DS (almost 2.5!) knew all upper and lower case letters by 18 months. He could figure out words in context in the simple baby books before 2. Around 2 I noticed he knew his phoenetic sounds though I'm not sure where he learned that skill. He could identify sounds both ways. Ex: If I said M he would say mah mah Mommy! Marble! Milk! And if I said "Desk" he could identify is started with a D. I never really asked him to identify sounds in other parts of words because it never occurred to me to ask.
Recently all the baby books have returned to the play space because our new DS is here! DS2 will get these books and spend hours spelling the words to himself while pointing to each letter. Yesterday he spelled the word penguin a lot. Ha. I have also noticed that he has all the Level 1 Thomas the Train books we own memorized. I don't mean he knows most words or gets the gist of the paragraph, I mean he literally can recite this big stack of books word for word as he turns the pages. I don't think he is reading but I do suspect he is recognizing some common words in these books. I was rather shocked because he managed to memorize them all in the span of about a week and Level 1 is usually a normal Kindergarten level I think. I could be wrong on that. It's the step up from "Ready to Read."
He has also been randomly spelling some of his most favorite words for several months, like his name and Mommy, Daddy, and now brothers name.
I don't want to push him to read at this point. If he keeps doing his thing will he read on his own?
