A little while ago I purchased a few things from Ants in the Apple, including the alphabet CD. Shmoo's pretty good now (most of the time, when he's paying attention!) with recognising the letters of the alphabet so we're making a start on phonics. The boys have been listening to the CD for 2-3 days now and I'm totally amazed at how Shmoo is just getting it so easily. The songs on the CD are great and after we've sung them together I go through some letters with Shmoo and he's able to apply so much of what he's learnt from the songs. Definitely recommend the CD!
Shmoo has also had a bit of a breakthrough with his numbers recently. He still struggles a little to count past 29 (unless he's stopped and corrected he'll count 'twenty-ten, twenty-eleven, twenty-twelve etc' LOL) but he's getting quite good at putting 2 numbers together - eg. 4 & 9, put them together and it's forty-nine etc. He can do that up to 99.
