Ktpie, I went thru the same thing with dd4.75. She knew all her alphabets by 16 mo and letter sounds soon after. She started writing at 3 and was able to spell words like oatmeal correctly. But she could not read. Not even Cvc words, not even the words she had spelt. I did not push. Then at the beginning of this year, she told me she wanted to learn to read so she can read 1000 page books. Language is not my strong suit so I had no idea how to teach her. I showed her the sight words free video on YouTube. She watched it a few times only and then started to read. But she was guessing a lot based on context and pictures and still struggling with phonetically spelt words that were not that critical to the story. So I came up with two more tricks. Everyday she has to read aloud at least 1 book. If she encounters a word she cannot read, she must raise her thumb. Then we slow down and I help her. So if it a easy word, I will ask her to sound it out slowly. If it is a long word, I will hide parts and have her decode. If it is a long sight word, I would furnish it so she can move on. Once she has read the word, she takes a second and clicks the word using her camera memory ( just like cam Jansen :)). We have done this for the last 3-4 months and now she is reading fairly fluently books that are at guided reading h and lower. So while she is not super advanced in reading, she is in a good place and growing.
