There seems to have been a lot of discussion about phonics on here lately, so I wondered if we could share personal experiences.
My daughter Laurana is 2 years and 8 months old. She has an enormous sight word vocabulary and can read simple sentences and pick words out of books and any other place. While she will read very short books, her concentration span is not long enough to read longer stories.
I started teaching phonics with the alphabet at about 18 months teaching only the letter sounds - to this day she only knows some of the letter sounds and does not know the alphabet in order. Around 24 months she started reading letters in words to me. One word I remember her sounding out very early on was “opposites” I have tried teaching her blending and while she may have picked it up she is not showing me very often.
Today I started with the Sonlight phonics readers (Readers K) and found she was sight reading the words, so to try to get the phonics in I got her to type the story onto the computer (she loves typing and will type words if I tell her what letters to type. This gave me the chance not only to do phonics but also to explain what full stops and exclamation marks are and also when we use capital letters.
I plan to continue doing this series in a similar way and then move on with The Ordinary Parents guide to reading teaching the conce[ts without drilling but just explaining either by typing or pointing out the rule in trext she is already sight reading.
What are you doing or hwhat have you done with your own child?