Reading is an important life skill to teach our kids. We taught Gab how to read before he was 3 years old. We taught him to read with phonics at first and then used sight words later on.
Teaching Phonics means teaching the sound of the letter or letter groups. Thus, the child learns to read letter by letter to form the word, compared to sight words where the child learns the word as a whole.
By teaching the sound, this means that the letter A is not taught by saying “Aye” but by the sound “ah”. Or the letter D is not taught by saying “Dee” but by the sound “duh”.
For example, to read CAT as phonics, we need to teach the child to read it letter by letter as “cah” – “ah” – “tuh”. And finally, teach the child to “blend” all the letters to form the word CAT.
Teaching Phonics can be intimidating but this methods prepares the child to read any word. With sight words, the child can be limited to a certain word list only. They may have a hard time reading other words not included in the word list.
However, there are words in the English language that doesn’t follow phonics. Words like the, go, was, and you doesn’t follow phonetics. This is where sight words can help in reading.
How to teach Phonics
Teaching phonics is often done by stages. It starts by learning the letter sounds and combining the sounds to form the words.
STAGE 1: Letter sounds. Teach how each letter sounds like. We used Youtube videos to teach this like the Phonics Song. Just 1 or 2 videos that we keep on repeating everyday for several weeks. There are also free apps that you can download about phonics. Pick the ones without the annoying ads on it.
Phonic Toys like LeapFrog Letter Factory is also a nice tool to make learning just like playing.
STAGE 2: Blending. After the child knows each letter sound, it is time to blend the letters together to form the word. This can take time, so be patient.
Start with simple 3-letter words with CVC format or consonant-vowel-consonant. Be sure to choose words that are phonetic. A good tool to use is a phonic wheel and books that uses phonics like BOB Books.
We mostly used phonic wheels since the blending are related to each other. We made phonic wheels for words like bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, and sat. This clearly emphasizes the differences in the letter sounds. Click here on how to make phonic wheels at home.
STAGE 3. Clusters. These are more challenging phonic sounds since it combines two letters together to make one sound. Examples are letter combinations of consonants like CH, SH, and TH; or letter combinations of vowels like EE, OA, and OO. These are also called digraphs.
I suggest taking more time and build reading confidence on Stage 2. The digraphs in Stage 3 will come naturally once the child is confident with his blending skills.
The goal for us was not just to teach how to read, but to foster the love for reading. Thus, enjoy and have fun in each stage. Don’t rush it. It took us several weeks in learning the letter sounds. Then more months to practice blending. Stage 3 just came naturally for us after reading several books.
Enjoy reading. Enjoy the journey.
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