readingbears are best ! 
, below once are good if you are looking for something varying :
http://www.time4learning.com/scope-sequence/preschool.shtml
http://jollylearning.co.uk/
thanks ! :hi5:
happylearning,
cheerymom
I wanted to give you all an update on our progress! My daughter at 13 months after a month of watching the preschool prep letter sounds and meet the sight words disc 1 a few times a week, she knows and can verbalize 15 of the letter sounds (upper and lower case) and 9 of the sight words on disc 1!! Of course, we have been reinforcing by playing with bath letters, leapfrog phonics toy, and writing letters for her on the magna doodle, but I am in complete shock. I suspect she knows more because she tries to say them, but the sounds/words aren’t as clear.
She points at letters in random places and says their sounds.
So exciting!
Just in case anyone is following this thread, I wanted to share more exciting updates! Yesterday, we moved on to Meet the Sight Words 2 (just the first two mini lessons) because I could tell she was bored with disc 1. Today I put on disc 2 again because she was so enthusiastic about it yesterday, and she read 3 of the words before they were spoken: my, they, & but. You all were right about how quickly they can absorb this information, and this is only what she’s choosing to share! From now on I will only show disc 1 occassionally as a refresher.
I forgot to mention in my last post that we also do Starfall.com sometimes, and we started meet the letters sometime last month as well.
Now that baby girl (14 months) knows most of her letter sounds, should I go ahead and start reading bear or should I wait for her speaking skills to advance? Right now she verbalizes all letter sounds except e, g, j, and u. She only says about 15 actual words regularly in our everyday activities, not including animal sounds, at this point, but she repeats random words that I say when I’m talking to her or someone else and she’ll read the sight words from the first disc of the meet the sight words when she feels like it and some from the second disc. Is she ready for reading bear or should I keep doing Starfall and meet the phonics letter sounds some more before starting? Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance
Wow! She is doing great! 
I haven’t heard of anyone starting Reading Bear at 14 months, anyway not on a regular, consistent basis. But I don’t see why it would hurt anything. Even if she can’t verbalized what she knows, she could still learn the lessons. Try it for a week or so, and if she likes it, keep going! Keep us posted! I love reading your updates, by the way! Your little one is only a couple months older than my little one. I am very impressed by her progress! Keep it up!