Another teacher, and reading tutor.

How old is your child?

You can teach the blending skill without using written letters. Just give three sounds (or two) separated by a second's pause, and have your child guess what word you are saying.

You can give some context cues at first to help your child figure it out.

I.e. "I'm thinking of an animal. /k/.../a/.../t/.... can you guess what it is?

If this little game is frustrating, and your child is younger than 6, I'd recommend waiting a bit and trying again in 3 months.

The ability to blend phonemes together is one that develops as a child gets older. Once the child has the ability, this game will be very easy and fun (for a while, anyway.) If the child really doesn't have the ability toi blend phonemes together at age 6 or older, it is time to start looking into remediation and support.... but if younger, I wouldn't worry so much.

Teacher here. You don't need to teach every letter sound before you start to sound out letters. Drill sounds by having a picture card for each letter. For b, have a picture of a ball and drill "b, ball, /b/" and then have him repeat. Do this with some consonants and some vowels and then start with short CVC words like hat. Write it or use letter tiles or magnets and have him tap out the word by tapping his index finger to his thumb. Model it for him. Say "/m/ /a/ /p/" and then say "map." The vowels "e" and "a" are very close in sound so it will take some time for him to detect the difference.

10:15 describes the method used by the popular "Teach your child to read in 100 lessons" book. Seems to be working pretty well for my daughter, when we're using the book. I haven't seen it translate to other situations yet.

I'm 9:54, and I agree with the PP. Their preschool is skipping long vowels and just doing short vowels. Even I find the short vowels a little complicated though! I feel like the difference between the sounds isn't always that much.

As an aside, I was just reading Half Broke Horses, and her dad talks about how it'd be so much better if we spelled phonetically, and I agree!

At my son's school, once he knew all the sounds of all the letters, they give him a box that contains all of the letters of the alphabet sorted out. Then they give him 4-5 cards with a simple picture on them. He lays the cards down picture up.

If the photo is of a car, he'll first sound out the word, and then get the letters and put them in order. When he thinks he has it, he flips the card over to check his work.

The ones we've seen him do are car, fan, cat, man, cup, dog, frog, and boy.

I think everyone has great suggestions. My guy learned the sounds of his letters first and now we are working on 2 letter words with short vowel sounds. Avoid long vowels for the moment.

I've found that the key with my kids is not to pause between sounds.

For example, the word: map

instead of sounding it out with each sound individually:
mmmm aaaaa pppppp
and then trying to put it together

teach them to sound it out without pauses
mmmmmaaaaaaaappppppp and then keep saying it faster until they know the word.
mmmmaaaaaappp
mmmmaaaap
mmmmap
map!

What PP said.

This beginning phase is, in my experience, the most frustrating. My son took many months last year to understand the principle of putting together individual sounds to make syllable sounds and had difficulty memorizing sight words (he has a learning disability). This year his fluency has increased and he can read simple picture books.

My son's daycare teaches phonics in "chunks". Two letters together, like ap, at, ag. And then shows kids words built on these "chunks," like cat, rat, fat. And tap, lap, trap.

My DD's preschool is teaching her how to read.

She first learned all the letter sounds.
Then, they introduced some simple 2 letter words (in/on/up/us/as). And, had her sound those out and practice, practice.
Then, they moved on to simple three letter words.

It seems to be working, she can sound out simple 2/3 letter words.

I am in the beginning stages of teaching my child to read. He is able to sound out letters but has problems putting those sounds together to make words. Any ideas on how to help with this?