My DS is 5 years 10 months now and read just like your DD for over a year! It was annoying, ridiculous and so time consuming. He'd sound out t-h-e every single time. He knew it was "the" out of a sentence, but in a sentence? He would get stuck.
However, it was like a magic light bulb turned on in his brain about 4 months ago. Suddenly he had a base of about 300 sight words and just took off. We started a "Word Wall" of words he could read without sounding out. I don't know if it helped the problem, or gave him a motivation to get over it himself. But if we'd come across a word that he read without sounding out, we put it on the wall. He started asking "is that one going on the wall!!"
Now our wall has crazy words like last night's additions: migration, species, ecosystem and Sahara Desert.
I don't know for sure, but I believe a large part of it was his strong tendency to perfectionism. If you sound it out to make sure you're right, you're less likely to make a mistake.
This is such a great idea! I read this thread this morning, and I decided to try it with my 4-year-old. She's been attending a preschool for high ability kids, and her teachers are working with each child on phonics. Oddly (to me anyway), there didn't seem to be much sequential progression in the instruction - she would come home every day with a different phonics rule to memorize. It was just too much for her, and she just wasn't getting it. She grew to hate it whenever I'd suggest we'd practice reading, and she finally told me, "Mom, I HATE reading. I never want to learn to read." Yikes.
We backed off for awhile, but I started thinking maybe she wasn't as high as I thought - I'd always heard that HG kids start reading very early. We had her tested and confirmed that she's gifted, but we've really backed off on the reading thing because it seemed to cause so much frustration. THEN I read this "Word Wall" idea, and we tried it today. Hooray! She's nuts about it - all it took was taping 6 names of our family members and a few other sight words (the, is, etc.) to her closet doors, and she is adding to the list exponentially. I had no idea she knew that many words, but apparently she's been so stuck on sounding everything out that she hasn't focused on what works for her. Once I explained that adults don't sound everything out when they read - that most of our reading is done by "sight", she got really excited. Even later on in the day at the grocery store, she said, "Mom, we have to hurry up and get home so I can add more words to my Word Wall!"
So anyway, thanks a bunch for the idea - we have one happy 4-year-old sleeping in front of her Word Wall tonight....
