The first books I bought were actually a mistake.

I picked up a set of Scholastic Early Readers. They looked perfect. They were short, stapled books with only a few words on each page. They were even marketed for brand-new readers.

But the words weren't actually easy for a brand-new reader.

The first book included the sentence, "the squirrel builds."

How was my daughter supposed to read that?

She didn't know that "th" made the /th/ sound. "Squirrel" is a long word for a child who has only just started reading CVC words. So is "builds." By the time she could read those words, she had already moved on to much harder books.

So I bought a different set.

What I learned was that many early readers aren't designed to teach phonics. They follow a different approach, encouraging children to memorize whole words and use picture clues to predict what’s written. Since that wasn't how I was teaching my daughters, those books weren't a good fit for us.

If you're teaching phonics, what you really want are decodable books.

A decodable book uses words your child can mostly sound out with the phonics patterns they've already learned.

For example, “cat” is a great decodable word because each letter makes the sound your child expects.

Words like “the” are much trickier. They contain patterns your child may not know yet, so they can quickly become frustrating.

I'll link some of my favorite beginner decodable books below.

Don't worry, I didn't write out a whole syllabus or make a big lesson plan. At the time, my older daughter was two and a half, her little sister was a baby, and I definitely didn't have that kind of time. But I still wanted to spend 10 to 15 minutes a day practicing reading with her. So how did I do it?

I structured the lessons around the books we had. I'd pick a book that was a good challenge for her, flip through it, and make a list of the tricky words, along with some of the easier ones. 

The lesson had three parts:

1. Warm-up Session

2. Whiteboard Practice

3. Reading the Story

For the warm-up, I'd write the easier words from the book on the whiteboard. This gave my daughter a chance to review them. Once she felt confident, we'd tackle the harder words from the story, sounding them out one at a time.

Only after that would we open the book and start reading.

This made a huge difference.

When she came to a difficult word in the book, it already felt familiar because we'd practiced it during the whiteboard practice. Reading the book felt much smoother and much less frustrating. 

If she got stuck while reading, that was perfectly okay. I'd first try to help her figure it out in the book, but if that wasn't working, we'd grab the whiteboard, sound the word out together again, and then jump back into the story.

We often sounded out the same word on the whiteboard, then again in the book, and sometimes a third time if she needed more help. I wasn't worried about the repetition. Every time we came back to a word, she grew a little more confident.

I kept our lessons short—usually no more than 15 minutes—but her focus always mattered more than the time on the clock. If she was losing interest, we'd stop. I'd much rather end a lesson with her excited to read again tomorrow than push through one more page. 

Around this stage, I also started introducing some common sight words. Sight words are simply words that show up a lot in writing. If my daughters recognized these words instantly, reading sentences became easier and left more mental energy for sounding out the trickier words.

Although they're called sight words, I still taught them by having my daughters sound them out.

Many sight words can simply be sounded out. The word “and” is a great example. After sounding it out enough times, she just naturally learned to recognize it.

But some sight words have tricky exceptions.

For instance, in the word “to”, the “t” makes its usual sound, but the “o” says /oo/.

Instead of asking them to memorize the whole word, I'd point out the part that was different.

I'd say something like:

"In this word, the 'o' says /oo/. Can you try sounding it out that way?"

As we came across tricky sight words, I also taught the phonics patterns they used.

I didn't sit down and teach every advanced phonics rule at once. I introduced new patterns as we needed them. That kept the lessons manageable and gave my daughters a chance to use each new pattern right away. 

Early on, I like teaching: and, to, the, can, not 

Once my daughters could read these early decodable books without much help, I could tell they were ready to try 4-letter words.

Once my daughters were comfortably reading these early decodable books without much help, I knew they were ready to learn some more advanced phonics patterns.

This is when I first introduced long vowel sounds.

How I Taught Long Vowel Sounds

When I first taught the vowels, I only taught the short vowel sounds. (/a/ as in apple, /e/ as in egg, /i/ as in ink, /o/ as in octopus, and /u/ as in up). When they were just starting to sound out words I didn’t want them to be confused by letters that could make more than one sound.

But now they were ready to learn that vowels could sometimes make a different sound. I didn't try to teach every new sound all at once. I'd introduce one new sound, and then give my daughters lots of opportunities to practice it. If that was going well, I’d teach the next sound. 

Small steps were much less overwhelming than trying to learn everything at once.

Starting with Long - “E”

I like starting with the long E sound because it's common and fairly straightforward.

The first thing I did was bring out our letter flashcards again.

I'd hold up the letter E and ask, "What sound does this make?"

My daughters would answer /e/, like in egg.

Then I'd introduce something new:

"Usually, E says /e/. But sometimes it says /ee/, like in eel."

We'd practice a few very simple words together:

he, we, me, be

Once they were comfortable with those, I'd introduce “ee” and explain that when two E's are together, they say /ee/.

Then we'd practice words like:

see, bee, tree, fee, pee

I wasn't trying to get them to memorize a rule. I just wanted them to notice a new pattern.

Adding New Phonics Patterns

As we started reading books with new phonics patterns, I’d introduce those patterns as we needed them.

For example, after “ee”, I taught “oo”.

We'd read words like:

moo, too, food, mood

Then we'd also practice words like:

book, look, cook, hook

This was also a good opportunity to explain that oo can make two different sounds.

I didn't worry if my daughters mixed them up at first. If they read a word incorrectly, I'd simply say something like, "Good try! In this word, the oo makes this sound," and we'd try reading it again.

They didn’t need to remember every new rule right away. I trusted that the more words they read, the more they would internalize these rules.

Picture yourself reading a book. Do you spend any time thinking about the phonics rules behind each word? Or do you simply recognize the word without having to think about it? That easy familiarity comes from practice. It comes from seeing those patterns over and over again, even if you couldn't explain the rule to someone else. 

To teach my daughters these new sounds, I used phonics flashcards. When I taught my oldest, I couldn’t find a set I liked, so I made my own cards. But by the time I was teaching my younger daughter, I was able to find a great set to buy. (I’ll link these)

I'd use these flashcards whenever I introduced a new sound. The box came with far more phonics patterns than I wanted to teach at once, which honestly felt a little overwhelming. Instead, we'd learn just one new sound at a time, and during review I'd only use the cards my daughters already knew. We'd play the same little games we'd always played, and then put them away again. 

The first advanced sounds we worked on were: ee, oo, th, ay, and double letters (such as: ss, ff, zz, ll)

Once they were comfortable with several of these new patterns, we were ready for one of the biggest milestones in early reading: silent E, sometimes called Magic E. 

I always like introducing new ideas one small step at a time. So before talking about "magic E," I first taught my daughters that sometimes an E at the end of a word is simply silent.

We practiced with words like:

give, live, have

I chose these words because the E is silent, but it isn't affecting the vowel sound.

That let my daughters focus on just one new idea: sometimes the “E” at the end doesn't make a sound.

Once that felt comfortable, we were ready to introduce magic “E”. 

This ended up being one of the most fun lessons we did, because both of my daughters loved the idea of a "magical" letter. I explained that sometimes the E at the end of a word is “magic” and it tells the other vowel to say its name.

I would write something like:

A _ E

Then I'd draw an arrow from the E back to the A and explain that the magic E tells the A to say its name.

We'd start with simple examples like:

ate

Then we'd play around with the pattern.

I'd erase the consonant, and switch it for a different one:

ake

ade

ale

It didn't matter that some of them weren't real words. I wasn't trying to build vocabulary, I was helping my daughters notice the pattern.

Once they understood the pattern, I could add another letter to the front, and we’d turn those into real words:

make

fade

tale

My daughters always loved the moment when those patterns suddenly turned into real words they already knew. 

Changing just one letter at a time helped them focus on learning the magic-E rule instead of trying to decode an entirely different word every time.

Even More Magic E’s

Once they understood how Magic E worked, the rest came much more quickly. We were no longer learning a brand-new concept. We were just applying the same idea to different vowels.

After A_E, we gradually worked through:

- E_E

- I_E

- O_E

- U_E

I left U_E for last, because it is the hardest of these patterns. Sometimes it says /oo/, like in “rule”, and sometimes it says /yoo/, like in “mule”.

If my daughters mixed those up, I didn't make a big deal of it.

I'd simply remind them:

"In this word, U says..."

Then we'd try the word again.