Things I've done to teach my son to read

I don't remember the exact age of  my son when started to focus more on reading. Ever since he was born I have tried to read to him, and as he became more of a little person and less of an animal (around 3-4 months?) the reading became more regular I think.

We are fortunate that we live within walking distance of a library, even though the hours aren't always convenient. I've made it a habit of having 5-10 books from the library at our house to supplement the usual books that he has had. I think that spending an hour a day of reading (not all at once) is the cornerstone of teaching to read.  I pick out books about things I know he likes (any book about space, the moon).  Sometimes he picks out books randomly but most of the time while we are there he is more interested in the blocks and puzzles they have.

I think teaching him the alphabet just happened by reading a lot of alphabet books and quizzing him on what the letters were.  Around a year and a half I found that he liked it when I would open a word processor, crank up the font size to 80 or so and then let him press the buttons to make the letters appear on the screen. I could also sneak in a little learning by asking to press specific letters.  Learning the sounds of the letters sort of just piggy backed on this with me asking him what sound each letter makes (either as we read an abc book or played the word processing game).  I haven't really used any online programs or computer programs.

This week I got around to trying out the "Flesch Cards" (ie flash cards based on Larry Sanger's essay on reading, where he makes a pun out of a method endorsed by the author of Why Johnny Can't Read). My son hated it immediately, I was able to get through maybe 3-4 cards. Perhaps if I had introduced it earlier he would tolerate it more but I think it is just so much different than our current style of how we interact that it isn't going to work for us.  Let's give it a couple more tries and see, otherwise I think I'll just stick to lots of reading with him and encouraging him to sound out the words.