Reading

from jujsky:

Hooked on Phonics Pre-K was really good for my DD. We started her on it right after she turned 3. She already knew a lot of her capital letters prior to starting. I mostly liked HOP for the games. They had a lot of creative games like Letter Lake (you stick paperclips on the letter cards then fish for them with a magnet) Hop to the Letter (spread the letters out on the floor and hop to them) Go Fish, Musical Letters (like musical squares), and Letter Labels (you give the child post-its with letters on them and they have to label things in the house that start with each letter).
The reason DD knew so many of her letters before we started HOP was due to playing with bathtub letters, and watching the Leap Frog Letter Factory video. That video teaches phonics as well.

from mizzou_mommy:
Starfall is very popular in my house. It's one the tools that helped my DD learn to read. She liked the the Leapfrog videos - Letter Factory, Word Factory and Storybook Factory, too. DS watches them now, too. He's 2.5 and is sounding out CVC words and has a slew a sight words. They are only allowed to watch one hour of tv plus 30 mins. each of computer time per day. We, also, read together a *lot*.