Reading Update

I've been a bit dazed during the last few days. I'm still waiting to get my energy back, inshAllah. The children have found plenty to occupy themselves, although I have kept a skeleton version of our HE going. At last the maths is finished, alhamdulillah! The boys can now have a maths break until September, inshAllah. I have been using Collins Primary Maths with them and they have completed all the Year 4 books. Ia's maths will still continue here and there, as is more appropriate to her level.
How about Ia's reading? Ia is coming to the end of her reception year. Throughout the year I've been using various phonics books with her. Just the common ones found in any bookshop. She has used online resources such as Education City, Create a Reader and others from the masses available. I tried flashcards, but she hated them. The boys did not like flashcards either. My packs of flashcards are still in excellent condition.
Next I tried some phonic readers, but, despite being familiar with the sounds, Ia was unwilling to try to put sounds together. Also I think, like the boys, she disliked the meaninglessness of some of those phonic readers. So, a little while later, I tried the old Ladybird "look and say" method. My old Peter and Jane books came back out for another round, and so she started to read them. Every evening at bed time, in the bedroom, she reads two pages. One new page and yesterday's new page. As we work through the book in this way each page will be read twice. This approach allowed me to focus on problems, such as her confusion between "this" and "they". We made glitter posters for both words.
So there is a slow and steady progress, alhamdulillah. I do not use any one method, nor do I buy into a big structured scheme. I use mix and match with whatever seems to be working at the time. I remember how laborious it seemed working through this with the boys. Each of them reading through their two pages a night at a snails pace. But then, one day, they just seemed to get it, and they became proper readers, almost overnight. Alhamdulillah. I think a child really teaches himself to read, as long as the tools have been provided. So, now I'm just going to keep plodding along with Ia, her phonics books and her two pages a night, until one day inshAllah she will become a reader.
I wrote this reading update in response to a question I was asked on Monday. While I have been doing this the boys have been making a funny powerpoint presentation on the other computer, featuring themselves in a silly story, with sound effects. I really shouldn't worry about ICT!