A couple of months ago I was trying to encourage Soren to draw. For 15 or 20 minutes every afternoon, we would sit at the coffee table with paper and pencil. I would draw stick figures and doodles; Soren would watch, his own paper untouched. After a couple of days repeating my usual pictures over and over, I ran out of ideas and started writing the letters of his name. One day I wrote and drew pictures of all the things I could think of that began with S: Soren, snake, superman, spider, stars, etc. The next day we focused on the letter O. It gave me ideas for drawing, which kept Soren entertained even if it wasn't fulfilling its original purpose.
A couple more weeks went by and I didn't put any effort into reinforcing the letters. So I was very surprised when, one day while reading a naptime story, he pointed to the page and said very distinctly, "ess". He was, in fact, pointing to an S. And he was very excited about it. So, instead of reading the book, we spent a few minutes looking through the pages for more letters.
Later that day, he brought me a pen and peice of paper, directed my hand to the page, and watched while I wrote the letters of his name. He quickly learned S, O, R, E, and D and began pointing them out everywhere we went. While driving in the car, I would hear him identifying letters on billboards. When reading a book, he would stop me often to show me an S or an O (which are easy to find because they are the same in capital and lowercase). At the grocery store, he pointed out letters on the packaging and on our morning walks, he would want to know the names for every symbol on every liscence plate we saw.
Now he knows the whole alphabet, at least all the capital letters. His favorites are Q and W. I don't know why he should have favorite letters but he always smiles and laughs when identifying those letters. He has a hard time saying L and Y; he recognizes those symbols but can only vaguely approximate the sounds.
It's probably silly and unnecessary that he learned the alphabet so young but it was completely driven by his own excitement and interest. It amuses me now to see him sitting by himself with a peice of paper, happily writing away on it and saying out loud the names of the letters he is trying to write. He covers the page in discrete scribbles while saying "R, Q, K, M, S ..."
A couple more weeks went by and I didn't put any effort into reinforcing the letters. So I was very surprised when, one day while reading a naptime story, he pointed to the page and said very distinctly, "ess". He was, in fact, pointing to an S. And he was very excited about it. So, instead of reading the book, we spent a few minutes looking through the pages for more letters.
Later that day, he brought me a pen and peice of paper, directed my hand to the page, and watched while I wrote the letters of his name. He quickly learned S, O, R, E, and D and began pointing them out everywhere we went. While driving in the car, I would hear him identifying letters on billboards. When reading a book, he would stop me often to show me an S or an O (which are easy to find because they are the same in capital and lowercase). At the grocery store, he pointed out letters on the packaging and on our morning walks, he would want to know the names for every symbol on every liscence plate we saw.
Now he knows the whole alphabet, at least all the capital letters. His favorites are Q and W. I don't know why he should have favorite letters but he always smiles and laughs when identifying those letters. He has a hard time saying L and Y; he recognizes those symbols but can only vaguely approximate the sounds.
It's probably silly and unnecessary that he learned the alphabet so young but it was completely driven by his own excitement and interest. It amuses me now to see him sitting by himself with a peice of paper, happily writing away on it and saying out loud the names of the letters he is trying to write. He covers the page in discrete scribbles while saying "R, Q, K, M, S ..."
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