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In my opinion, phonics works best when started in pre-school, where the child is thrilled to be able to figure out one word at a time. By first grade, alot of kids will be bored by this method and be in a hurry to read more than a word at a time. Phonics also slows down the comprehension.

It seems though, that for alot of children, drawing boxes around words and using flash cards doesn't seem to work. It's hard for me to understand because all my family, myself included, are visual learners. I even have a bit of a photographic memory. I can remember times when I didn't know the answer to a test question and I could close my eyes and read it on the page of the text.

Very, very interesting. You've said a number of things there that I have never thought about. My daughter is a very visual learner. When in kindergarten, her teacher (a very good one too) suggested I consider a very light dose of Ritalin (I didn't). Now, at 17, she's ready to soon enter college to study art. Yet, she always relied on her phonics to read. She started k/g when she was 4. By the time she was 5, she was even more rammy. She showed signs of boredom during these young years, and when I mentioned it to her principal, he said that was an adult concept and that children didn't experience it. I knew better b/c I was seeing it.

I never thought of my learning style, but I do try to visual things to draw upon knowledge. I also try to "see" a text in my mind. Thank you. Very, very interesting!

Gatto and Blumenfeld both assert that a self-motivated individual can learn to read competently in 40 hours regardless of age if instructed with a phonics program.

My experience confirms this. At age four my first daughter learned to read competently (could independently handle short Dr. Seuss books) after about 30 hours of teaching (1/2 hour a day for two months) with Blumenfeld's book, Aphaphonics. My second daughter was even faster, learning in about twenty hours. But she was 4-1/2.

Both already knew their letter sounds from watching Sesame Street.