I've enjoyed reading everyone's responses and have to admit like HelloBaby I really have no clue how to teach a kid to read. I don't think I every learned the proper method myself either. My mom claims my dad (a former English teacher) "taught" me at some point during preschool but my dad denies it (and my mom's memory is really fault) so I'm not quite sure if I was taught to read early or not.
Regardless of that I know I was much more prone to be a whole word reader and still very much am to this day. I've always been good at figuring out words from the context. I do remember my dad and I always playing games to figure our what an unfamiliar word meant because he'd never tell me, he'd say either figure it out or go get the dictionary. I was always too lazy to get the dictionary so I preferred to figure it out myself. I still do this so much to this day that there has been times that I've read multiple words in DH's language and understood their meaning but I never made a connection to the spoken word until DH had me either read the passage out loud or we were discussing some sort of text.
I have a feeling DD's going down that path but who knows? I'm hoping she just magically figures it out on her own because I really have no clue how to teach phonics since I'm so bad at it myself. She does have some sight words and is really interested in the letters/sounds etc but right now she's much more focused on writing the letters than reading them.
I'm actually probably one of the parents that Polly was saying was teaching their kids incorrectly.
However, I don't really get how you'd introduce the letters sounds since it depends on the context of the word? Also, she's read to in both languages (and, unfortunately, she always wants me to be the one reading to her, even in DH's language) so it just adds to the confusion. DD knows all her letters and knows some letters start with certain sounds that correspond to a letter but I really don't get how to proceed from there. Thankfully her interests seem to be in writing/math/puzzles/oral story telling at the moment so I'm hoping this is an issue that comes up later.
