We're also big fans of Step Into Reading and the Dr. Sueuss/Eastman. Lucounu, you're the first Mom I've seen who puts those at the top of your list, too! Great minds think alike, I guess!
DS6 learned to read on his own at 2 from the Step books. He was a Thomas-aholic, so we had all of them. First, he would memorize the story, so when we paused at a word and pointed to it, he would fill it in. Then, we'd see him "reading to himself" in his crib at night (which of course, was reciting what he had memorized). Very quickly, though, he started recognizing those words in different stories and contexts.
Lots of people like the "Bob" books, but those bore me silly. My 27 month old can sight read a few of the early scholastics readers, but I think he too is better off with whole-language fun readers like SIR than a black-and-white book about "I see..." My mom is a reading teacher and she's also offered us Dick and Jane books, but since we don't really talk that way, I wasn't a fan.
Oh, my little one also loves Spot books and is getting lots of sight word vocab from them. He now has about 30 words he can read outside of context (ie on plain white paper), and many others he recognizes in books. We don't do formal reading programs or flash cards or anything like that, so he must be picking it up from reading the stories together. I'm a whole language fan because it's working in our house, but I'm not 100% sure exactly what I'm doing right! LOL!
