I would never have pushed my little one to read if he was not ready or willing but he brought me his older siblings phonic reader (1st one) and he was able to read it! I was floored! I had to tell him the sight words, but he could sound out the rest of the simple phonetic words. Needless to say, he was very impressed with himself, and for the rest of the night wanted to read more and more and more. I had to stop him because he was getting into the more difficult to sound out words like 'ph' makes 'f' sound etc.

So, I want to encourage him as long as he is interested, but so many of the phonics programs use writing as well, and I don't think he is ready for that. He will be 5 in Jan. but is after the cuttoff date for entering "kindergarden" this year. We will be homeschooling anyway, so who says we need to wait right? The only reason I mentioned this is that we homeschool through a charter that gives us funds for us to choose our own curriculum. So it would have been nice to have access to those funds this year to buy books books books!

So what other than Starfall is out there with simple readers for him to have fun with? I saw that ETC has an online program that looks good especially since it would not ask him to write but is fun and interactive. Wanted to look for something free though first, if there is something available. :)

None of my children have been ready to write when they were ready to read. We have used 100 Easy Lessons for teaching reading and just skip the writing part. We do handwriting separately, later. :D

If you wanted to try out 100EL, it can usually be found at the library. As for websites, IDK, starfall is the fave here. Maybe pbskids?

pbskids.org has a fun section called "Word World". My beginning reader loves it. :)

Starfall and Word World at Pbskids.org are fun websites here. But truly, my kids adore Reading Eggs far more than either of those. It's in AU$ so it's actually cheaper than the listed price, I think it's like $35 for 6 months, but I don't remember for sure. It really is a wonderful program though. Also, for a non online curriculum, I have not used Hooked on Phonics, but I know it's easily found at places like Tuesday Morning and TJMaxx for pretty cheap and my friend said there was not really any handwriting involved with it.