What can you do before or instead of sounding it out?!?

Another great post from Anna over at The Measured Mom that you simply must check out if you've got a little person beginning to read or going in that direction. So often, as parents, all we remember as children was being told to "sound it out," so we tend to rely on that as our sole teaching strategy when helping our kids read. Anna does a great job in this post helping you understand all of the knowledge that has to come before they're ready to sound something out. Also, it's really important to use many reading strategies when a child gets stuck on a word. I need to do a longer post on this but, here's an example of a picture from Literacy Links that you can print out and use to encourage your child to try different things if they're stuck on a word. There are also lots of sheets like this available on Teachers Pay Teachers like this one for free or for a small cost.