If you decided to take the plunge and teach your child to read without using any formal program - welcome to my world! It isn't has hard as it may seem. Only one of my children had a formal reading program.
Though sometimes the Type A half of my brain feel a PLAN is needed. In order to appease her (me?) I made one. I may or may not follow it. Children are all different, and I have learned more and more with each child. These (along with the simple 10 steps) are 'more like guidelines'.
Ok so at this point I have a child who is up to step 7. She can read simple short vowel words, knows the, a, I, and is ready for more. We need to learn more sight words, and we need to add in some fancy rules.
Up until now, I have spent more time focusing on her pronunciation of words than on her reading. We seem to be at a tipping point, she can make most sounds necessary for words, all she needs is the final habit of putting the sounds together properly for each word (without me having to prompt her). Actually I am finding her more of a challenge than many other kids I taught to read due to her language problems. I did have another kid who learned to enunciate late, but he also waited longer to learn to read.
Each week we borrow several books from the library to 'share'. Meaning I read some words, she reads some words. She has a very short attention span, so while the general idea is that she reads one word per page, I never get upset if she stops partway through. I usually preview the book before we borrow it, and I read each page quickly to myself, while she looks at the pictures, to find the word she can read. I sometimes put my finger over the word so that I don't accidentally read it!
My basic plan is to work on sounds/words in the following in this order:
Long vowel words - When there are two vowels, the first one says it's name. covers ai, ee, ae, and VcV (silent E words.Or Vowel consonant Vowel) I expect to be on this for a month or more. If it comes up in a book we will do AY as well (y likes to pretend to be a vowel)
Short words - he, be, me While the formal rule is that 'no consonant is after the vowel' I prefer to call them 'itty bitty words' so small the e likes to say his name to feel important.
CH - Chickens! We are prolly getting chickens for a project this summer, I figured having them might help her practice both saying ch and reading it.
ir/ur/er - They all say /r/ so we might as well learn them together.
OO - both /ew/ and uhh as in hoot, and hook. I usually ask a kid to sound them out both ways and guess which one is the right word. (we might make a 'nook cook book')
SH - currently she cannot make the sound /sh/ so learning how to read it will be of limited importance, however I am sure the sound comes up on many simple words (ship, wish, etc). Though truthfully none of my own children could make that sound until much later in age (I just checked Little Man can say it)
After that I will reassess how she is doing and make a new list.
Notes - I do not count ING as a separate 'sound' I have never had a kid who couldn't blend the letters and come up with the sound on their own. The same goes for ck, ll, and tt.
While we are working on the shared reading we will also be doing many free printable pages from Starfall.com to work on phonics (initial sound, final sound, rhyming, spelling) and of course plenty of reading just for fun (and reading to Daddy). We also will continue to work on her speech, playing games with the alphabet, and computer fun.
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