Hi

When I started teaching my own kid to read, I made the classic mistake: I taught the alphabet using letter names — "ay, bee, cee." Turns out that's backwards.

Kids don't read by naming letters, they read by blending sounds. "C-A-T" only turns into "cat" if your child already knows C says "kuh," not "cee." The moment I switched to teaching sounds first ("kuh, kuh, cat" instead of "see, ay, tee"), blending suddenly clicked.

A few other things that made a real difference over the past few months, if you're teaching a 3-7 year old to read:

1. 10 minutes a day beats 1 hour once a week. Phonics is a skill built by repetition, not cramming. Short daily sessions kept my kid engaged instead of tired of it.

1. Word families are a shortcut. Once a child learns "-at" (cat, hat, mat, sat), they can read 5-6 words for the price of learning one pattern. Way faster than teaching every word from scratch.

1. Blending is physical, not just mental. Holding up a finger for each sound, then swiping your hand as you blend them together, gives kids something to see and do — not just hear.

1. Praise the attempt, not just the answer. A wrong guess while sounding out a word means they're actually trying to decode it, which is the whole point. Correcting too fast can make kids afraid to guess.

I ended up turning everything I learned into a full printable phonics workbook (A-Z sounds, blending practice, CVC words, tracing sheets, games, a 30-day plan) because I couldn't find one that was actually simple enough to use without a teaching background. If you're in the trenches teaching a little one to read, hope this helps either way. 💙