Advice on this stage of learning to read please - blending and rote learning?

[stressed2007]

I have a question about learning to read. My LO (just 3) can now sound out a sentence super fast phonetically. I think after several weeks of this she is getting bored doing this and I therefore want to encourage her to go to the next stage. She is quite quick - I told her for example the other day when we were looking at the word ?moon? on the alphabet chart in her room that when you see two o?s together i.e. ?oo? that this makes the oooooo? sound. I only need to tell her once and she remembers it. She can now look at her word chart on the wall of her bedroom and she says ?P?I?G? is pig but is obviously helped by the picture of the pig above the word although today she said PIG is pig while she was in a different room.

Can anyone tell me how children actually learn to read? how for e.g. does the blending for words start? Do children learn their first words off by heart so to speak ? i.e. they don?t learn how to read out all words at the beginning but rather know from memory what the word dog looks like etc. In which case shall I get her to memorise certain basic words? Are there any particular websites that can explain how this works? Are there any threads on here that go into detail on this? Or are there special books to help children at this stage of their development?

Thanks all for your help.

my son has just started school last September and they have given him 100 popular words to learn (week by week) his reading books are very basic and only have two or three different words in them. i have made cards with these words on and i get him to spell the word first and listen to the letters. the school also gave him a yellow booklet and its called "letters and sound with jolly phonics". In it is letters and each letter has an action, eg U's action is the action of putting an umberella up, the letters "ch" have the action you would make when you are a train "choo choo" and so on. hope this helps

stressed - can I ask where you got her alphabet chart from? I need one for DD. Thanks.

If it helps, my dd (4.5) is doing both blending (learning the letters phonetically and then sounding out words) and learning words by rote (they are doing the Oxford Reading Tree books and they learn the words from there).

My dd is still at nursery and I sometimes think her school is pushing them a little hard. She is doing the same work as other children we know who are a year ahead of her in reception.

Your dd sounds very bright. I hope you don't mind me saying this, but there really is no rush...

Sorry, forgot to say they have flashcards for the ORT words.

Lots of children "memorise" their favourite stories and sitting on your knee following the words they begin to recognise letters and words when they see them in other contexts.
To become readers involves a great deal more. Phonics is an important skill to learn on the road to becoming a reader (and speller) but to be a real reader a child needs to understand what they are reading and this is where I would concentrate with such a young child ... talking and discussing and giving opinions on the books you share.
As a reception teacher I don't give out 45 HFW (or 100 popular words) for children to learn I'm not a fan of ORT [shudder smiley face] and all the children in my class can read ...