Pedagogical principles and obstacles

• Phonetic learning for reading is key. Many reading resources and curricula focus more on memorization of sight words, and you’ll want to avoid these. You can teach reading faster through sight words, but it’s less optimal for lifelong reading because you’re not building the muscle of decoding the sounds of words.
• You want to focus on letter sounds before naming the letters. Do all the games and things that go with that. [I’ll add what we used below.]
• You can’t teach math if reading hasn’t been addressed, so it’s important to start with reading.
• Expect to spend about 10 minutes, max 15, at the beginning. You’ll want to keep things enjoyable for the 2 year old, and a short practice every day with the right materials is really all it takes.
• This video does a great job showing what the process will look like. This is exactly what it was like to read with Simone. You can see the kid moving around and using his body a lot, and the dad providing lots of encouragement. He helps direct attention and maintain enthusiasm. He has a Substack where he just started posting about his process, and you can follow along for $7/month. I like it so far.
• Once the kid knows letter-sounds and is getting ready to read, the biggest challenge is finding the right books. A lot of kids books have words that are relatively difficult to read phonetically. E.g., if you’ve taught your kid that the letter “c” makes a “kuh” sound and “i” makes an “ih” sound and “e” makes an “eh” sound, “circle” will throw them for a loop. You want the right intersection of fun story + simple vocab + straightforward sounds for letters and letter-combinations.

Is this necessary?

• Some kids do mostly teach themselves around 4, so it’s not strictly necessary for parents to do all this work. If they become interested in letters, you have lots of books around, and you read with them often, they will start sounding out letters and recognizing words on their own.
• That said, without some encouragement, most kids in the US won’t teach themselves or be taught in school until they’re 6. I’ve yet to meet a parent who has tried and failed to teach their 3-year old to read. There are so many benefits to being able to read 3 whole years earlier, it doesn’t take that much time, and it’s fun, so I think it makes sense to try.
• There’s no need to panic if the kid doesn’t seem to be into reading. Having a decent amount of exposure to parents with multiple high-achieving kids, it’s not uncommon that the ‘smartest’ kid resisted reading with the parent the most, or was a late talker.
• The biggest benefit I saw was that from a very early age, my 3 year old associated anything that felt hard with needing to practice to get better at it. She also had confidence that if she practiced, she would get better. This translated to mastering physical skills like monkey bars and balance beam, and to other academic skills like writing.

Stuff to buy

• Lots of parents swear by Bob Books.
  • These have worked out really well for us. It’s what we used once my 2 year old mastered the letter sounds. We did initial phonics with some flashcards and a game I made with photos of familiar people, objects, and characters, then moved on to the Bob Books.
  • It’s also what my close friend (Harvard grad, valedictorian at Stanford Business School, successful serial entrepreneur with a 9-figure net worth) used to teach all 3 of his kids to read. They all learned to read well by 3 and are all star students.
  • The little-book format is nice because it’s very exciting and satisfying for a kid to realize they can read a book on their own. I also saw Simone figuring out ways to learn better – for example, if she realized she made a mistake, she’d close the book and reopen it to “reset” and try again.
  • The book format is also handy because if she had a tough time sounding out a word later in the book, we could flip back to a previous page with the same letter or a rhyming word, and decode from there what the hard word might be.
• Hooked on Phonics – the flashcards and little books
  • You don’t really need the audio/video if you’re reading with a 2-3 year old, since at that age the parent is right there to help.
  • There is also a guided book with different phonetic combinations and ‘ladder words’ (words that you can’t phonetically sound out) so that you can do them in small chunks.
  • My friend who homeschools her kids (who are all doing advanced coursework for their age) prefers to start with Hooked on Phonics, then use Bob Books as a supplement, because she believes it’s overall more efficient to get kids on phonics first. But I’ve also heard from parents that it’s more tedious and harder to get the kid into.
  • We’re planning to try Hooked on Phonics or Elemental Phonics with our 2nd kid to see if he likes it, then Bob Books.
• If you’re ok with screen time, the Lexia app is well-regarded.
  • I used this a bit, but the Bob Books were working well enough that we didn’t sign up. There’s a Core 5 assessment, and something called Power up.
  • I might introduce it for her later, but for now the books are plenty.
• “The Letter Factory” is a go-to for teaching letters and sounds
  • It’s an oldie but a goodie, as they say.