Babies and toddlers learn phonics using our program in a way that is similar to how they learn grammar – by discovering the patterns of the language. They can do this naturally and easily without any effort or specific instructions – in the same way that you don’t have to tell a 3-year-old to add an ‘s’ onto words to make them plural or an ‘ed’ onto words to make them past tense.

It is not necessary to give babies or toddlers specific phonics instructions. They usually will have learned many phonetic patterns after learning to read around 200 words. The best way to teach babies and toddlers phonics is probably to teach them to read many more words. This should help them learn more phonetic patterns. For example, if your baby has learned the sounds that some letters make, but not the sounds that other letters make, then teach your child more words that include letters that make the unlearned sounds.

Some children, especially children aged 5 or older, will need specific instructions with phonics. While I am a strong advocate of having children learn phonics, there are several negatives to strictly phonetic approaches. Instead of breaking words into individual letters and sounds, you can teach phonics within the context of a whole word. For instance, you could point to the words “book,” “bubble,” “bat,” and “baby” as you say the words. To highlight that the words start with the same sound, you could line up the four words by their first letters and say all of these words start with the ‘b’ sound. “Let’s make a new word that has ‘b’ in it. Look, the word “big” starts with ‘b’ and “cab” ends with ‘b.’” (You are not saying the name of the letter b, instead you would be making the sound that a b makes.)

One caveat to teaching young children using a strictly phonetic approach is that it generally leads to slower reading without as much emphasis on comprehension. In our DVDs, books, and Sliding Cards, the meanings of the words are connected to what the words look like and sound like. With a traditional phonics approach, the sounds are abstract and not connected as directly to the meanings of the words. Also, the words are pronounced more slowly when each syllable is said separately. When good readers read, words are rarely pronounced using phonics because we immediately recognize most words by their shapes.

The babies – who develop the ability to read phonetically at high levels – read in a similar way. They can read quickly with comprehension and they can sound out unfamiliar words using phonics.