b and d are hard for beginning readers. Here is a neat little trick to discern the two:
Hold up the hand and use the thumb and first finger to make the ball on each hand. The other fingers are the stick. When you do this it spells the word bed. So that if you know the word bed you can figure out which letter is b and which one is d.
My little one is too little to think about the word bed, so I modified it like this. She holds up her hands to match them to the letter. Then she can read if it is b or d. After a couple days she memorized it to her hand. Now if the letter matches her left hand she knows that it is B and if it matches her right hand she knows that it is D.
