Teaching babies to read with the whole word method is a wonderful place to begin a baby reading program.  Exposure to many words gives a baby a great grasp of the language and its patterns.  Once you have been using the whole word method of teaching for awhile, you can certainly add some phonics to strengthen your baby's understanding of the rules of language.  This helps your baby decode many more words.

I really like the Word Family Words Mats because they come with letter tiles which are used as manipulatives.  This makes teaching very hands on and interactive, which my 3 year old really enjoys.  The word families are very simple and will not teach advanced phonics, but it is a wonderful place to start.  The kit teaches 20 different word families and a whole bunch of letter tiles.  You choose a word family, such as "en" and then add the letter tiles to makes as many words as you can think of.  The mats are dry erase so children can even practice writing the words.  I really like this kit and would definitely recommend it as an introductory way to include phonics in your baby reading program.  The recommended age is 3 and up.

For more ideas on how to teach your baby to read check out A Guide to Teaching Babies to read.  It is jam packed with information on how to teach your baby to read.

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