Teaching a nonverbal kid to read

Mr K is an interesting boy. Although he's not particularly verbal, he is very interested in letters and numbers.

He can count to at least twenty. I'm sure he can count higher, but we haven't tested him on this. He knows all his letters, and he knows the sounds they make. He can even sign them all. If you show him the alphabet, he gets excited and points and labels all the letters for you.

So the next step, as suggested by his preschool teacher, is to get him to read. If he can read and articulate the letter sounds, eventually he can articulate sounds in verbal speech. It's backwards from the way most kids go about it, but you have to play to a kid's strengths.