My little brother, Philip, is learning to read! The site we use is here:
Starfall Site It introduces different reading at appropriate places. In ABCs, the child learns the letters & their primary sounds, the short sound songs (based on popular nursery and folk songs), the Letter Song (based on the alphabet song but has sounds as well - so takes a bit longer), and the letters in sign language. In Learn To Read, there are skill-building games, entertaining stories, and either movies or introductions to diagraphs (/sh/, /wh/, /th/ and /ch/). Philip is on lesson 8. The next level is It's Fun to Read! which has introduction to spelling in it. The last level is I'm Reading! and he might be reading more than you think!
I am teaching him also with simple homemade books; a sample book is
Max the Cat. The book reads: (page 1) Max the Cat (page 2) Max is a cat. (page 3) Max sat on a bag of tan sod. (page 4) An ant ran to the sod. (page 5) A rat ran to the sod. (page 6) A man ran to the sod. (page 7) Bad cat! (page 8) Max will not sit on sod. Glad cat! The End
The catch is that in the pictures, on page 4 there is a hole in the bag, and the sod comes out. I put the ant and the rat in to build tension, and on the last page I put a bandage over the hole in the bag and a sign, "DO NOT SIT" just to be funny. He likes these books.
Matthew
