When I was a kid, I learned to read using the Sing Spell Read and Write curriculum by Sue Dickson. It's awesome, and covers WAY more than just reading/writing! I loved it, and always figured I'd use it with my kids. I bought the pre-K curriculum package, and would recommend buying their whole package if you're looking for a curriculum (if you buy nothing else, get the level 1 CD for all the phonics songs!) but there are plenty of free/cheap resources we found:
You can find tons of explanations and demos on youtube by typing in the curriculum name, but here are our favorite videos:
The Phonics Song: This is the alphabet with pronunciations instead of letter names. I started playing it when my daughter was a toddler, and she was trying to sound out words before she was 2! I love that there is a slide show with the letters as they're singing so kids can learn to associate the shapes with the sounds.
Here's another version, with the chart/placemat that comes with the curriculum pack (worth making or buying one of your own):
And here are 2 links of kids singing it, because it's adorable, and there is no better motivator than seeing other kids do it, too!
When they get more advanced, there is a song for the short vowels (which they've already learned in the alphabet song) :
And new long vowel sounds:
Once they've got the letter sounds, then they move on to 2-letter combinations, once again, using singing:
I did the above activity by writing the vowels on a magnetic white board, then swapping out magnet letters for the consonants.
It takes a while to get to the combination stage, but once they've got it, it's amazing to watch them take off! We used the BOB books after that to introduce really simple words, and she loves reading! (I bought the first set from Amazon, and they gave me the option to buy the Kindle version for .99 as well. The physical books were really important as she was learning to read, I think, but after getting through set 1, we used the Kindle Owner's Lending Library to borrow each set as we needed them. Yay for free readers!)
Anyway, I hope that's helpful! We really enjoy the songs, and I made homemade charts, books, and coloring pages by using black and white clip art for each letter (print each letter/picture combination and put them in a dollar-store photo album!).
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