I will start this out by saying that I know that there are those who are opposed to a letter of the week-type approach, and I get that, and I agree with it to some extent. But I also have a 2 year old who gets up at 6, goes to bed at 8, and does not nap. He gets squirrelly in the afternoon, so I am going to do some more formal stuff with him to help him with his letters--mostly craft and game stuff as he is not into sitting for long. For those of you with young kid experience: I don't know what to make of him sometimes. (Well, in many areas, but here I am talking about learning. ha!) He knows some of his letters very well all the time. But others he is weird about. For instance, he had a big cup of letter tiles and he was dumping them all out saing he had to find the F. He dug through them all and found the F, which I had no idea he knew. The next day, I showed him an F and he had no clue. So what is up with that? If you know of good sites or games, I would appreciate it! I know the letter of the week one and starfall and I have a Mailbox preschool subscription, but I would like to hear what worked for you. And a quick ABC story that made me laugh: We were at the ATM the other day and he said, "Mom, what does that B & H sign say?" So I looked, at it said "B & H Supply Company." He didn't believe me.:lol:
He is still very young. His brain is still changing and it may be a bit before he retains an "F" as an "F". I remember Ems in Kindergarten. She could already read and count. That is until she got to 16. For some reason 16 always turned into 18. All the other numbers were fine. Something about that 16.:lol: It took almost the whole year but she got it. Children at this age have a very short memory and attention span. All I can say is it will come along when his brain is ready to retain it. Patty
It is so strange how their brains work--what they do retain versus what they don't. I would swear under oath that he remembers every happy meal toy he has ever gotten--especially the ones we have thrown out!:roll:
Paint, play doh, make pretzel doh and shape the letters, etc... are all excellent for the little guys. We were given a mini book set of the alphabet. Each cardboard book is about 3" x 3" and my son loves them. I also have an alphabet chart that hangs and has pockets for each letter. It comes with pictures for each letter and then more letters all on that cardboard material. I think it was around $20 at Oriental Trading. They go through stages and like the others have said one day they got it and the next they barely remember their name. ROFL Read to him! I can't stress that enough. We have a chalk board and a whiteboard that are also great fun. Believe me when I tell you it is the simple things that they enjoy the most. You can make your own flash cards and play go fish "ummm do you have an letter E?" We also got a Cookie Monster letter bingo game at Walmart - cheap at most $4. There are different ways to play the game so...you can call the letter or items that begin with the letter. If he is REAL active and needs to burn off some...try doing things where he gets to hop to the letter on the floor or find things. The game Cadoo (sp?), which is too old for him now..., has a card that says go find something hard and red. This is always a favorite at our house. Go find something that has ___________ Dot to Dots with numbers and the ones with letters are fun. Anyway...it's all fun!
Something that I did was make a relay game out of the letters. I wrote the letters in colored ink on 3 x 5 cards and taped them to small cones that I have (the mini traffic cone type). I put them across the room and asked him to go get a "C", or whatever letter you are working on, and bring it back as fast as you can. Great for working off that extra energy. You can change it up by asking him to bring back a letter and tell you what it is. Hope that helps.
I think these are great ideas! Shelia, it's funny you mentioned the go fish, because we picked up a letter go fish game at WalMart the other day and we played that for the first time this afternoon. He cracks me up because we played so we could see each others cards and he totally doesn't get that you should ask for a pair if you can see it, so he just kept asking for b bear since b is his favorite letter. I have read to him literally since the day we brought him home from the hospital. I had to do something to stay sane since we were trying not to watch TV...He loves to "read" and he loves story time and word games and stuff like that, so I hope that continues!!
You have already got a ton of ideas that I would have suggested. Just posting to say that his remembering one day and forgetting the next is soooooo normal. Don't worry about it for let it phase you. In fact...I am not sure that ever completely ends..lol. Just being a kid! Doesn't mean anything.
Yeah, I wasn't too worried about it...I was just surprised that he picked out the F the first time. It is weird how they just pick stuff up. Kinda makes me nervous!:shock:
When my son first sat down and started reading aloud...I was like "oh man...now I have to get serious about schooling." lol. It is amazing how much they can pick up. I for one am so glad he taught himself how to read...I hated teaching that. lol.
My ds9 learned his letters using sidewalk chalk. I would make an A, and say what it was, then he would say it. (He was about 2 1/2.) However, he couldn't identify an A that was printed, like in a book. Only the sidewalk chalk A (and other letters). If you read to them a lot, they seem to all of a sudden just start picking up words. They will probably also read more when they are older.
