Reading curriculum necessary?

Two of my sons taught themselves to read at a young age. The oldest one had no need of any other program–he just figured out all the phonics rules. The second one had developed some habits that relied a lot on just sight-reading–if I gave him an unfamiliar word not in context, he had trouble with it. I did do a very brief runthrough of a simple phonics program with him (Phonics Pathways is what I used) You’ll hear some from the “phonics only” camp who will tell you that most children need specific phonics instruction or they will “hit a wall” at about 4th grade that they cannot get past just by sight-reading, and I don’t know for sure if this is true or not, since I taught my sight-reader some phonics. It just made sense to me that he ought to have the full range from BOTH toolboxes.

So, anyway, the only potential pitfall I see is if he relies almost exclusively on sight reading. You can check this by giving him a few regular but unfamiliar words and see how he handles them. If he sounds them out appropriately, he is using both approaches appropriately; if he is flummoxed, you might want to consider some basic phonics teaching.