He's starting to Read!

I've been tryign to figure out how to teach the 4yo how to read. He knows all his consanant and short vowel sounds and just hasn't been able to blend them together. I had heard a lot about blend ladders, where you go ba, be, bi, bo, bu, da, de, di, do, du, etc etc but he wasn't able to do that either and got very frustrated so I stopped doing anythign with reading altogether. Well, a few days ago I got the brilliant idea that *I* could go through the blend ladders and just have him watch/listen. The first day we did the Bs. He listened but that was about it. The next day we did Ds and he was starting to do them on his own by the du. And today we did the Fs and he was doing it himself! He has been helping me turn the sounds into words, like ba:bat, be:bed, bi:big, etc and then I would finish writing the word he had made next to the blend. But today when we were done with the F ladder, I wrote "Fox" and he read it to me, and then he read "Dad" and then "Bed"!! I'm actually teaching him how to read!! I am so excited. I just hope I can continue to not push him into doing things he's not ready to do.