Now I Know My ABC's...

In the last week or two, Will has gone from recognizing just a handful of alphabet letters, to recognizing them ALL without mistake. He's loved the alphabet song for quite awhile now and sings it often to his sister. But what good is the song if you don't know what it means?! He's been able to spell his name and recognize those letters for awhile as well and has also taken note of other favorite people's names and what letter their name begins with. We have books and toys and songs about letters... but suddenly, it's all seem to come together for Will and he's mastered the uppercase letter alphabet! On Friday, when I picked him up from the sitters (I always ask him to stand beside his door while I put Sophie - in car seat - into the Jeep) I came around to his side to find him pointing to each letter on my logo and spelling "C-H-E-R-O-K-E-E". Now he loves it when we quiz him with other random words on random objects so that he can spell/say them for us. It's so exciting!

One of the biggest teaching aids for Will seems to be this toy:
Way back at Thanksgiving time, Grandma Riedeman brought this for Will to play with during our family lunch at her friend's house. He seemed to ignore it at first, but later at home started figuring out what it does. The audio voice has the cutest little voice (supposed to be that little puppy dog that serves as the "dial" to change games) and it encourages the child to help him "dig up some letter biscuits". You can switch the game to just press a letter and hear it's name or sound. Or you can slide it all the way over to be quizzed. Maybe a month ago, he started really enjoying the letter sounds and even started recognizing more letters by sound than by sight. When it quizzed him, he could find the letter that makes the sound "Gggg as in goat" before he could simply "find the letter G". And in the last week or two, he's been playing with this toy daily and is now excellent at recognizing by sight AND sound. Thank you Grandma for such an awesome toy!

Another favorite, prior to the Leap Frog toy, is his wooden alphabet puzzle with pictures of various objects that start with each letter below the puzzle piece. We've been using this for almost a year now and at first, he required a lot of help with completing it. Now he enjoys this puzzle as part of his massive puzzle sorting game that he does with the huge pile of puzzle pieces and boards surrounding him in a circle.

Another fun thing for alphabet practice (which we have to read up on and jump into) is the Phonics Dance. I don't know much about it, but my sister and her husband (both elementary school teachers) say this is all the rage in the school systems now. There's a whole song and dance with phonics info about each letter. These are really the only two I know by heart and that's just because they are the ones my kids seem the most interested in when Aunt Casey and Uncle Dub sing to them: B & D. B goes like this (you make the B sound like Buh): "B, B, B is baby, baby, baby. B, B, B is B... Wah!" It makes a lot more sense when you hear it in person and Sophie just smiles a giggles when I dance and sing this to her. She even started saying "buh, buh, buh" quite a bit after hearing this so often. And then D goes: "D, D, D is I'm a digging dog. D, D, D is D." This one is Will's favorite. So Casey gave me a whole set of laminated cards (8.5x11 mind you) of the Phonics Dance and a book about how to teach them to kids. Ha!

At my work, we've been giving out these cute little books to our patients and Will likes to choose this for one of his bedtime books often.

I've even tried incorporating the alphabet into our own food on occasion. Can you spot the W spelled out in tomatoes amongst Will's peas? :) HE did! And he loved it.

ABC's at breakfast time.

And while we're at it (why not?) Sophie got an S on her cereal with a drizzle of yogurt and sprinkle of cinnamon. Ha - that's totally for my own enjoyment - I'm sure she could care less. But, again, Will noticed and told her all about it.

And one other idea I've been working on (and still have more pages before it's complete) is a picture scrapbook of sorts (as basically basic as possible because I am so NOT creative):

I haven't shown it to Will yet because I'm still waiting on a few more pictures that I've requested of family and friends, but I think he'll like it.

Also, I recently ordered the Leap Frog Letter Factory DVD after hearing rave reviews from several people. I was planning to stick it in Will's Easter basket, but maybe I won't be able to wait that long?