CVC words

We have been working hard in homeschool.  Gyunay can recognize his letters (although b,d,p, and q are interchangeable, as are u and n, and f and t), and he knows all of the letter sounds.  We've been working on a phonics program called I Can Read, but it was getting discouraging.  Since hands-on works best for us, I made up some CVC cards (consonant-vowel-consonant).  He has been working with word puzzles and other things, so these words are not unknown, but he has never seemed to be able to sound out a word, or to recognize the words.
Here is one of the cards I made:

Gyunay successfully spelled "pig" when I helped him sound it out.  We then progressed through the other cards, some of which (cow, dog) he needed more help with than others.  Then we got to fox, and he spelled it completely on his own!!!  

Meanwhile, Lydia was working on her Latin.  As you can tell, my kids prefer to work on the floor.  Disregard the stacks of books in the background.  :)

Gyunay is also showing some progress with writing, but that is much slower.  We are still working on pre-writing skills like shapes more than actual letters (although we work on those, too, particularly the ones in his name).  The slant board (pictured above, black) has been very helpful.