I am not 100% sure but maybe you could start with like an ABC chart, and go through the letters first until she can recognise letters, then start on basic words like CAT etc on those big learning charts, maybe you could even make your own?

With the time my stepmum got us to learn all the numbers, then she slowly taught us like they do on Play School, when the big hand faces xxxx and the little hand faces xxxx what does this mean? etc etc

Prob doesn't help, i'm sure you will get some wonderful answers though.