Scope for learning

As usual, lots happens in just a few days and if I don't write it down I forget... Reuben has been helping his dad with measuring the frames from the exhibition pictures to cost them, so he's been involved in recording numbers and seeing his dad make calculations, he likes to physically measure things with the tape measure (including himself) and he seems to realise that numbers are used for a variety of things (age, height, time, etc.).
We were looking at words the other day and noticed that some words are short and some long, without actually counting the letters we were trying to guess how many there were in the word we picked, Reuben can also recognise words from a small list (things like, show me the word dog) so it looks like he is making sense of it somehow, some things I am sure that he knows but I don't know how anyone could measure his knowledge, luckily we don't have to.
He asked for some reading workbooks the other day when we were in WH Smiths and we gave them a go, Reuben just does them for fun so we have to be creative with the tasks as some are just weird... they had mixed up the letters of the word cow (owc) and other 3 letter words and asked for the letters in the right order to make the word. Where in the real world would you find this? If you have a love of anagram puzzles that might be useful practise but otherwise? But I have to admit that scope for learning is everywhere, as doing the workbooks is Reuben's idea he is not bothered by the weirdness and goes along with it, just for fun!