Thanks all.
We actually were developing the MonkiSee products before I had her so she saw plenty of the videos and flash cards and I made some of my own phonics cards with word families where I would write the first letter in black and the word family in red. I would have cat, bat, rat, sat and so forth. I printed out at least 13 sets of Daddude's Flesch cards and showed her those. I still have a basket of them here that she pulls out from time to time and asks me to show her. Our breakthrough came when she was about 3 1/2, a year ago. I remember we had a lot of discussions about phonics and sight reading with Daddude and other members on the Yahoo group and I admit it, I was swayed and really tried to focus on that for a time. When I went back to flash cards and was consistent and showed them regularly she became a reader. I have used LR a little bit as well. It is a wonderful program. I think for us, the flash cards are what brought us to a new level and from there she just jumped in. She likes me to read to her, but more often than not, she grabs the book and says she is reading to me. She is very independent and likes to do things without help. That may be evident in some of the videos of her. She doesn't like me to point to the words or touch the book and so forth. She has the attitude that, "Mommy, I can do it."
I am so happy she is reading well, but more than that, I am so happy that she loves to read. I decided when she was 2 that regardless of her being able to read early or not, I would read to her and develop that love. I pointed to the text while I read, which I think helps a lot, too. We visit the library about twice a week and usually have 80 books checked out on any given day.
I believe it is being consistant in whatever you do. My son read much earlier than she did and I did comparing between them, I admit it. We are blessed that there are so many great products available to us as parents now. When I began this journey 10 years ago there was only Doman and I spent months of my life making flash cards, books, Bits of Intelligence cards and videos. Now we have YBCR, LR, MonkiSee, soon Reading Bear and others. It is wonderful to have access to all these products as they give us options in how we can teach.
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