I am an ESL teacher and have heard people say things like: You are a teacher, so you know how to teach reading. So I feel where you are coming from.

I met a mom in the school yard who said she had purchased your baby can read for her son. The directions stated that you should play two half hour videos for your baby a day - one in the morning and one in the afternoon. She said that she didn't find it helped her son learn to read in any way.

I think it is possible to hot house things like letter sounds. However, I think getting preschoolers to apply that knowledge when encountering new words so that they are be able to sound out words and blend phonemes would be difficult.

DH made the point last night that we push DD and lecture her about cleaning up all the time and she hasn't taken to that at all. If there is a method to Hot House picking up Lego, I will be the first to sign up. On the other hand I've never had to drill or lecture about reading.