I'm having this same issue, we at a bit of a late start. She knows most of her letters and letter sounds but when I try to teach her to put the sounds together she says its too hard and starts into her defiant phase. Was wondering if I'm just starting to early for her (shes 5.5) or if there was a better way. So far her learning has come from flash cards and school zone workbooks and shes doing well. Just tried starfall. She complained becasue it was boring and set into a tantrum. Some days ps doesn't seem so bad, but I refuse to give up on her like that.
Thanks for the input. I keep waffling but I am pretty sure we are going to give it a go and see how it is. If we don't like it we can switch to alpha phonics when it comes in. I am going to keep doing what I am now and see how it goes... I found a progressive phonics thing online, too, that I may see if we like.. All in all I think I have decided to try some free things before I sink money into a program just yet..
Thanks!!!! This is really helpful! I am buying them a mouse this weekend since I only use my laptop and they have trouble with the track pad and we are gonna give it a go!
She may just not think she is ready. Maybe try some games to reinforce the sounds until she feels SUPER comfortable with them before moving on to putting sounds together. That is what I am doing with my DD right now because blending can be tough if they aren't comfortable with the sounds of the letters...
Sometimes learning individual sounds can come way before the child is ready to blend sounds together into words. That's okay! If she's not ready, she's not ready to blend. I'd continue with the flash cards and school-zone, and maybe some free stuff off the web. Sometimes "it's boring" means "it's hard" or "I'm not ready yet". You might (or might not) want to begin some Dolch words on flash cards (sight words) or simple three-letter words which she can apply phonics to later when she's ready to do that.
We LOVED it....with one caveat: drop the writing and just do the reading if you are using it w/ very young. Their fine motor skills needed for writing sometimes just can't match their desire/ability to start reading. So don't let that deter you from just doing the reading lessons. And, just like the directions suggest, stick to only one lesson each day even if they want and are capable of more.
I used it with my first child who was a little older and had expressed a desire to start reading. We didn't finish the book, but went quite far into it. Then my daughter just sort of took off reading on her own. My second child was a different story. He is very dyslexic and this program was really hard. He wanted to read, but could never remember the letters/sounds/symbols from one day to the next. We never got through the first few lessons with him.
I know a lot of people don't like it, but we used it with my son, starting at age 3 and a half. It did exactly what it said it would - taught him to read in 100 lessons. We did buy dk readers to give him something fun to read as well. We loved this book! The writing aspect was difficult at 3 years old, so I might skip that and concentrate on the reading. The "funny" type helped him to remember how to sound out words even if I did find it a bit odd.
