PHONICS.
Rod and Staff Phonics.
It’s the Mennonite publishing house and is supposed to be for 1st and 2nd grade, but the second grade material is pretty advanced.
And read to the kids. One of the best ways to get kids to read is to spend time reading to them.
My mom taught me to read.
I remember learning to read using the “Look-Say” method in the Fargo, N.D. public schools in the first and second grades about 1955 and 1956. I remember the Dick, Jane, Sally, Spot and Puff books. I remember the first and only word on the first page of the first book: LOOK.
When I can get on my main computer, I will ping the regular homeschool ping list.
Homeschoolers will have some more ideas.
I’m slightly younger but my school was actually still using Phonics. I remember workbooks with dipthongs (ch, th, ng, etc., ending -e, long vowels, short vowels, how to sound out words. Eventually we moved up to sight reading (later called Whole Language) but we were taught the sound of unknown words before we were expected to digest chunks of “Dick and Jane run! Run, Dick, run!”
Like another poster said “Dick and Jane”. That was best instruction.
the letter Aa looks like this and makes an ay sound or uh.
phonics baby.
1946-Dick & Jane. Some time about half way or so through the first grade, the teacher brought out the Dick & Jane books and all of us soon learned to read the relatively simple words. Next grade was smaller print and bigger words.
Alphabet song with alphabet printed out for them to follow along. Then start with the short words which teaches them letter pronunciation and usage. Cat, dog etc etc. All singular sounds on the letters. No combo letters or sounds yet like sh.
If you’re eulexic, you’ll skip phonics. This doesn’t work for the general population, but some people (e.g. the original poster and me) get reading right away. By the second grade I was reading hundreds of pages a day, and you can’t do that by sounding out words.
Phonics, and I knew the alphabet and times tables up to 12 and could read by the first grade, but I was born with White Privilege and Gods gift to humanity, today they call it ADD and ADHD and give you drugs to stop it.
PHONICS . . . . and no round robin reading (everyone taking a turn to read outloud) . . bad for comprehension. Always discuss with the child what he or she read. Reading is one thing but understanding what you read is another. I worked for a Regional Office of Education for umpteen years and offered workshops and also visited classrooms. You would be surprised the number of classrooms where (even in history classes, etc.) students were taking turns reading. I have a problem with it even in church and have encouraged teachers not to have the read alouds in for both adult and children . . . I also have noted it is often those who can’t read who volunteer to do so!
What others said: phonics. We learned short and long vowels with the symbols and consonants, whether they were hard or soft. Then we learned the digraphs like “ph”, “ch”, “th”, etc.
I was in elementary school in the sixties.
“I recall that my parents never really talked ‘baby talk’ to us; as soon as we were able to learn words and speak, they spoke to us in more or less adult language. So, I grew up knowing a lot of words, and probably using a lot of them without really knowing them except by inference.”
I was exactly the same with my kids and it was just like what you said - they’d talk to their grandparents at 6 years old and the grannies would comment to me that they sound like they’re talking to adults.
Baby talk is like not feeding them, you’ll stunt their growth either way.
We had our gggf big Bible (published 1860) with big words and I learnt to read with it when I was 3 ... My mother taught me ...
When I started school at age 5 I skipped 2 grades ...
Phonics.
I knew the alphabet before first grade because I had a puzzle of the letters. I might have known some words too.
I noticed with my sons, who are all good readers, that they had a concept of written words before they even started any kind of formal instruction. Maybe around the age of four. For example, they would see a word (example, the Disney TV logo, or words on a billboard) and ask me what it said. I might have done that myself.
You make a good point that the language parents around children use is important. I found that is true even with my dog, who has a pretty good list of words she understands.
I showed up my first day of first grade knowing how to read. All of us learned on Mom’s lap.
Are you trying to teach someone to read. I have lots of suggestions if that is the case.
My daughter has a brain injury and didn’t talk until she was 5.
I made sure she could read, and can make recommendations.
She has a master’s degree in Data analytics.