This issue of using phonics versus the whole-word approach to teach reading came up on another thread, and I thought it deserved its own. It's a huge debate in the education community about which method for teaching reading is best. It seems silly, because that probably depends on the child, anyway. And for us homeschoolers, it doesn't matter as much, since we'll be trying various things and sticking with what works.

For some background on the "great debate" look here: http://www.child-reading-tips.com/greatdebate.html

For what it's worth, I can tell what I observed about the way my son taught himself to read. I guess he used the whole-word approach -- I doubt there are many self-taught readers who used phonics!

What I noticed first, was that he became interested in having me label things. We'd be drawing chalk figures of our family on the sidewalk, for example, and he'd get me to label them "Mommy" "Daddy" and so on. Draw a house, a flower, a tree, label them all. Soon it was apparent that he could recognize those labels without a picture. It just seemed like educated guessing. If I wrote down "Daddy" and he said "Daddy" I thought to myself, "well, of course, it's pretty much the only word he knows that starts with a D." Also, I noticed that if I wrote a word he didn't know, such as "Moon" he'd guess a word he did already know that started with the same letter, such as "Mommy". As months progressed, his guesses got progressively better because he'd look at both the first and last letters before guessing. Later still he'd take into account the middle letters, in kind of a jumble, when guessing the word. At no point did I ever hear him sounding out the letters.

Somewhere in there, he also became very interested -- shall we say obsessed -- for a few months in my pointing to each word as I read it in a book. That was an extremely tedious time for me. I started realizing he could read pretty well (he wouldn't demonstrate on request), because eventually he'd stop me and have me read and point over again at any weird word (like "fizzle" or "whee") that he'd never heard/read before. Did that mean he already "knew" the other ones?

Anyway, NOW a long time later, I notice he does sound out words syllable by syllable, so I guess he sort of figured out the phonics on his own. I think it has occasionally come up naturally that I've told him rules like "tion" is pronounced "shun" and so on. I'm not sure how much of that he retains, but of course he's still very young.

I think one of the things that the advocates of whole-word reading suggest is going around your house and putting labels on things. We never did that, but in hindsight, I bet Eric would have loved it.

I'd welcome any stories pro/con you have about teaching reading with various methods. My sister used "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" for several of her kids and loves it.

All I know is that when I was taught using whole language I did not get it.  My second grade teacher even told my mom that I was just slow and probably always would be.  Thank goodness my 3rd grade teacher saw things differently and spent the time needed to teach me to read using phonics.  I became an A/B student and I love to read now.

My brother was taught to read using a phonics program and was always a bright kid and never had any problems in school.  He always excelled in school and was an excellent reader from very young.

If my kids pick up reading using whole language great, but I am prepared to teach them using phonics.  I will probably teach phonics even if they pick up whole language.  I can not see a reason not to.  However, it is still a little while off still, so I may change my mind between now and then.  We'll see.

I'm working on reading with my 5 year old, and for us a combination of whole word and phonics seems to work.  We worked on basic sounds and she does try to sound things out.  The rules of phonics are so complicated though....some words are just easier (for us) taught by sight.  One thing I will share...I found that she was much more likely to "want" to read when I got some Dr Suess books from the library instead of the boring readers that came with her curriculum.  She got tired of "Dan and Jan ran" really quickly, but dove right in to Dr Suess.

To add to the mix...I've used the "Read America" approach, which is not phonics or whole language, but based on linguistics.  Reading Reflex is the text, so to speak, and interesting background reading is Why Our Children Can't Read and What We Can Do About It (great background on the development of the English language and why certain spellings occured...giving rise to all the rules...and exceptions...of phonics).  It's inexpensive, has a progressive lesson plan, and so far seems to work.  I've used it with my 6-year-old and started doing some of the basic work with my 4-year-old.  The author (Carmen McGuiness) really pans both phonics and whole language, and can come off a bit abrasive in print.  But she does make a good case. I was taught phonics myself, and constantly fall back on that.  Not sure how the Reading Reflex techniques will work over the long haul, but so far I've been happy with it.  We've used the Bob books as readers, since they are vowel-controlled, and work with our program.  Also Let's Read, an old linguistic reader from the 60's which has lots of content, but no pictures.  

I found my 6-year-old son had an amazing capacity for memorization from early on, and would memorize the words to a book, but couldn't read them.  Once he started trying to memorize words, I found he'd look at the first letter and guess...not great accuracy.  He also relied on the pictures for clues. Now that we've started pairing letters as symbols with the sounds of our language, his accuracy is greatly improving, and he's beginning to be able to read words even beyond the level we are studying.

I agree with Elizabeth that our huge advantage as homeschoolers is the ability to leave what doesn't work and keep looking until we find what does!

Best wishes - Susan