Why does "teacher created" matter?

One of my hometown friends, who is now a speech teacher, posted this image to Facebook with the caption "Anyone else see the problem here?!?"

The teachers in the crowd expressed a collective facepalm, but one of her friends replied "I feel so stupid...What's the problem?"

For the non-phonics nerds in the crowd, the first sound in chair is /ch/, not /k/. We don't pronounce this word "kuh-hair."  CH is a team that cannot be separated. 

This is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking about when I created my first educational product, ABC Beginners Cards. 

I was tired of seeing flashcards that just made NO sense.  Don't tell a kid learning the alphabet that "elephant" starts with E, "giraffe" starts with G and "hippopotamus" starts with H.  First of all, kids should be learning the HARD G sound first (gate, gift, get) to avoid confusion.  Second, did you know that kids who don't know much about letters and spelling think that "elephant" starts with L?  Say the word out-loud - the letter L is the first thing you hear.

Here's the crux of my argument: I think it makes MUCH more sense to teach beginning letter sounds with small, easy to read words that kids will be familiar with - when kids see the words dog, cat, hat, and egg on flashcards, they believe that reading is approachable.  After they've learned beginning letter sounds, moving on to final consonant sounds and medial vowels is EASY, with the same words they've already been working on. 

Plus, we all know that kids love to ask questions and skip ahead of what you PLAN to teach them.  YOU try explaining the phonics reasoning behind "hippopotamus" or "elephant" to a 4 year old when he gets curious about the rest of the word.

I realized years ago that if I was going to help kids learn to read, I couldn't always depend on corporate resources - a graphics designer might make cute pictures and throw together cards that LOOK perfect, but a TEACHER comes to the table with knowledge of the subject and how kids learn.  That's why I create my own stuff.  And that's why I'll always choose resources from Teachers Pay Teachers over my other options.