I found this article and it would make sense since children learn to speak in sentences without us teaching them grammar.
When we set out to teach babies from 3 months through 3 years old how to read, we do it using the whole word method. This is also known as sight-reading. There is a lot of controversy about the subject of sight reading in older children, but what some people might not know is that although we use the whole word method, through this exposure to the written word, your baby is also learning phonics.
When you begin to teach your baby to read, try not to show them words that start with the same letter in the same set. This is only a suggestion to be followed in the very beginning. Once your baby has seen 50 words or more, you can start to purposely group words that follow a certain phonetic pattern together. This is a natural way to reinforce phonics into your baby’s reading program.
You can easily accomplish this by showing words that all start with the same letter. You can then show words that have the same digraphs, for example, words that have “ch” in them. You can show words like chicken, church, beach, and punch. Your baby will naturally absorb the language and the patterns in this way.
Grouping words into sets is not necessary. It is just a suggestion for parents that wish to further enforce the learning of phonics while teaching their babies to sight-read. Without ever grouping patterns together, your baby will still intuit the rules of phonics on their own. Babies learn phonics on their own due to their marvelous developing brains. The brain is able to decode the patterns of the language effortlessly when reading is introduced before 3 years old. When it comes to teaching babies to read, earlier is better.
