Early Reading - Wheaton,IL

I have the Hooked On Phonics- Learn to Read system. My son started reading at 3.5 years old. He wanted to be like his sissy. I had it with her and I thought I would give it a shot with him when he said he wants to read. He loved it and at 4 years old is a really good reader. The program begins with identifying the alphabet, the sounds they make, clear to reading books. You can skip beginning parts if your daughter already knows it but they are there in case she doesn't.

i really loathe the usborne books.
we did dr suess, and a lot of fairy tales. the real ones. nursery rhymes, good old mother goose with all her creepy fascination.
we made our own flash cards too, but honestly i had much better luck with just reading than all the 'techniques' surrounding teaching kids to read.
get GOOD stories. ones you like. chances are your daughter will like them too.
khairete
S.

I suggest getting tub letters (Target sells them) and every night in the bath take the letters and say the sounds and put them together on the wall. I did this with my son and he learned to read really fast like this. It is also a phonics approach rather than a "whole word" approach. Most schools teach by whole word meaning the kids memorizes sight words. IMO it is ridiculous. I do not mean to brag but both my kids are among the best readers in their school (I know this because they do a pull out of a few top kids each week for enrichment and my kids go) and I taught them by phonics and sounding out letters. They were reading the "sight" words of the sixth grade list in Kindergarten!! So anyhow, start with simple 3 letter words like cat and dog. Then do blends with th, sh, etc. You just have to make it fun. As far as the Bob books-one of my boys loved them and the other thought that they were totally stupid. If your child likes them that is all that counts-they are not meant for adults. Go to Barnes and Noble and see what they have. You can use any book really. There are lots of levelled readers out there.

Oh-and I 100% second the advice of a pp for Starfall.com....amazing site for reading!!!!

The Kindergarteners in our district learn to read using Jolly Phonics. There is an action for every sound - even some blends have their own actions. My kids picked up reading and writing quickly - most kids do.

http://www.jollylearning.co.uk/

I enjoyed making our own flashcards with the kids by cutting out pictures and letters from magazines, gluing them to 3 by 5's and then laminating them with clear shelf paper. The kids would help and it made learning the phonics lessons much easier. www.starfall.com is a wonderful site to help with early reading skills too.

When it comes to reading though, there are 2 sides to this coin. You don't have a choice but to pick easy readers for her to read to you. But it doesn't sound like she's ready for that. What you read to her is designed to unlock the world to her. You get her excited by reading cool stories to her that she's not ready for reading herself. But tell her how when we keep doing our phonics lessons together, she'll be able to read this to you one day soon. My husband bought the entire Wizard of Oz series and we have hundreds of reading story collections and reading textbooks I've bought at thrift stores and nicer sets we've bought. Just make it fun. I love ALL books. My husband is really into older books. My daughter even enjoys looking at encyclopedias....she's 10 though :)

Don't know how you feel about her learning on the computer, but www.starfall.com is another option.