teach your child to read in 60 days

i am just getting ready to teach my son to read using the same phonetics based "box of games" that my mother used to teach me. it's all material that was written and thought of in the '70s.

to my amazement it seems that there is still some sort of argument amongst academics about how to teach kids to read. the two camps are phonics and whole-word. to make the comparison simple, i'll put it like this: with phonics you teach what the letters sound like (as well as some other weird combinations), with whole-word you teach kids what words look like (recognize the whole word). which would you rather try to do? teach 45 sounds and the letters that make them.... or try to teach your kids to memorize by sight every word in the english language? in mandarin you have no choice, with an alphabet you do!

putting all the academic mumbo aside, my mom taught me to read/spell using phonics, and that's how i'm going to teach my son. it works.

just my tuppence.