Learning to read with Tom Thumb

Recently, Tom Thumb expressed a desire to learn how to read.  Not really knowing where he was at in terms of knowing his letter sounds, I whipped out my favorite reading program The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading.  The first 26 lessons are about teaching all the vowel and consonant sounds.  I decided instead of doing the lessons I'd see what he knew already by asking him.  Amazingly, Tom Thumb knew all the letter sounds, with the exception of a strange pronunciation of the letter H (when he sees the letter H he says "hill."  I don't get it either).  Because of that, I skipped those lessons and started right in with him on lesson 27.  I figure we'll resolve the "hill" problem as we go along.


In the last week, we've been working through the lessons in the book for 5-10 minutes just before his nap and he seems to be progressing well.  I don't have any expectations for how fast we'll complete a lesson or how long we'll do it per day so it has been really relaxed.  Today we finished up lesson 35 and went on to lesson 36 which covers S sounds like /z/: is, his, as, and has.  I'm hopeful that this program will work as well for him as it did for Red!