Does anyone know any really good and effective ways to teach the alphabet and beginning reading?
Most of us are familar with flash cards, and perhaps games that use the alphabet, but are there any secret techniques that I don't know about?
If you can teach the alphabet and beginning reading (sight words?), super effective that worked 100% of the time, that pretty much replaces K-1st grade.
I suggest comic books. The language is very simple and there are illustrations that the child can infer the meaning of the words from. I could read both the latin and cyrillic alphabet at age 5 due to Donald Duck coming out in cyrillic every other issue in former Yugoslavia.
Look for "BOB Books" They're pretty good from what I hear. Montessori schools use them.
I wouldn't use their website just now though - google gives a message that "This site may be compromised" for whatever (ominous) reason.