Also. although phonics in teaching reading is going to work well at an older age, it will be a much slower and much more time consuming process. And the transfer from phonics to the word reading stage is virtually skipped. It is unnecessary because the phonics is already well ingrained in the mind. Questions about attention span and the young child. In getting responses and questions from people, this theme seems to be a common one, and I felt it deserved some attention on this site.
Attention spans are nonexistant, as one responder termed it, at the preschool age.
So how does one get around that. The answer is you don't. You would be surprised how much they pick up when they seem to be doing every other thing but paying attention. And later, when they are ready for the workbooks, let them decide when they want to do an activity and how long they want to spend at it. You have lots of time.