They learned basic phonics like letter sounds from preschool and Leapfrog type toys. So by the time they turned 3 they knew all the letters/letter sounds. We worked on rhyming words a little bit and so did preschool. What words rhyme with cat? man? They both understood that at age 3. I have heard it said that the kids who can rhyme early are the ones who read early. Rhyme at 3, read by 4. From there, they were ready to learn to blend sounds. Around their fourth birthday I wrote words on a piece of paper, like "man" to see if they could sound it out or even understood that concept. They both understood. Our public library has some of the BOB books on audio. DD was fascinated and listened to the first set by herself in her room. She has a CD player in there. I bought her another set or two, and she worked on those (she read them to me), then she was ready to tackle more advanced readers, like Henry and Mudge or Dr. Seuss books. She loved the challenge of it and I wasn't going to hold her back. I checked out some other audio books from the library, like easy chapter books, and she listened to them while following along in the book.
DS on the other hand had a bit of an attitude problem, but he is clearly the superior one with decoding. He could also blend and sound out around his fourth birthday but clearly couldn't care less. I printed out a list of Dolch sight words and was shocked that he could read almost all of them through the third grade level because I had never tried to teach him any sight words. I got out the couple sets of BOB books that DD had used 16 months earlier (they are 16 months apart in age) and he could easily read those to me. After a set or two of BOB books I moved onto some of the PD Eastman or Dr. Seuss books. He read to me maybe a couple times per month. I did not want to push him more than that because it wasn't worth battling him. He just kind of magically absorbed the reading process and moved up a level every single time he read something. His K teacher had him reading chapter books like "The Mouse and the Motorcycle". Not sure how she got him to do that. He is starting to get more interested in reading now that he is in first grade and does it for about a half hour a day without my nagging.
