I remember the first day that my step-daughter Hailey learned to read. Reading about phonics and phonemic awareness takes me back. We were flying to Mississippi to visit her grandmother, and she had asked to do "work" (her workbooks). I always thought this was amusing because most people or students I know don't ask for more (home)work. Nevertheless, she wanted to do work. I cannot remember what the activity was, something to the effect of filling in missing letters in words, identifying words with common vowel sounds in the middle c/a/t, r/a/t, etc. I had coached Hailey that letters have sounds. She knew most of these sounds. Observing her piece sounds together and then saying the sounds fast enough until there was some sort of word recognition was the most incredible thing to experience (almost as exciting as watching her learn how to bike and swim). The reason for bringing this up is that it never occurred to me that learning to read words beginning with vowel sounds would be easier than starting with words that begin with consonants.
Additionally, I am impressed with the many different strategies that can be used to help children rhyme and word match. They all seem very interactive, visual, or kinesthetic. There is a "doing" "making" or "manipulating" component involved. I am again realizing how I gravitate towards "action" learning and "visual" learning.
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