Aaron has taught himself to read!

Tonight, Jaidyn, Aaron, and I were the only ones home for a little while. Jaidyn's favorite book right now is "Richard Scarry's Cars, and Trucks, and Things that Go". She has suddenly become very interested in reading books in the last few months.
Anyway, this book has a little goldbug on every page that you have to find. He hides really well. She calls him "bee". I'll turn the page, and she says, "Where bee?" And when she finds him it's "There sis!" Translated means, "there he is!" :)
So, we were finding bee, and Aaron wanted me to read what the pages said, instead of just finding the goldbug. So I started reading. And then he tells me, "I know what that says..." What? I asked. "Mustard" he says. Now I'm not sure at this point whether he has memorized this, although I don't remember reading that part because it was part of a big glob of words we don't usually read.... or if he just thought it looked like a mustard truck because it was yellow... but it's not at all shaped like a mustard bottle, so it could have been a yellow tube of toothpaste...
So, I asked him, "How do you know that, Aaron?" He says, "I read it!" I am excited, but still skeptical. So, I pick out some words, and say, "so what does this say?" He tries to guess by what it's a picture of, but I tell him, "No, you have to sound out the letters." So we go through a couple of words. He knows the S, T, E, L, and A sounds really well. I had to help him with some blends like OY, OU, and SH, and some sight words like THE and THEY. But on the whole, he started sounding out words like LAST, FOR, TIGGER, IS, and even TIME! I was blown away. My son has never been to any kind of preschool, traditional school, or even been in a homeschool curriculum!! Yet he is reading!! And I would bet money that within 6 months (or a lot less) I will be blogging that he is reading books on his own! Real life learning really does work!! You DO NOT need textbooks! Just an interest in learning, (Aaron's part) and a willing helper (that would be me most of the time). What a privilege to be a parent, and observe this phenomenom!!
I had to add to this post after I looked through our pictures last night. I'll try to add a pic to this post too. When we took the kids to the Kalahari Resort and Waterpark for Christmas this year, one of the things we did was play a few games of Candy Bingo. The kids had bingo boards that had the name of a candy in each square. They used sweet tarts for markers. Aaron had his own board, and I sat by him thinking I'd help him read. But he didn't need as much help as I thought he would! Whenever the lady doing the game called out the name of the candy, he listened to the first sound of the words, and found the right square! It was so cool!