Learning

I take no credit for my son intelligence or politeness. With that disclaimer I can share this. (Honestly I don't)
Yesterday I ran to the store with no kids in tow. (Any mother's dream.) I came home with an alphabet border (remember elementary school) for my son, he asked what I got when I got home. I said this for you, and tossed it at him, then walked in the kitchen to put my frozen orange juice away. He came in and said, "Tank you mom, for buying this, at da store, for me."
I was very impressed, that is quite the sentence for a three year old boy in my opinion.
I bought the border because he is showing a great interest in the alphabet, he has gotten all his uppercase down, but is working on the lower case. l t i all look surprisingly alike, as does o and a, if the a is handwritten. not to mention h and n Which is why I bought the alphabet border it has the lower case next to the upper.
I have done nothing to teach my child the alphabet other than read to him A LOT, and let him watch me read A LOT. We have quite a few alphabet books, all of which focus on uppercase, except maybe Dr. Suess ABC, which include lowercase. I read a year ago teach children lowercase first, but I didn't teach him anything so I couldn't stop from learning uppercase first. He has recently starting to want to trace letters, and starting to try to write his name. Oh I take it back I taught him four letters, how to spell his name. I taught him how to read, the letters about a year ago, he is just barely getting to the stage where he can recall how to spell his name without looking at it written. I thought about buying him a tracing letter book, but decided we should start with tracing with our fingers before pencils, since using a writing utensil is two pieces of coordination. He also is "reading" the letters of almost anything he can get his hands on. This terrible intimidates me, I was never much of a reader until high school. I could barely read until middle school. So how am I suppose to teach my child to read? Which is why I didn't teach him letters, I wasn't going to push him, I would have taught him when he was 4, but at 2? I'm not over demanding. I had to go to a tutor in 5th grade to teach me phonics, I still barely can spell phonically, I can do it well enough for spell checker to fix it at least. Anyway, how am I suppose to teach my child phonetics?!! Seriously, having a kid that teaches himself, is terribly intimidating. I think it is smarter than me!
Also I did not teach politeness, he picked him up himself. I would say thank you to him for good behavior, not to mention my husband and I try to be very gracious to each other when we help each other, or others help us, but I have never told my son to say thank you to me. He just picked it up, I do tell him to say thank you to his nursery teachers, and other people who help him.