Lil' Letter Caper

 

I strongly believe play is the most important learning a three year old can be doing. That said, I have a kid who is endlessly curious about letters and writing (and books obviously). Claire quickly learned all the sounds in our alphabet over the summer (short sounds for the vowels) and now I’ve introduced the letter names. I didn't follow any formal program -- I just wrote a few letters on the board before breakfast and pointed to them while speaking their sounds. That's it! Our phonics approach seems to be working because we were goofing around with some stick-on letters and I found this:

I wonder what would have happened if I was on my game and had some vowels out?

Pretty cool, right? I handed her an S to begin and asked, “what sound does this make, can you stick it on something that starts with this sound.”

Well off she went! "S" was stuck on stairs, "P" placed on a pillow, and the cutest of all  --

C for C-C-Claire (or cute perhaps?)

She put the "H" on my hat and then I abandoned her and a closet door full of letters to attend to my now smoking pan of oatmeal. When I came back into the living room, I found the T on the hat as well.

I would be lying if I said the wannabe librarian’s heart inside me didn’t pitter patter a bit when Claire said, “it has a ‘tih’ sound in it too, at the end part.”

Be still my heart, this kid is going to be able to read ME stories soon!

The letter game continued in the kitchen where Claire labeled her bowl with a sticky "B". And she was sorely disappointed when I would not allow her to stick another "B" onto her blueberries...or my butt. Sorry kid, I've got to draw the line somewhere and it better be before you figure out just what XL might describe when they're put together.