Reddit mentions of Leapfrog: Letter Factory

Not an app but hopefully this can help you!

My sister is a teacher and she's helped me work with my son for the last year (since 3.5) on beginning to learn to read. Its been working great so hopefully some of this will help you.

Does she know both upper case and lower case letters? I'd start with this. I had great success utilizing this puzzle. We'd put it together once a day and I'd identify the letter as he put it in, and then we'd sing the ABC song at the end.

Check out the Leapfrog Letter Factory DVD series from your local library. They start off with the phonics sound and then move on to combining letters to make words. Great primer. (I think its letter factory, then word factory, then word caper)

Youtube has a great array of tools. After the above has been accomplished, move to a phonics song per day to make sure there are no gaps in her phonics knowledge. At the same time, introduce 1-2 sight words (start with the first 25 of Fry's sight words. They make up 1/3 of all we read!) Go very slow on this, only add more once the previous words have been memorized. Once you get the first 25 down, then you can start taking some from Dolch sight word lists too if desired.

Once you are pretty sure there are no gaps in her letter-sound awareness, then you can start to move onto CVC words. Show her that A+T = "ahhh T" = AT, then add a B onto that for B + AT= BAT, then C+AT = CAT, etc. Again, go very slow and keep up with 1-2 sight words a day at the same time.

Some tips:

-Utilize a variety of educational goals at the same time. Don't just go solid for sight words, for example, but instead do 1-2 sight words and then 3-5 minutes of phonological education. The current research is that its a combination of sight words and phonological awareness that gives most people their beginnings on how to read. This also helps with motivation. If she is struggling with sight words but is getting phonological awareness easily, she can see her progress there and won't be as frustrated.

-Utilize a variety of techniques. Puzzles, songs, games, flashcards, coloring, etc. Let your child lead on this if possible, as their tastes may be different than what you expect. I was surprised to see my son loving a youtube rap video about rhyming, for example (the concept of rhyming took a lot longer than I thought it would for him to get).

-Keep the amount of time short but do it daily as part of the routine. That will keep the attention quality high and the minutes add up! For example, I have him do an activity for a dessert (his call if he wants to do it at all), and we do 2-4 low pressure sight word flash cards at night while he brushes his teeth. I'd tell him what the word was several days before starting to ask him if he remembered what it was.

-Keep everything low pressure and fun, but consistent every day so it doesn't turn frustrating or into a battle. Have a bit of review as part of your daily routine too so she doesn't lose what she gained, and so she can see her progress (my son loves watching the "pile he knows" pile of index cards grow bigger with each word we add). Learning written English is so much more difficult that I realized, as it borrows words from other languages. So there are so many words that make no sense to pronounce/don't follow the 'usual' rules. For example, pronounce these words - AT, HAT, WHAT. Even with reading simple words, like "A", is usually pronounced in regular reading as "uh", even though phonologically A is for Ahh Ahh Apple. So give tons of slack for this process as its kind of convoluted haha. But I'm a firm believer that putting a bit of effort in every day will pay off immensely down the road. I'm hopeful that if my son is doing well in reading that he can put his focus more on social/emotional development at school, for example, as that's an area I feel least capable of helping him in. So good luck to you in this endeavor! Its a lot of work for the parent to get an ever changing educational game plan in place but what a great gift to give your kid!