I found that when I was teaching 5 year olds, they learned better with the phonetic sounds.
So I linked the letters to the sounds, but they learned a few words at a time.
I had this series of books that I used which had some colouring in pages and the way of saying it in English underneath.
This was however about 8 years ago and methods do change, so insha'allah I'm hoping someone else who teaches children will be able to give appropriate and better advice.