A preliminary study sought to determine whether preschool, kindergarten, and first-grade children's analyses of English words were governed by perception of onsets and rimes or by perception of phonemes within onsets and rimes. Data were from several previous studies that used a 10-word invented spelling task. High percentages of the 135 preschool, kindergarten, and first grade inventive spellers with all lengths of words produced spellings that were considered unlikely if governed by attention to onsets and rimes rather than by attention to individual phonemes. The percentage of first graders who spelled consonant blends (78%) matches findings of an earlier study. Findings support a child-centered approach to early reading instruction. If children do not treat phonemes as more difficult than onsets and rimes and are willing to work at the task of analyzing complex onsets and rimes, then it makes sense to use teaching strategies that encourage children's discovery of their own tasks. (Four tables and one figure of data are included.) (Contains 22 references.) (Author/RS)