In early literacy, decoding is the slow sounding out of a sequence of printed letters in a word. Simple decoding is a natural step of exploration for a very young child who has basic letter-sound knowledge. In Souns, sight reading is not the goal. Discovery is the goal!

Children love to trace the letters with their little fingers, saying each sound. The pages are water resistant, durable, and sized for little fingers to explore the shape of each letter. The line placed on the left suggests the left hand margin, discretely reinforcing left to right orientation.

The simplicity of this material is quite appealing to the emergent reader. Children who have the Souns reading pages available to them return to read them throughout their early decoding years.