This evening we were reading Bentley's reader (from kindergarten). As it turns out, the first word was "one." Bentley pronounced the word, "on." I corrected him gently, telling him that it looks like "on" but is pronounced "one."
"Oh, No!" Bentley said.
"What?!" I exclaimed; startled, thinking his comment a surprising reaction to a trivial three letter word at the beginning of a cheesy reader.
Bentley explained: "Today I was making birthday cards in kindergarten for Mrs. Rains [the librarian] with Abby [one of his friends in kindergarten]. Abby asked me, 'Bentley, how do you spell "one?" '
So I told her, "Abby, 'one' is spelled wuh, wuh, wuh - double-u; uh, uh, uh - yoo; nn, nn, nn - ehn; W-U-N."
"Papa, I told her how to spell it wrong!"
"But!..." I assured him, "You did an excellent job of spelling according to the sound of the letters; that is exactly the right thing to do! There is no way to guess how to spell this word from the way it is spelled. Some words are just like that."